Mrs Gaskell: Cranford.
1852 First contribution to Household Words. Tours provinces with Dickens' theatrical company. Basil published (November). Dickens: Bleak House.
Thackeray: Henry Esmond.
1853 Tours Switzerland and Italy with Dickens and Augustus Egg. Charlotte Bronte: Villette.
Charlotte Yonge: The Heir of Redclyffe.
1854 Hide and Seek (June) published. Dickens: Hard Times.
1855 Has first play, The Lighthouse, performed. Trollope: The Warden. Mrs Gaskell: North and South.
1856 In Paris (March-April) with Dickens. Joins staff of Household Words. After Dark (short stories) published. Charles Reade: It is Never Too Late to Mend.
De Quincey: Confessions of an English Opium Eater.
1857 The Dead Secret (June) published. Tours Cumberland, Lancashire and Yorkshire with Dickens. Dickens: Little Dorrit.
Trollope: Barchester Towers.
George Eliot: Scenes of Clerical Life.
1858.
1859 From January, living for the rest of his life (with one interlude) with Mrs Caroline Graves. The Queen of Hearts (short stories) published. Darwin: The Origin of Species.
George Eliot: Adam Bede.
Smiles: Self-Help.
Meredith: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.
1860 The Woman in White published (15 August) in volume form. Dickens: Great Expectations.
George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss. Ruskin: Unto This Last.
1861 Resigns from All the Year Round. George Eliot: Silas Marner.
Charles Reade: The Cloister and the Hearth.
HISTORICAL EVENTS.
European revolutions.
Don Pacifico. Gold in California.
Great Exhibition.
Dismissal of Palmerston.
French coup d'etat.
Livingstone reaches Zambesi.
Derby becomes Prime Minister: Disraeli becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer. Aberdeen becomes Prime Minister; Gladstone becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer. New Houses of Parliament opened.
Crimean War (to 1856). Crystal Palace at Sydenham.
Palmerston becomes Prime Minister. Fall of Sebastopol. Daily Telegraph.
Peace of Paris. Speke on Victoria Nyanza.
Defeat and return of Palmerston. Indian Mutiny. Divorce Act.
Defeat of Palmerston. Derby becomes Prime Minister. India transferred to Crown. Jews admitted to Parliament. Property qualification for MPs removed. Livingstone on Lake Nyassa.
Cobden treaty with France. Volunteer movement.
Garibaldi in Sicily and Naples.
Victor Emmanuel King of Italy. American Civil War (to 1865).
DATE AUTHOR'S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT 1862 No Name published. Braddon: Lady Audley's Secret.
1863 My Miscellanies (selection of journalism) published. George Eliot: Romola.
1864 Mrs Gaskell: Sylvia's Lovers. Newman: Apologia.
1865 Dickens: Our Mutual Friend.
Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland.
1866 Armadale published. Mrs Gaskell: Wives and Daughters.
George Eliot: Felix Holt.
Kingsley: Hereward the Wake.
1867 Trollope: The Last Chronicle of Barset.
1868 The Moonstone published (4 October). Caroline Graves marries Joseph Charles Clow; Collins forms liaison with Martha Rudd ('Mrs Dawson').
1869 Daughter, Marian Dawson (4 July), by Martha Rudd. Arnold: Culture and Anarchy.
J. S. Mill: The Subjection of Women.