As currently constituted, this page, taken together with the three companion pages covering the years 1625-1658, 1659-1700, and 1701-1746, represents a fairly extensive chronological account of key historical and literary events between the years 1625 and 1800. A few of the historical entries, and more of the literary ones, are "linked" to primary texts in electronic form.

Historical entries are listed, on a year-by-year basis, in a somewhat arbitrary order of "importance". Literary entries are roughly sorted in the following order:

• General literary history, including important births, deaths, and cultural and literary events, especially as these latter relate to censorship or government control of the press.

• The publication of poetry.

• The publication of "prose fiction," somewhat arbitrarily defined, but including novels and "romances."

• The publication of very diverse varieties of prose nonfiction, including history, criticism, philosophy, science, polemic, and periodical literature.

• Performance dates for key plays.

Find the year in which you are interested in the menu below.

Table of Contents

• The British score a number of naval victories over the French off the Atlantic coast of France.

• Birth of Anna Seward.
• Publication of Thomas Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College and Thomas Warton's Pleasures of Melancholy. Publication of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Six Town Eclogues; With Some Other Poems, with contributions from John Gay.
• Samuel Richardson publishes first volumes of Clarissa.
• Performance of Garrick's Miss in her Teens.

• Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle officially ends the War of the Austrian Succession.
• The Bow Street Runners, London's first regular police force, established by Henry Fielding, in his capacity as Chief Magistrate at Bow Street.

• Death of James Thomson.
Birth of Jeremy Bentham.
• First three volumes of Robert Dodsley's Collection of Poems, which helps define a new "canon," are published.
Publication of Thomson's mock-Spenserian poem, The Castle of Indolence. Posthumous publication of Mary Leapor's Poems upon Several Occasions (reissued 1751).
• Publication of Tobias Smollett's Roderick Random, and of the first part of John Cleland's quasi-pornographic Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (concluded in 1749).
• Publication of Hume's Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding.
• Parson Yorick dies in May (Tristram Shandy, Vol. I, Ch. 10).

"Alas, poor YORICK!" The black page commemorating Parson Yorick's death in volume 1 of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-67). (More . . .)

• Birth of Charlotte Smith.
• Publication of William Collins' On the Death of Thomson and The Passions.
Publication of Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes.
• Publication of Fielding's Tom Jones.
• Publication of Bolingbroke's On the Spirit of Patriotism and The Idea of a Patriot King, and of David Hartley's Observations on Man.
• The Monthly Review commences publication.

• Publication of Christopher Smart's Eternity of Supreme Being and Thomson's Poems on Several Occasions.
• Publication of Charlotte Lennox's Harriot Stuart.
• Johnson commences publication of The Rambler (to 1752).
• Yorick's sermon on conscience lost, found, and preached (Tristram Shandy, Vol. II, Ch. 17).

• Frederick, Prince of Wales, dies.
• Spurred in large measure by the popularity of William Hogarth's satirical engraving Gin Alley, Parliament introduces an effective Gin Act that increases taxation on the beverage, and bans its sale by distillers and shopkeepers; consumption begins to fall dramatically.

	William Hogarth. Reproduced from William Makepeace Thackeray, The Four Georges. The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1869).
(More . . .)

• The Gregorian calendar is officially introduced into England.

• The Marriage Act (sometimes known as Lord "Hardwicke's Act") is passed, making only those marriages performed according to full Anglican rights (or by special licence) legal. Previous to this act, consent to marriage in the presence of witnesses, or the officiating of anyone in priest's orders, was all that was required to make a marriage legal. The act was designed to curb clandestine marriages, sometimes of minors, performed by sham priests for a fee in the district of the Fleet Prison (from whence these derived the name "Fleet marriages"). Marriages performed according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church or nonconformist churches remained illegal until 1837.

• Henry Pelham dies; his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, becomes Prime Minister.

• French settlers are expelled from Acadia (Nova Scotia) by the English.
• William Pitt the elder dismissed from office by Newcastle for his criticisms of government policy.

