Timeline
(dates for poems are dates of composition unless otherwise specified)
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Neoclassical Period 1660-1785
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| Restoration 1660-1700 |
1679: John Dryden (1631-1700), "Mac Flecknoe" 1693: Dryden, A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire |
1660: Charles II restored to throne |
| Augustan Age 1700-1745 |
1709: Alexander Pope (1688-1744), "An Essay on Criticism" 1710: Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), "A Description of a City Shower" 1712-1717, Pope, "The Rape of the Lock" 1714: Pope, "Impromptu to Lady Winchelsea" 1717: Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea (1661-1720), "The Answer (to Pope's Impromptu)" 1731 Swift, "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" 1732: Swift, "The Lady's Dressing Room" 1734: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), "The Reasons That Induced Dr. Swift to Write a Poem Called the Lady's Dressing Room" 1735: Pope, "Epistle 2: To a Lady" 1736: Anne Ingram, Viscountess Irwin (1696-1764), "An Epistle to Mr. Pope" before 1746: Mary Leapor (1722-1746): "An Essay on Woman" |
1710: Swift leaves Whigs for Tories 1713: against his wishes, Swift becomes dean of St. Patrick's in Dublin 1714: death of Queen Anne (Tories fall, Whigs rise to power) 1739: Swift's Ménière's disease worsens, causes him to give up his duties as dean 1742: guardians appointed to tend to Swift's affairs 1744: death of Pope 1745: death of Swift |
| Late 18th C 1745-1785 (Age of Johnson, Age of Sensibility) |
1749: Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), "The Vanity of Human Wishes" 1742-1750: Thomas Gray (1716-1771), "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" 1799: William Cowper (1731-1800), "The Castaway"
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1775-1783: American Revolutionary War |
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Romantic Period 1785-1830
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| early Romantics |
1773: Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743-1825), "A Summer Evening's Meditation" (publication date) 1789-1794: William Blake (1757-1827), Songs of Innocence and Experience 1790-1793: Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell ca. 1792-1795: Barbauld, "The Rights of Woman" 1797: Barbauld, "Washing-Day" (publication date) 1797-8: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), "Kubla Khan" (published, with prefatory note, 1816) 1798: Coleridge, "Frost at Midnight" 1798-1802: William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (1798 edition included "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "We are Seven," "Expostulation and Reply," "The Tables Turned," and Lines...Tintern Abbey"; the Preface appeared in the 1800 edition, and was revised to the version we read in the 1802 edition) 1799: Wordsworth, "A slumber did my spirit seal" 1802: Wordsworth, "My heart leaps up," 1802-1804: Wordsworth, "The world is too much with us 1804: Wordsworth, "I wandered lonely as a cloud" |
1789: beginning of the French Revolution (fall of the Bastille) 1793-1794: Reign of Terror begins in France 1804 Napoleon crowned emperor of France |
| late Romantics |
1817: John Keats (1795-1821), letter to Benjamin Bailey 1819: Keats, "Eve of St. Agnes," "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "To Autumn" |
1818: Keats' brother dies of tuberculosis; Keats develops ulcerated throat 1820: Keats coughs up blood, confirming diagnosis of tuberculosis 1821: death of Keats 1834 death of Coleridge 1850 death of Wordsworth |
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Victorian Period 1830-1901
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Early Victorians (1830--1848) |
1831-1832: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), "The Lady of Shalott," "The Lotos-Eaters" 1833: Tennyson, "Ulysses" 1833-1850: Tennyson, In Memoriam 1845-47: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), Sonnets from the Portuguese publ. 1849: Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), "The Forsaken Merman" ca. 1851: Arnold, "Dover Beach" ca. 1853: Robert Browning (1812-1889), "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea Del Sarto" publ. 1855: R. Browning, "An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician" 1853-1856: E. B. Browning, Aurora Leigh publ 1880: Arnold, "The Study of Poetry" |
1832: First Reform Bill 1830-1833: publication of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology 1837: Victoria crowned 1850: Tennyson succeeds Wordsworth as poet laureate 1840's: entry of Higher Criticism of the Bible into England (e.g. translation of Strauss' Life of Jesus, 1846) 1859: publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species 1867: Second Reform Bill 1870, 1882: Married Women's Property Act |
| Pre-Raphaelites and fellow travellers 1848-1860+ |
1847: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), "The Blessed Damozel" 1856: Christina Rosetti (1830-1894), "A Triad," "In an Artist's Studio" 1859: Christina Rossetti, "Goblin Market" 1866: Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), "Laus Veneris"
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1848: founding of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood |
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Aesthetes and Decadents |
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1901: death of Queen Victoria |