Eighteenth-Century Literature
Essay on the sublime in The Spectator (23 June 1712)
1701-1702: first daily newspapers published in England
1707: The Act of Union is passed, merging the Scottish and English Parliaments, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain
1708: Great Britain consolidates trading power and political influence in India
1710: The world’s first copyright legislation, Britain’s Statute of Anne, becomes law
1714: Death of Queen Anne and the accession of George I
1715: The first Jacobite rising; an attempt by the Catholic Stuarts to take back the crown from the Protestant Hanovers
1727: Accession of George II, like his father, born in Germany
1729-1735: The Wesleys establish Methodism in England
Jonathan Swift, “The Lady’s Dressing Room” (1732)
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, “The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to Write a Poem Called The Lady’s Dressing Room” (1734)
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man (1733-1734)
1742: the first water-powered cotton mill begins operation in England
Translation of Longinus, On the Sublime, by William Smith (1743)
William Collins, “Ode to Fear” (1746)
Samuel Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes (1749)
Samuel Johnson, “On Fiction” (1750)
Samuel Johnson, “On being acquainted with our real characters” (1751)
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
1754-1763: The French and Indian Wars, the North American chapter of the Seven Year’s war, which was a “world war” from 1756 until 1763, is fought in colonial North America mostly by the French and their allies against the English and their allies
Edumund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757)
1757: Beginning of formal British rule in India
1760: George III becomes King; he is on the throne until 1820 but declared unfit in 1810, when his son became Prince Regent
Kant, from Observations on Feeling of the Sublime and the Beautiful (published in the German in 1764; translated into English in 1799)
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
1765: British Parliament passes The Stamp Act
1770: James Cook claims the East Coast of Australia for Great Britain
1770: Boston Massacre
1773: Boston Tea Party
Phyllis Wheatley, “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth” (1773)
1775-1783: American Revolutionary War
1776: Declaration of Independence signed in Philadelphia
1780: Beginning of the Romantic Era in British Literature?
1780: Founding of Constitutional Societies in Great Britain
1787: The United States Constitution written in Philadelphia
1789: Beginning of the Romantic Era in British Literature?
1789: George Washington becomes President of the United States
1789: The Fall of the Bastille
1789-1799: French Revolution
1789-93: The Revolutionary Controversy in England
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence (1789)
Richard Price, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (Delivered on November 4, 1789; published immediately as a pamphlet)
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (November 1, 1790)
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (February 1791)
Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
1792-1802: Wars begun during the French Revolution lead into the Napoleonic Wars, which last from 1803 to 1815
1793: France’s King Louis XVI is executed by guillotine in January
William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (February 1793)
1793: France’s Queen Marie Antoinette is executed by guillotine in October
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794)
1796: Napoleon Bonaparte’s first victories as an army commander
1798: Beginning of the Romantic Era in British Literature?
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads (1798)
Kant, from Observations on Feeling of the Sublime and the Beautiful (translated into English in 1799)
1799: Napoleon stages a coup and declares himself the First Consul of France