• Beginning of the Seven Years War, in which Britain allies itself with Prussia against France and other continental powers.
• Following a series of military failures, Newcastle resigns as Prime Minister in November; William Pit the elder assumes the leadership of the war against France as Secretary of State, and begins to implement the "Maritime Strategy" that will eventually result in the capture of Canada and much of India.
• The "black hole of Calcutta": in protest against East India Company's fortification of Calcutta, the nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Dawlah, attacks and imprisons 146 soldiers of the British garrison under John Holwell; they are confined over the night of 20 to 21 June in a guard room some 18 feet by 15 feet; it is alleged that all but 25 of the soldiers died as a result.

• Pitt the elder and Newcastle unite in a coalition ministry.
• Calcutta is recaptured by the British. Robert Clive, commander of the forces of the East India Company and their Indian allies, defeats the nawab of Bengal and his French allies at Plassey, despite being vastly outnumbered; Bengal falls under British influence.
• The passing of the Militia Act, enacted in response to the inadequacies of the training of militia, empowers the government to conscript all males of military age for three years service. Only a few battalions are actually raised this way, however.
• London's Bow Street Runners empowered to serve outside of the City limits.

• Cape Breton Island, and its citadel, Louisburg, falls to the British.
• The comet whose appears had been accurately predicted by Edmund Halley returns.

• "The Year of Victories": British naval forces are victorious against a French fleet, intended to cover a planned invasion of the British Isles, at Quiberon Bay, with the result that the French plans are abandoned. Coalition forces, including the British, defeat the French at Minden. General James Wolfe captures Quebec City from the French on the Plains of Abraham.
• Josiah Wedgwood opens his first pottery business in Burslem, Staffordshire.

• George II dies, and is succeeded by his grandson George III.
• The conquest of Canada is completed by British forces with the capture of Montreal.

• Pitt the elder, his war policies rejected by the new King, resigns.

• Duke of Newcastle is driven from office by George III's favourite, Lord Bute, who becomes Prime Minister.

• The Seven Years' War ends. On the continent, the conflict concludes with the Treaty of Hubertusburg; the Treaty of Paris ends the colonial war, redefines European possessions around the globe, and establishes Britain as the foremost imperial power in the world: Britain receives Quebec, Cape Breton Island, Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, Tobago, Senegal, Florida, and Minorca, as well as settling its predominance on the Indian subcontinent.
• Lord Bute resigns, and is replaced as leading minister by George Grenville.
• John Wilkes is arrested on a general warrant for seditious libel following the publication of issue #45 of his The North Briton, which had alledged that the King's speech proroguing Parliament had contained a lie.

• Wilkes is expelled from Parliament.

• The Stamp Act is introduced by Grenville's administration, imposing a duty on legal documents and newspapers in the American colonies in order to help finance the defence of the colonies, and pay for the Seven Years War. The tax is immensely unpopular in the colonies, where the right of British Parliament to impose taxes on the colonists is questioned.
• Grenville is replaced by the Whig leader Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquis of Rockingham, who becomes First Lord of the Treasury in July.
• James Hargreaves, a weaver and carpenter, invents the "spinning jenny," which mechanizes the textile industry by utilizing eight spindles for spinning, powered by a single large wheel. Hargreaves faces almost immediate opposition, and some violence, from hand-spinners concerned about the effect of his invention upon their livelihood.

• Rockingham's administration repeals the unpopular Stamp Act, but passes a Declaratory Act, affirming the right of Parliament to levy taxes from the colonies.
• Rockingham resigns, and is replaced by Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, who rules with Pitt the elder, newly created Earl of Chatham, and Lord of the Privy Seal.

• The American Import Duties Act, steered through Parliament by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townshend, is imposed upon the American colonies: this imposes duties on lead, glass, paper, painter's colours, and tea and is bitterly opposed by the colonists.

• Chatham (Pitt the elder) resigns from office; Grafton assumes full responsibilities as Prime Minister.
• In new Parliamentary elections, the expelled MP John Wilkes is returned in the seat of Middlesex.
• The Royal Academy of Arts is founded to encourage the fine arts, with Joshua Reynolds as its first president.
• James Cook is appointed Captain of the Endeavour, and commences a mission of exploration to the Pacific for members of the Royal Society.

