Ethan Frome, Summer, Bunner Sisters (5 page)
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Presidency of Grover Cleveland (to 1889).
The ‘Great Upheaval’: 700,000 on strike in the US. Demand for eight-hour day. Surrender of Geronimo.
Home Rule Bill for Ireland: Gladstone resigns, to be followed by Salisbury as prime minister (to 1892).
Wilhelm II becomes Kaiser.
Benjamin Harrison, Republican, elected president (to 1893).
Jane Addams establishes Hull Settlement House, Chicago.
Second Socialist International (to 1916).
Eiffel Tower built in Paris.
Census: US population 63 million. Enumerators instructed to distinguish between ‘blacks’, ‘mulattoes’, ‘quadroons’ and ‘octoroons’. New constitution of the state of Mississippi prohibits inter-racial union (the prohibition stands for seventy-five years). Depression: drastic fall in agricultural prices. Bismarck resigns.
Carnegie Hall opens in New York.
Financier Jay Gould dies worth $77 million.
Gladstone, now in his eighty-third year, becomes prime minister for a fourth time (to 1894).
| DATE | AUTHOR’S LIFE | LITERARY CONTEXT |
| 1893 | Buys Land’s End, on Atlantic front at Newport. Becomes friends with French novelist, Bourget. | Stephen Crane: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets . Sarah Grand: The Heavenly Twins . Death of Maupassant (b. 1850). |
| 1894 | Travels in Italy. Depression and illness interfere with writing. | George Moore: Esther Waters . Chopin: Bayou Folk . Twain: Pudd’nhead Wilson . |
| 1895 | Stephen Crane: The Red Badge of Courage . Grant Allen: The Woman Who Did . Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest ; An Ideal Husband . | |
| 1896 | Eight-month trip to Europe. | Hardy: Jude the Obscure . Jewett: The Country of the Pointed Firs . Chekhov: The Seagull . Birth of Scott Fitzgerald. |
| 1897 | Publishes The Decoration of Houses with architect Ogden Codman. | Grand: The Beth Book . Chopin: A Night in Acadie . Wells: The Invisible Man . Robinson: The Children of the Night . |
| 1898 | Treated as outpatient in Dr S. Weir Mitchell’s ‘rest-cure’ for nervous collapse. | James: The Turn of the Screw . |
| 1899 | Publishes first short story collection, The Greater Inclination . Travels in Europe. | Gilman: Women and Economics . Thorstein Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class . Chopin: The Awakening . James: The Awkward Age . Norris: McTeague . Chekhov: The Lady with the Lap-dog . Birth of Hemingway. |
| 1900 | Publishes The Touchstone (novella). Travels in Europe. | Conrad: Lord Jim . Dreiser: Sister Carrie . Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams . |
| 1901 | Buys 113-acre estate in Lenox, Massachusetts. Plans large house and gardens. Crucial Instances (stories) published. Mother dies. Edith inherits $90,000. | Mann: Buddenbrooks . Nietzsche: The Will to Power . First Nobel Prize for Literature. |
HISTORICAL EVENTS
New Zealand women secure the right to vote.
World Columbian Exposition, Chicago.
Cleveland regains office as US president (to 1897).
The US becomes the leading manufacturing nation in the world.
Nicholas II becomes Tsar.
Dreyfus affair in France.
Death of Engels (b. 1820).
Freud’s
Studies in Hysteria
inaugurates psychoanalysis.
William McKinley elected US president.
Klondike Gold Rush.
Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. German naval laws begin arms race.
Curies discover radium. Invention of the cash register. Rockefeller ‘retires’ worth
c
. $200 million. Spanish–American War. Death of Gladstone (b. 1809).
Moscow Arts Theatre founded.
Florence Kelley becomes president of newly founded National Consumers’ League.
Outbreak of Boer War.
Planck’s quantum theory. First Zeppelin flight.
US population 76 million. US railroad network just under 200,000 miles.
Death of Queen Victoria; accession of Edward VII.
