The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in Eighteen Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XI. The Period of the French Revolution.

Table of Principal Dates.



1700 Death of Dryden.
1702 Edward Bysshe’s Art of Poetry.
1709 First English Copyright Act.
1712 J. J. Rousseau born.
1714–27 George I.
1717 David Garrick born (d. 1779).
1719 Death of Addison.
1720 Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu born (d. 1800).
1723 Blackstone born (d. 1780).
1727–60 George II.
1727 Death of Newton.
1728 Oliver Goldsmith born (d. 1774).
1729 Burke born (d. 1797).
1731 Cowper born (d. 1800).
1731 Death of Defoe.
1737 Edward Gibbon born (d. 1794).
1744 Death of Pope.
1745 Hannah More born (d. 1833).
1745 Death of Swift.
1748 Bentham born (d. 1832).
1749 Goethe born.
1750 The bluestocking parties begin.
1751 Sheridan born (d. 1816).
1751 Encyclopédie, vols. I and II.
1753 Dugald Stewart born (d. 1828).
1754 Crabbe born (d. 1832).
1756 Amory’s John Buncle.
1756 Burke’s Sublime and Beautiful.
1757–60 Pitt’s first ministry.
1757 Blake born (d. 1827).
1758 Mrs. Carter’s Epictetus.
1759 British Museum opened.
1759 Burns born (d. 1796).
1760–1820 George III.
1760 Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse.
1762 Wilkes’s The North Briton.
1763 Rousseau’s Contrat Social.
1764 Death of Hogarth.
1765 Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto.
1765–9 Blackstone’s Commentaries.
1766 C. Anstey’s New Bath Guide.
1766 Malthus born (d. 1834).
1766 Lessing’s Laokoon.
1768–71 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1st edn.
1769 R. Cumberland’s The Brothers produced.
1770 Burke’s Thoughts on the Present Discontents.
1770 Wordsworth born (d. 1850).
1771 R. Cumberland’s The West Indian.
1771 Walter Scott born (d. 1832).
1772 Coleridge born (d. 1834).
1773 Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen.
1773 Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer.
1774 Burke’s Speech on American Taxation.
1774 Southey born (d. 1843).
1774 Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther.
1775 Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies.
1775 Grattan enters the Irish parliament.
1775 Jane Austen born (d. 1817).
1775 Charles Lamb born (d. 1834).
1775 Sheridan’s The Rivals.
1776 Bentham’s A Fragment on Government.
1776 Death of Hume.
1776 Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.
1776 The American Declaration of Independence.
1776 Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, vol. I.
1777–84 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2nd edn.
1777 Hannah More’s Percy.
1777 Clara Reeve’s The Champion of Virtue, afterwards The Old English Baron.
1777 Sheridan’s The School for Scandal and A Trip to Scarborough produced.
1778 Death of Rousseau.
1778 Death of Voltaire.
1778 Hazlitt born (d. 1830).
1779 Olney Hymns.
1779 Lessing’s Nathan der Weise.
1780 Arthur Young’s Tour in Ireland.
1781 William Pitt the younger and Sheridan enter parliament.
1781 Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
1781 Rousseau’s Confessions.
1782 Mrs. Siddons begins acting at Drury lane.
1783 Crabbe’s The Village.
1783 Fox’s India Bill.
1783–1802 William Pitt the younger’s first ministry.
1784 Beckford’s Vathek written.
1784 Death of Johnson.
1785 Clara Reeve’s Progress of Romance.
1785 Burke’s speech On the Nabob of Arcot’s debts.
1785 Cowper’s The Task.
1785 Burke begins his attack on Warren Hastings.
1786 Burns’s Poems (Kilmarnock edn.).
1786 Burgoyne’s The Heiress.
1787 Sheridan’s speech against Warren Hastings.
1787 Colman’s Inkle and Yarico.
1788 The Times founded.
1788–97 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3rd edn.
1788 Byron born (d. 1824).
1788 Goethe’s Egmont.
1789 Blake’s Songs of Innocence.
1789 Fall of the Bastille.
1789 Bentham’s The Principles of Morals and Legislation.
1790 Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France.
1791 E. Inchbald’s A Simple Story.
1791 Boswell’s Life of Johnson.
1791–2 T. Paine’s The Rights of Man.
1791 Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest.
1792 T. Holcroft’s The Road to Ruin.
1792 Pitt’s speech on the slave-trade.
1792–4 Arthur Young’s Travels in France.
1792 Shelley born (d. 1822).
1793 W. Godwin’s Political Justice.
1794 W. Godwin’s Caleb Williams.
1794 Blake’s Songs of Experience.
1794 Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho.
1794 Southey’s Wat Tyler written.
1794–5 Paine’s The Age of Reason.
1795 Carlyle born (d. 1881).
1795 Keats born (d. 1821).
1795 M. G. Lewis’s The Monk.
1796 Burke’s A Letter to a Noble Lord.
1796 Southey’s Joan of Arc.
1796 Bage’s Hermsprong.
1796 E. Inchbald’s Nature and Art.
1796–8 Southey’s Ballads written.
1797 Kotzebue popular on the London stage.
1797 The Anti-Jacobin.
1797 Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian.
1797 Heine born.
1797–1814 Wordsworth’s Excursion written.
1798–1805 Wordsworth’s Prelude written
1798 Southey’s Holly Tree written.
1798 Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population.
1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads.
1799 Balzac born.
1800 Schiller’s Wallenstein.
1800 Wordsworth’s Recluse written.
1801 Chateaubriand’s Atala.
1801 Southey’s Thalaba.
1802 Cobbett’s Weekly Register begins.
1802 Victor Hugo born.
1802 The Edinburgh Review.
1803 Jane Porter’s Thaddeus of Warsaw.
1804 Death of Kant.
1804–6 William Pitt’s second ministry.
1805 Southey’s Madoc.
1805 Wordsworth’s Ode to Duty written.
1805 Death of Schiller.
1805 Chateaubriand’s René.
1806 “All the Talents” ministry.
1807 Crabbe’s The Parish Register.
1809 The Quarterly Review.
1809 Charles Darwin born (d. 1882).
1809 Tennyson born (d. 1892).
1809 Chateaubriand’s The Martyrs.
1810 Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs.
1810 Crabbe’s The Borough.
1810 Southey’s The Curse of Kehama.
1810 Mme. de Staël’s L’Allemagne.
1811 Thackeray born (d. 1863).
1812 Browning born (d. 1889).
1812 Crabbe’s Tales.
1812 Dickens born (d. 1870).
1812 Maria Edgeworth’s Absentee.
1813 Hogg’s The Queen’s Wake.
1813 Southey’s The Life of Nelson.
1814 Southey’s Roderick, the Last of the Goths.
1816 Coleridge’s Christabel.
1816 Peacock’s Headlong Hall.
1817 Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria.
1817 Peacock’s Melincourt.
1817 Maria Edgeworth’s Ormond.
1818 Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey.
1819 Hope’s Anastasius.
1820 Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer.
1820 Southey’s Life of Wesley.
1820–30 George IV.
1822 Peacock’s Maid Marian.
1824–8 Godwin’s Commonwealth of England.
1829 Southey’s Colloquies.
1829 Peacock’s The Misfortunes of Elphin.
1831 Peacock’s Crotchet Castle.
1834–47 Southey’s The Doctor.