• Wilkes is expelled from Parliament for a second time.
• Captain Cook's expedition reaches Tahiti.
• James Watt patents his steam engine, and Richard Arkwright patents a water frame (which was likely not his own invention); the latter is a water-powered spinning frame that makes fully-mechanized cotton mills possible.

• Frederick, Lord North's administration assumes power, replacing that of Grafton. In an effort to appease the colonists, North abolishes the duties under the American Import Duties Act, retaining only that on tea. Popular protests in the colonies leads to the "Boston Massacre," in which British troops are provoked into firing upon a crowd of rioters, killing five.

• Spain cedes the Falklands Islands to Britain.
• Warren Hastings becomes Governor of Bengal, and begins to implement major administrative and legal reforms to Britain's colonial administration of India.

• Lord Mansfield, presiding over the case of the escaped slave James Somersett, declares slavery to be illegal in England
• The Royal Marriages Act passed, stipulating that the sovereign's consent was required for a member of the Royal Family to wed, unless over 25 years of age. The act was instigated by George III as a reaction to the marriage of two of his brothers to commoners, without his approval.
• Captain Cook begins his second expedition, during which he explores the coast of the Antarctic.

• The Regulating Act is passed, which attempts (unsuccessfully) to extend government control over the East India Company's administration of its territories in India; it made the company-appointed Governor General (at this time, Warren Hastings) responsible to a government-appointed council.
• The "Boston Tea Party" occurs when about 50 American colonists disguised as Native Americans board East India Company ships in Boston harbour and throw some 300 chests of tea into the water. The raid was in protest of the Tea Act, which allowed the Company to dump surplus tea at cheap rates onto the American market.
• Captain Cook's expedition reaches the Antarctic.

• John Wilkes is once more re-elected as member for Middlesex; Parliament relents in the face of popular opinion, and he is allowed to resume his seat.
• The so-called "Intolerable Acts," four separate pieces of legislation, are passed in response to the Boston Tea Party. The Massachusetts Government Act revoked the charter of the colony, while the Administration of Justice Act allowed colonial administrators to return to Britain to be tried for capital offences. The Quartering Act permitted the Governor of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, to billet troops in colonial homes, and the Boston Port Bill closed Boston harbour down, pending compensation for the owners of the tea destroyed during the "Tea Party."
• Joseph Priestley isolates oxygen for the first time.
• First Congress of the American colonies meets.
• Louis XVI accedes to the throne of France.

• The American Revolution begins with skirmishes between British troops and colonial militia at Lexington and Concord; this is soon followed by a more serious engagement at the Battle of Bunker Hill, during which British forces successfully assault a fortified position overlooking Boston, but at the cost of heavy casualties. George Washington is appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. Revolutionary forces invade Canada in the autumn.
• James Watt perfects his steam engine.

• The Continental Congress issues the Declaration of Independence from Britain.
• General Howe evacuates Boston, but lands on Long Island, and defeats the Continental Army under Washington.
• Captain Cook commences his third voyage, to discover a northwest passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

• "Gentleman" John Burgoyne's British army is defeated at Saratoga, and surrenders to the Americans.
• Lord North attempts to resign after the defeat of British forces at Saratoga, but is dissuaded by the King.

• Encouraged by the American success at Saratoga, France joins the war on the side of the revolutionaries.
• John Horne Tooke is imprisoned for proposing the raising of funds by subscription for the revolting American colonists.
• The Roman Catholic Relief Act is passed, which makes it legal for Roman Catholics to acquire landed property; it is strenuously opposed by many, and helps provoke the Gordon Riots in 1780.
• Chatham (Pitt the elder) dies.

• Captain Cook is killed by Hawaiian islanders.
• Samuel Crompton invents the "mule," a spinning jenny powered by water or steam that is capable of producing a fine yet strong thread quickly and economically.

