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Victoria becomes queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
She inherited the throne at the age of 18, after her father's three elder brothers had all died leaving no legitimate, surviving children. The United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy, in which the Sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Reign 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901 -
William Wordsworth becomes poet laureate
Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate -
Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning elope; writes poems included in Songs from the Portuguese
On September 12, 1846, while her family was away, Barrett sneaked out of the house and met Browning at St. Marylebone Parish Church, where they were married. 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. -
Charlotte Bronte publishes Jane Eyre; Emily Bronte publishes Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë, written between October 1845 and June 1846,The decision to publish came after the success of her sister Charlotte's novel. Jane Eyre. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited the manuscript of Wuthering Heights, and arranged for the edited version to be published as a posthumous second edition in 1850. -
Alfred, Lord Tennyson becomes a poet laureate
Tennyson's Poems in two volumes was a tremendous critical and popular success. In 1850, with the publication of In Memoriam, Tennyson became one of Britain's most popular poets. He was selected Poet Laureate in succession to Wordsworth. -
Japan opens trade to the West
On March 31 1854 representatives of Japan and the United States signed a historic treaty. A United States naval officer, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, negotiated tirelessly for several months with Japanese officials to achieve the goal of opening the doors of trade with Japan. For two centuries, Japanese ports were closed to all but a few Dutch and Chinese traders. The United States hoped Japan would agree to open certain ports so American vessels could begin to trade with the mysterious i -
Mohandas K. Gandhi is born in India
Known as 'Mahatma' (great soul), Gandhi was the leader of the Indian nationalist movement against British rule, and is widely considered the father of his country.Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar in Gujarat. After university, he went to London to train as a barrister. -
Thomas Edison invents the incandescent lamp
Thomas Alva Edison invented a carbon filament that burned for forty hours. Edison placed his filament in an oxygenless bulb. (Edison evolved his designs for the lightbulb based on the 1875 patent he purchased from inventors, Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans.) -
Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appears
a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer -
Queen Victoria dies
The death of Queen Victoria on January 22, 1901, ends an era in which most of her British subjects know no other monarch. Her 63-year reign, the longest in British history, saw the growth of an empire on which the sun never set. Victoria restored dignity to the English monarchy and ensured its survival as a ceremonial political institution.