Marconi transmits messages across the Atlantic.
Assassination of President McKinley; Theodore Roosevelt becomes US president.
Beginning of Picasso’s ‘Blue’ period.
| DATE | AUTHOR’S LIFE | LITERARY CONTEXT |
| 1902 | Publishes first novel, The Valley of Decision , set in eighteenth-century Italy. Becomes friends with Theodore Roosevelt. Moves into ‘The Mount’, her new home in Lenox. Teddy has nervous illness. | James: The Wings of the Dove . Gide: L’Immoraliste . William James: Varieties of Religious Experience . Birth of Steinbeck. |
| 1903 | Travels in Europe with Teddy. Meets Henry James and art critic Bernard Berenson. Begins The House of Mirth . | James: The Ambassadors . Butler: The Way of All Flesh . G. E. Moore: Principia Ethica . |
| 1904 | Buys her first automobile. Travels in England and France. Works on The House of Mirth throughout busy summer at ‘The Mount’. Guests include Henry James. Publishes Italian Villas and Their Gardens . | Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard . James: The Golden Bowl . Conrad: Nostromo . Death of Kate Chopin. |
| 1905 | Scribner’s serialization of The House of Mirth , January–November. Published 14 October in book form, it becomes best-seller (140,000 copies by the end of the year). Italian Backgrounds published (first of several travel books). | Forster: Where Angels Fear to Tread . Shaw: Major Barbara . |
| 1906 | Travels in England and France. Stage adaptation of The House of Mirth (with Clyde Fitch). Play fails in New York. | Upton Sinclair: The Jungle . Death of Ibsen (b. 1828). |
| 1907 | Rents apartment in Paris. Publishes The Fruit of the Tree . | James: The American Scene . Henry Adams: The Education of Henry Adams . |
| 1907–12 | Divides time between homes in US and Paris. Travels in England and Italy. Has affair with journalist Morton Fullerton (1908–10); writes love sonnets and a diary to him. | |
| 1908 | A Motor-Flight Through France . | Forster: A Room with a View . |
| 1909 | It is revealed that Teddy has embezzled $50,000 of Edith’s money. | Gertrude Stein: Three Lives . Gide: La Porte étroite . Wells: Tono Bungay ; Ann Veronica . |
| 1910 | Moves to a new apartment in Paris and sells her New York houses. | Death of Mark Twain (b. 1835). Forster: Howards End . |
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Women in Australia are granted the vote.
Women’s Trade Union League founded in New York.
In Britain, Emmeline Pankhurst founds Women’s Social and Political Union.
Wright brothers’ first successful powered flight.
Death of Gauguin (b. 1848).
Theodore Roosevelt re-elected US president.
Russo-Japanese War (to 1905).
Anglo-French Entente Cordiale. ‘La belle époque’ in France.
First Russian Revolution. Separation of church and state in France.
Series of mining disasters in US (to 1910); 2,494 killed.
Einstein’s special theory of relativity.
San Francisco earthquake.
Clemenceau becomes French prime minister (to 1909).
Currency panic in US; run on banks; J. P. Morgan imports $100 million in gold from Europe to halt crisis.
Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia.
Cubism begins in Paris. Asquith becomes prime minister in Britain (to 1916).
First Model T Ford car. Blériot flies across English Channel. Commercial manufacture of Bakelite means beginning of plastic age.
Diaghilev founds Ballets Russes. Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto.