• In response to George III's handling of, and interference in, the conduct of the Revolutionary War, John Dunning introduces into Parliament a resolution asserting that "the influence of the crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." It is passed by the House of Commons.
• Some 300 people are killed, and much property destroyed during the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots; these begin in response to a petition against the Roman Catholic Relief Act presented to Parliament by Lord George Gordon. Gordon was charged with treason for fomenting the riots, but was later acquitted.
• Robert Raikes launches the Sunday School Movement when he opens a school for Sunday instructions in reading and the catechism for illiterate children in Gloucester.

• The British Army of General Howe surrenders to the Americans at Yorktown, bringing the Revolutionary War, in effect, to a conclusion with a decisive victory for the former American Colonies.
• A naval battle at Dogger Bank (in the North Sea) between British and Dutch navies is inconclusive.
• Lord North again attempts to resign following the surrender at Yorktown, but is again persuaded by the King to remain in office.

• Publication of George Crabbe's The Library, and of Anna Lætitia Barbauld's Hymns for Children.
• Publication of volumes II and III of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Publication of Vicesimus Knox's Liberal Education, and of the first volume Richard Watson's Chemical Essays (5 volumes, completed in 1787).
• Performance of Samuel Jackson Pratt's The Fair Circassian.

• Lord North resigns, and Rockingham again becomes First Lord of the Treasury. His new administration initiates peace talks with the American revolutionaries. He dies suddenly, however, in July, after only 5 months in office. He is succeeded by William Petty Lansdowne, 2nd Earl of Shelburne.
• Two acts are passed in Parliament to exclude "placemen" — backbenchers who sold their votes to the government for well-paying offices or sinecures. Crewe's Act targets the crown's revenue officers, and prevents them from holding elected office, while Clerk's Act similarly restricted anyone holding a government contract from sitting as an MP. Both acts were guided through Parliament by Edmund Burke.
• Henry Grattan, leader of the patriot party in Ireland, wins legislative independence for the Irish Parliament.
• The British navy wins a decisive engagement against the French at the Battle of the Saints, off the coast of Dominica.

• The Treaty of Versailles brings the Revolutionary War to an official end; Britain recognizes the independence of the United States of America.
• Lord North is briefly returned to office in coalition with Charles James Fox. Their ministry is shortlived, however, and falls after the failure of a bill to reform the East India Company; the bill itself became the subject of a number of satirical attacks. William Pitt the younger succeeds as Prime Minister (the youngest ever, at the age of 24).
• The Bank of Ireland is formed.

• Pitt the younger introduces his own India Act to curtail the power of the East India Company.
• Henry Cort develops the "puddling process," by which impurities are removed from iron, making a less brittle wrought iron possible.

• Warren Hastings quits the post of Governor General of India, returning to England amid allegations of corruption and the arbitrary exercise of illegal power.

• Pitt the younger establishes a new independently regulated sinking fund, into which a portion of government revenues are paid in order to reduce the national debt.

• William Wilberforce and other members of the Clapham sect (a society of wealthy adherents to Anglican evangelicalism) found the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.
• Edmund Cartwright patents his new power loom.

• King George III suffers his first bout of "madness," attributed to porphyria.
• Warren Hastings, former Governor General of India, is impeached for corruption: the trial before the House of Lords lasts seven years, and ends in an acquittal.
• In an effort to maintain the continental balance of power, Britain enters into a Triple Alliance with Prussia and the Netherlands.

• The French Revolution breaks out. In Britain, reaction is initially mixed, but most liberal or progressive observers support the cause of the revolutionaries.
• William Wilberforce introduces to Parliament his first resolution to abolish the slave trade; it fails to pass.

• Lord North succeeds to the title of 2nd Earl of Guildford.

• The Constitutional Act creates Upper and Lower Canada (Ontario and Quebec respectively).
• The Society of United Irishmen is founded by Wolfe Tone and other protestant Irish radicals who are inspired by the French Revolution: they seek to create an independent republican Ireland.

• Thomas Hardy, a London shoemaker, founds the Corresponding Society, a radical political organization that aimed at achieving universal adult male suffrage and annual parliaments. Chapters of the organization begin to spring up all over Britain.

