Georgette Heyer's Regency World (35 page)

Venetia:
Venetia Digby was born in 1600. A great beauty, she was included in
Aubrey’s Brief Lives
and described as ‘a most beautiful desirable creature’. Several poets, including Ben Jonson and Aurelian Townshend, wrote verses commemorating her death.

Oedipus:
The tragic hero of Sophocles’ plays
Oedipus Rex
and
Oedipus at Colonus
who was doomed to kill his father and marry his mother without knowing who they were at the time.

Timeline

1738
: George III born.

1744:
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz born.

1761:
George III marries Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

1762:
George, Prince of Wales, born (12 August).

1775:
Jane Austen born at Steventon (16 December).

1785:
George, Prince of Wales, marries Maria Anne Fitzherbert (21 December).

1795:
George, Prince of Wales, marries Princess Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (8 April).

1796:
A daughter, Princess Charlotte, born to HRH George, Prince of Wales, and Princess Caroline (7 January).

Soho Foundry opened in Birmingham (30 January).

1800:
Maria Edgeworth publishes
Castle Rackrent.

1801:
The parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland united in the Act of Union (1 January).

The Prime Minister, William Pitt (the Younger), resigns over the Catholic Emancipation.

The Battle of Alexandria (21 March).

The Battle of Copenhagen.

1802:
The Peace of Amiens signed by England, France and Spain.

Gas lighting used for the first time to light the front of the Soho foundry in Birmingham as part of the celebration of the Peace of Amiens.

William Cobbett first publishes his
Political Register
(January).

Walter Scott publishes the first volume of his
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

Edinburgh Review
established (October).

1803:
War with France begins again (18 May).

Invasion scare in England.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge publishes his
Poems.

1804:
Pitt again becomes prime minister.

Napoleon proclaimed emperor (May).

1805:
Battle of Trafalgar (21 October).

Admiral Horatio Nelson killed at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Battle of Austerlitz (2 December).

Scott publishes
Lay of the Last Minstrel.

1806:
Pitt dies (23 January) and the Ministry of All the Talents takes office.

Lord Grenville becomes prime minister.

The great Whig orator, Charles James Fox, dies (13 September).

1807:
Abolition of slavery passed in the House of Lords (25 March).

Gas lighting installed in Pall Mall.

The Whigs are dismissed from Office.

The Duke of Portland becomes prime minister.

Napoleon invades Spain.

Charles and Mary Lamb publish
Tales from Shakespeare.

Lord Byron publishes
Hours of Idleness.

1808:
The Peninsular War begins.

Covent Garden theatre destroyed by fire (20 September).

Richard Trevithick’s early steam engine, the ‘catch-me-who-can’, runs on a circular track at Euston.

Walter Scott publishes
Marmion.

1809:
Battle of Corunna (16 January).

Drury Lane theatre destroyed by fire (24 February).

The Duke of York forced to resign as army commander-in-chief over the actions of his mistress, Mary Ann Clarke (18 March).

Battle of Oporto (12 May).

Byron goes abroad (2 July).

Battle of Talvera (28 July).

The great engineer, Matthew Boulton, dies in Birmingham aged 81 (17 August).

Canning and Castlereagh fight a duel.

The Duke of Portland dies (30 October).

Spencer Perceval becomes prime minister.

1810:
Napoleon marries Marie Louise, daughter of the Emperor of Austria (11 February).

Napoleon annexes Holland (9 July).

Princess Amelia dies (2 November).

George III pronounced insane.

Lady Hester Stanhope travels to the Middle East.

Walter Scott publishes
Lady of the Lake.

1811:
George, Prince of Wales officially becomes Regent (5 February).

The Regent holds his first public levee at Carlton House (26 February).

Battle of Albuera (16 May).

Duke of York reinstated as army commander-in-chief (25 May).

The Regent appoints himself a field-marshal.

The Regent holds a military review of 3,000 troops on Wimbledon Common (10 June).

The Regent holds the great Fête at Carlton House with 2,000 guests (19 June).

Luddites engage in machine breaking in the Midlands.

Nash begins Regent Street.

William Thackeray born (18 July).

Jane Austen’s
Sense and Sensibility
published (November).

Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes
Necessity of Atheism.

Shelley is expelled from Oxford.

London’s population passes the one million mark.

Great Britain’s population approximately 12.5 million.

1812:
Battle of Cuidad Rodrigo (19 January).

Charles Dickens born (7 February).