Death of King Edward VII (b. 1841), who is succeeded by George V.
| DATE | AUTHOR’S LIFE | LITERARY CONTEXT |
| 1911 | Drives through central Italy with Walter Berry. Ethan Frome (admired by reviewers). | Dreiser: Jennie Gerhardt . |
| 1912 | Worsening rifts with Teddy. Sells ‘The Mount’. Visits England. The Reef . | Dreiser: The Financier . Mann: Death in Venice . |
| 1913 | The Custom of the Country . Divorced from Teddy. Travels with Berry in Sicily and Bernard Berenson in Germany. Last visit to US for ten years. | Proust: A la Recherche du temps perdu (to 1927). Alain-Fournier: Le Grand Meaulnes . Ellen Glasgow: Virginia . Lawrence: Sons and Lovers . Conrad: Chance . |
| 1914 | Joyce: Dubliners . Gides: Les Caves du Vatican . | |
| 1914–19 | Based in Paris. Travels in North Africa and Spain. After outbreak of war, tireless fund-raising and other work for unemployed women, refugees, homeless children and tuberculosis convalescents. Visits front. Writes articles about life in the trenches for Scribner’s. Publishes Summer (1917) and The Marne (1918) and rents château at Hyères on the Mediterranean (1919). | |
| 1915 | Continues with a series of visits to the front lines, delivering medical supplies. Organizes Children of Flanders Rescue Committee. Forms friendship with André Gide, fellow worker at the hostels. | Virginia Woolf: The Voyage Out . Ford: The Good Soldier . Lawrence: The Rainbow . Gilman: Herland . Roosevelt: America and the World War . |
| 1916 | Made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur for her war work. Edits The Book of the Homeless , a fund-raising venture with contributions by distinguished writers, artists and musicians which raises $15,000. Bunner Sisters published in Xingu and Other Stories . | Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . Death of Henry James (b.1843). |
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Agadir crisis. Chinese Revolution.
Woodrow Wilson elected US president. Foundation of the ‘Bull Moose’ Party by Theodore Roosevelt and his followers, splitting the Republican Party completely. Poincaré becomes French prime minister, and is elected to the presidency the following year (to 1920). First Balkan War.
Sinking of
Titanic
. Charlie Chaplin’s first film.
Completion of new, even grander, Grand Central Station building.
Post-Impressionist exhibition in New York.
Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring
premiered in Paris, provoking riot.
Second Balkan War.
World War I (to 1918). President Wilson proclaims US neutrality. Ludlow Massacre: striking miners killed in Colorado. Panama Canal opens.
Assassination of Jaurès, French socialist leader.
Sinking of the
Lusitania
.
Battle of the Somme – huge death tolls. Lloyd George British prime minister. Rasputin assassinated. Dada begins in Zürich.
| DATE | AUTHOR’S LIFE | LITERARY CONTEXT |
| 1917 | Yeats: The Wild Swans at Coole . | |
| 1918 | Death of elder brother, Frederic Jones. Buys a villa in a village ten miles outside Paris. | Cather: My Antonia . Hopkins: Poems . Rebecca West: The Return of the Soldier . |
| 1919 | French Ways and their Meanings (to 1920). | Woolf: Night and Day . Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio . Dos Passos: One Man’s Initiation – 1917 . |
| 1920 | The Age of Innocence . (Wins Pulitzer Prize, 1921, first awarded to a woman.) | Katherine Mansfield: Bliss . Sinclair Lewis: Main Street . Lawrence: Women in Love . Pound: Hugh Selwyn Mauberley . |
| 1921 | The Old Maid (novella) turned down by several magazines because of its theme of illegitimate birth. | Huxley: Crome Yellow . |
| 1922 | The Glimpses of the Moon sells more than 100,000 copies in six months. | Lewis: Babbitt . Woolf: Jacob’s Room . Mansfield: The Garden Party . Joyce: Ulysses . T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land . Death of Proust. |
| 1922–31 | Continues to travel, and buys her Hyères home. Reads and dislikes Ulysses and The Waste Land . Publishes The Writing of Fiction , several novels, collections of short stories and poems (including A Son at the Front, Old New York, The Mother’s Recompense .) | |
| 1923 | Pays short visit to US to receive honorary Doctorate of Letters. Scott Fitzgerald works on film version of The Glimpses of the Moon . | Cather: A Lost Lady . Cummings: Tulips and Chimneys . Shaw: Saint Joan . |
| 1924 | Ford: Parade’s End (to 1928). Mann: The Magic Mountain . |
