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William Blake publishes Songs of Innocence
Blake believed that his poetry could be read and understood by common people, but he was determined not to sacrifice his vision in order to become popular. -
Mary Wollstonecraft critiques female educational restrictions in A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a treatise on overcoming the ways in which women in her time are oppressed and denied their potential in society, with concomitant problems for their households and society as a whole. -
Charles and Mary Lamb publish Tales from Shakespeare
Brother-and-sister writing team Charles and Mary Lamb interweave the words of Shakespeare with their own (some 200 years later in 1807) to bring 20 of his best plays to the young reader. They are more fully enlivened with the early twentieth-century color illustrations of Gertrude Hammond. -
English artisans called Luddites riot and destroy textile machines, fearing that industrialism threatens their livelihoods
The Luddites were trying to save their livelihoods by smashing industrial machines developed for use in the textile industries of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire. Some Luddites were active in Lancashire also. They smashed stocking-frames and cropping frames among others. -
Brother's Grimm begin to publish Grimm's Fairytales
Jacob Grimm and his younger brother Wilhelm published a collection of folk tales. The Grimms didn't write these stories; they collected tales that had been handed down from generation to generation. The Brothers Grimm worried that industrialization would erase these classics from memory. So they set out to protect these ancient tales. -
United States declares war on Great Britain
In the War of 1812, the United States took on the greatest naval power in the world, Great Britain, in a conflict that would have an immense impact on the young country's future. Causes of the war included British attempts to restrict U.S. trade, the Royal Navy's impressment of American seamen and America's desire to expand its territory. -
Jane Austen publishes Pride and Prejudice
Austen is considered one of the greatest writers in English history, both by academics and the general public. Austen's transformation from little-known to internationally renowned author began in the 1920s, when scholars began to recognize her works as masterpieces, thus increasing her general popularity. -
Mary Shelley, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, publishes Frankenstein
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published in 1818, when Mary was 21, and became a huge success. The first edition of the book had an unsigned preface by Percy Shelley. Many, disbelieving that a 19-year-old woman could have written such a horror story, thought that it was his novel. -
Noah Webster publishes An American Dictionary of the English Language
This book, published in 1828, embodied a new standard of lexicography; it was a dictionary with 70,000 entries that was felt by many to have surpassed Samuel Johnson's 1755 British masterpiece not only in scope but in authority as well. -
Victor Hugo publishes The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Since its appearance in 1831 the story has became part of popular culture. The novel, set in 15th century Paris, tells a moving story of a gypsy girl Esmeralda and the deformed bell ringer, Quasimodo, who loves her.
