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Victoria becomes queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Queen Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India. -
Charles Dickens publishes Oliver Twist in periodical form
The story is about an orphan, Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Naively unaware of their unlawful activities, Oliver is led to the lair of their elderly criminal trainer Fagin. -
William Wordsworth becomes poet laureate
Wordsworth received an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1838 from Durham University, and the same honour from Oxford University the next year. In 1842 the government awarded him a civil list pension amounting to £300 a year. With the death in 1843 of Robert Southey, Wordsworth became the Poet Laureate. He initially refused the honour, saying he was too old, but accepted when Prime Minister Robert Peel assured him it would be good. -
Potato famine begins in Ireland; close to one million people die of starvation or famine-related diseases; massive emigration begins.
The Irish during this time suffered devastating loses of family, friends, and fellow countrymen. Of the 8 million Irish in 1845, one million died, while 1.5 million emigrated to the United States. -
Elizabeth Barrett & Robert Browning elope; during their courtship she writes poems included in Songs from the Portuguese.
The Brownings lived happily in Italy for 15 years. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's weak health improved dramatically, and the couple had a son in 1849. She published her best-known work, Sonnets from the Portuguese, in 1850. The sonnets chronicled the couple's courtship and marriage. -
Charlotte Bronte publishes Jane Eyre; Emily Bronte publishes Wuthering Heights
Charlotte Bronte wrote her second novel, Jane Eyre, in 1847. A Bildungsroman, the book follows the development of Jane Eyre from a young child into a young woman. Charlotte Bronte published this Gothic novel under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë, written between October 1845 and June 1846, and published in 1847 under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell." It was her first and only published novel: she died aged 30 the following year. -
Ten Hours Act limits the number of hours that women and children can work in factories.
The Factory Act of 1847 stipulated that as of 1 July 1847, women and children between the ages of 13 and 18 could work only 63 hours per week. The Bill further stipulated that as of 1 May 1848, women and children 13–18 could work only 58 hours per week, the equivalent of 10 hours per day; this act helped with the children. -
Alfred, Lord Tennyson becomes a poet laureate.
After Wordsworth's death in 1850, and Samuel Rogers' refusal, Tennyson was appointed to the position of Poet Laureate, which he held until his own death in 1892, by far the longest tenure of any laureate before or since. He fulfilled the requirements of this position by turning out appropriate but often uninspired verse, such as a poem of greeting to Princess Alexandra of Denmark when she arrived in Britain to marry the future King Edward VII. -
Japan Opens Trade To The West
Japan opened its ports after signing the Treaty of Kanagawa with the US in 1854 and began to intensively modernize and industrialize. -
Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. -
The U.S. Civil War begins
It started on April 12, 1861, in Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. -
In France, Victor Hugo publishes Les Miserables.
The novel contains many subplots, but the main thread is the story of ex-convict Jean Valjean, who becomes a force for good in the world but cannot escape his criminal past. The novel is divided into five volumes, each volume divided into several books, and subdivided into chapters, for a total of 48 books and 365 chapters. Each chapter is relatively short, usually no longer than a few pages. -
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation declares slavery illegal in Confederate Territories
On Sept. 22, 1863, he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, due to go into effect in 100 days, declaring that all slaves held in states rebelling against the Union would be free. -
Lewis Carroll publishes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar creatures. -
Britain ends eighty-year practice of deporting convicts to Australia
During the late 18th and 19th centuries, large numbers of convicts were transported to the various Australian penal colonies by the British government. One of the primary reasons for the British settlement of Australia was the establishment of a penal colony to alleviate pressure on their overburdened correctional facilities. Over the 80 years more than 165,000 convicts were transported to Australia. -
Mohandas K Gandhi is born in India
Mohandas K. Gandhi was born on October 2nd, 1869 in Porbandar, in the western part of India, to Karamchand Gandhi, chief minister of Porbandar, and his wife Putlibai, a devout Hindu. -
Thomas Edison invents the incandescent lamp
The first public demonstration of the Thomas Edison's incandescent lighting system was in December 1879, when the Menlo Park laboratory complex was electrically lighted. Edison spent the next several years creating the electric industry. -
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appears
Huckleberry Finn is a boy about thirteen or fourteen. He has been brought up by his father, the town drunk, and has a hard time fitting into society. Tom Sawyer and his friends occasionally call him "Huck Finn". -
Frank Baum publishes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900. -
Queen Victoria Dies
Warmhearted and lively, Victoria had a gift for drawing and painting; educated by a governess at home, she was a natural diarist and kept a regular journal throughout her life. On William IV's death in 1837, she became Queen at the age of 18.