• The French Revolutionary War begins with the invasion of the Austrian Netherlands by the armies of the Republic, and the subsequent declaration of war by France on Britain on 1 February. The Duke of York leads a British expeditionary force into Flanders, but it achieves little. In August, Admiral Samuel Hood occupies Toulon with an allied force. Naval operations begin against the French West Indies.
• The Corresponding Society holds a meeting in Edinburgh, where plans are drawn up for underground operations; the authorities respond by condemning many of the organization's leaders to transportation.

• In a naval engagement that becomes known as the "Glorious First of June," Admiral Hood defeats a French convoy in the Mediterranean, capturing six ships and sinking a seventh.
• The British seize Corsica from the French.
• Thomas Hardy and others associated with the Corresponding Society, including John Horne Tooke, are charged with treason, but are acquitted.

• The Duke of York's expeditionary force is evacuated from Bremen after an unsuccessful campaign on the continent.
• The first coalition of allies against the French begins to disintegrate: however, the British acquire a great many Dutch overseas possessions, including Pondicherry, Trincomalee, Ceylon, Malacca, Amboyna, and Banda.
• There is an invasion scare, as the armies of the French Republic begin to achieve dominance in Western Europe.
• The trial of Warren Hastings before the House of Lords ends with an acquittal.
• Wolfe Tone is banished from Ireland for his seditious activities, and flees to France, where he begins to organize an invasion force.

• In April, the sailors of the British Channel fleet mutiny against the terrible conditions under which they were forced to live; most of their demands are met. As a result of this success, the British North Sea Fleet, based at Nore in the Thames estuary, mutiny as well. The mutineers hold out for four weeks, but this time the government reacts with severity, and they are forced to surrender. Their leader, Richard Parker, is subsequently hanged.
• Two important British naval victories frustrate French invasion plans. At Cape St. Vincent in February, Sir John Jervis defeated a much larger Spanish fleet, while October saw the defeat of a Dutch invasion fleet by Adam Duncan at Camperdown.
• An invasion force organized by Wolfe Tone fails to land, as planned, in Ireland, when it is dispersed by a storm at sea.

• A serious rebellion breaks out in Ireland as republican forces, led by the Society of United Irishmen, look to France for aid. Threatened by government informers, the rebels choose not to await a planned French invasion of Ireland, but rise in May, largely in Ulster and Wexford. The rebellion is crushed before French help arrives.
• A second anti-French coalition, consisting of Britain, Russia, Turkey, Naples, Portugal and Austria, begins to take shape.
• Horatio Nelson attacks the French fleet in harbour in Aboukir Bay on 1 August: this "Battle of the Nile" sees the destruction of nearly the entire French fleet stationed in Egypt, and effectively nullifies Napoleon's success on land in Egypt.
• The British capture Minorca.

• In October, an allied invasion of Holland fails. The allies, however, score some successes in the Italian campaign against the French.
• The Corresponding Society is banned.
• The first Combination Act is passed. Essentially an anti-trade union bill, this act probibits the "combining" of two or more workers for the purpose of obtaining better wages, working conditions, etc.
• Income tax, at the rate of two shillings to the pound, is levied for the first time, as a "temporary" measure to help finance the war against the French.
• Social reformer Robert Owen becomes manager at the textile mills at New Lanark, where he begins to implement reforms aimed at establishing a humane and comfortable work environment for his employees.
• Napoleon's forces lay siege to the Turkish city of Acre in Palestine; following a bombardment lasting 61 days, British warships force the French to abandon the siege.

• In response to the rebellion of 1798, Pitt the younger introduces the Act of Union, uniting Ireland with England and Scotland. The act passes, and comes into effect the following year.
• The Census Act is passed; a census of the population is henceforth taken every 10 years.
• Napoleon's brilliant Italian campaign succeeds in regaining ground lost to the allies in the previous year.
• Britain takes Malta.
• The second Combination Act is passed, aimed, as was the first, against the formation of any association of workers for the purposes of obtaining concessions from employers.