A Romantics Chronology, 1780-1832

Martin Garrett

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781349552696, 9781137273260
• eBook ISBN: 9781137273277
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

This book covers the life and work of a wide range of writers from Coleridge to Wollstonecraft, Hemans, Beckford and their contemporaries. Also encompassing a wealth of material on contexts from the treason trials of 1794 to the coming of gas-light to the London stage in 1817, it provides a panorama of one of the richest periods in British culture.

Chronology

1780

January

22	Antonio Canova (1757–1822) sets off to see Naples, Pompeii, Herculaneum and Paestum. In December he returns to Rome, where he spends much of his career.

February

22	The Belle’s Stratagem by Hannah Cowley (1743–1809) opens at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.

April

Late this month George Crabbe (1754–1832) comes to London, moving into lodgings on 24.

27	Marie-Joseph du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), arrives in Boston as part of the French expedition to aid the rebels in the American War of Independence or Revolution, which began in 1775. He leaves for France on 23 December 1781.

Foundation, by John Cartwright (1740–1824) and others, of the Society for Constitutional Information. This year Cartwright publishes The Legislative Rights, expanding Take Your Choice! (1778).

May

12

British forces capture Charleston. They hold it until 13 December 1782.

31

Last performance at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, by Mary Robinson (1758–1800), famous as ‘Perdita’ since playing this role in The Winter’s Tale in 1779. Between June and December she is the lover of George, Prince of Wales (1762–1830; later George IV); on 5 September 1781 she accepts £5,000 and a pension for returning the Prince’s letters. At the height of fashion and notoriety, she is painted in 1781–2 by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88) and George Romney (1734–1802).

June

2

Lord George Gordon (1751–93) presents a petition, with 45,000 signatures, against the Catholic Relief Act of 1778. An immense crowd accompanies him to the House of Commons; the anti-Catholic ‘Gordon riots’ continue until 8. About 700 people are killed and much damage is done to property. About thirty rioters are executed and many more are transported or sent as soldiers to Africa. According to Alexander Gilchrist’s 1863 Life of William Blake, William Blake (1757–1827) is among the rioters. Crabbe witnesses the burning of Newgate on 7. A Plain and Succinct Narrative … by Thomas Holcroft (1745–1809) is published soon after the events. Gordon is charged with treason and acquitted in February 1781.

19

William Beckford (1760–1844) sets off on his Grand Tour, travelling via the Netherlands and Germany to Venice, which he reaches in August. He proceeds to Lucca (16 September), Florence (October), Rome (29 October) and Naples, where he stays in November and early December with his cousin Sir William Hamilton (1731–1803), British Envoy Extraordinary since 1764. Beckford returns to Venice in December and stays in Paris before arriving in England on 14 April 1781.

July

John Nichols publishes, at the author’s expense, Crabbe’s The Candidate: a Poetical Epistle to the Authors of the Monthly Review.

August

5	The Chapter of Accidents by Sophia Lee (1750–1824) opens at the Haymarket Theatre.
29	Birth of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) at Montauban.

September

About now William Blake, Thomas Stothard (1755–1834) and several fellow artists, sketching by the River Medway, are detained for some time as suspected spies.

11	William Wilberforce (1759–1833) is elected MP for Hull.
12	Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) is elected MP for Stafford.
25	Birth in Dublin of Charles Robert Maturin (1780–1824).

November

11	First meeting of Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club, established by Robert Burns (1759–96) and his brother Gilbert (1760–1827).
29	Empress Maria Theresia of Austria dies. Her son Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor since 1765, now becomes ruler of the Habsburg lands until his death in 1790.

December

14	Death in London of Charles Ignatius Sancho (1729?–80). Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African is published in 1782.
26	Mary Fairfax, later Mary Somerville (1780–1872) is born in Jedburgh.
29	First performance of the pantomime Harlequin Freemason, by Charles Dibdin (1745–1814), at Covent Garden. It plays 52 times this season.

Sophia Lee and her sisters Charlotte (c.1748–?) and Harriet (1757/8–1851) found their school in Bath, which continues until 1803.

Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), who moved to Birmingham a few months ago, agrees to become senior minister of the Unitarian New Meeting.

1781

January

1	Official opening of the Iron Bridge, built by Abraham Darby III (1750–91), near Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. Ironbridge develops by the bridge.
29	First performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756–91) opera Idomeneo, re di Creta, in Munich.

Early in the year Nourse publishes the sixth and seventh volumes of The History of England by Catharine Macaulay (1731–91). The eighth and final volume comes out...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• General Editor’s Preface
• Chronology
• Sources
• Author/Name Index
• Title Index
• Subject Index