Parliamentary restrictions on the Prince Regent removed (11 February).

Capture of Badajoz (6 April).

The prime minister, Spencer Perceval, is assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons (11 May).

Lord Liverpool takes over as head of the Tory government.

Lord Liverpool resigns (21 May).

Lord Liverpool resumes office (8 June).

America declares war on Britain (19 June).

Battle of Salamanca (22 July).

Battle of Borodino (September).

Napoleon begins the retreat from Moscow (19 October).

James Madison elected as US president (November).

London’s main streets are lit by gas.

Wheat prices rise dramatically, reaching near-famine prices.

The waltz is danced for the first time in London ballrooms.

Joseph Turner exhibits
Snowstorm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps
at the Royal Academy.

Byron publishes first two cantos of
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
.

The Grimm brothers publish their
Fairy Tales.

Mrs Siddons appears on stage for the last time.

1813:
Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice
published (January).

Battle of Vittoria (21 June).

Madame de Staël visits London.

Wellington invades France (8 October).

Napoleon defeated at Leipzig (October).

The Methodist Missionary Society is founded.

The Philharmonic Society is founded.

Robert Owen publishes
A New View of Society.

Robert Southey publishes
Life of Nelson.

Shelley publishes
Queen Mab.

Byron publishes
The Bride of Abydos.

1814:
In an extreme winter the Thames freezes over and the great Frost Fair is held (1–5 February).

The Grand Duchess of Oldenburg arrives in London.

The Allies enter Paris (30 March).

Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba (11 April).

Louis XVIII enters Paris as king (3 May).

Wellington created a duke (3 May).

Austen’s
Mansfield Park
published (May).

The Allied sovereigns arrive in England (7 June).

The procession of the Allied Sovereigns to Guildhall (18 June).

Military Review in Hyde Park with 12,000 troops (20 June).

Thanksgiving service at St Paul’s (7 July).

The Regent holds a grand fête at Carlton House in honour of the Duke of Wellington (21 July).

George Stephenson builds the first working steam locomotive (25 July).

The official Peace celebrations begin in Hyde Park (1 August).

Princess Caroline departs England for an extended tour of Europe.

The Congress of Vienna begins (1 November).

England and America sign the Treaty of Ghent (24 December).

Scott publishes
Waverley.

Byron publishes
The Corsair.

Wordsworth publishes
The Excursion.

The Shelleys leave England.

Edmund Kean appears as Shylock in his debut at Drury Lane.

Cricket is played for the first time by the MCC at Lord’s.

1815:
Napoleon escapes from Elba.

Napoleon arrives in France (1 March).

Louis XVIII flees from Paris (19 March).

The Hundred Days begins with Napoleon’s entry into Paris (20 March).

The Corn Law is passed (23 March).

Anti-Corn Law riots in London (March).

An alliance is formed between Britain, Prussia, Russia and Austria to fight against Napoleon (25 March).

Otto von Bismarck born (1 April).

Anthony Trollope born (24 April).

The Congress of Vienna begins (9 June).

The Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels (15 June).

The Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras (16 June).

Wellington’s army defeats Napoleon’s troops at the Battle of Waterloo (18 June).

The Congress of Vienna ends (19 June).

Napoleon abdicates (22 June).

The Allies enter Paris (7 July).

Louis XVIII returns to Paris (8 July).

Napoleon is banished to St Helena (17 August).

Humphrey Davy invents the safety lamp for miners.

John Macadam’s road-construction technique is adopted in England.

John Nash begins the renovation of the Brighton Pavilion.

Scott publishes
Guy Mannering.

John Macadam publishes
The Present State of Roadmaking.

Lord Byron marries Ann Isabella Milbanke.

The Apothecaries Act is passed making it illegal for unqualified apothecaries to practise medicine.

1816:
Charlotte Brontë born (21 April).

Princess Charlotte marries Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (2 May).

Beau Brummell leaves England for exile in France (17 May).

Richard Brinsley Sheridan dies (17 July).

Spa Fields Riots (2 December).

The Elgin Marbles are bought by the British Museum.

The Duke of Clarence’s mistress, Mrs Jordan, dies.

The Corn Law riots; wheat again approaches famine prices.

Austen’s
Emma
published; it is dedicated, by invitation, to the Prince Regent.

William Cobbett publishes his famous
Twopenny Trash.

John Keats publishes his sonnet ‘On Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (December).

Coleridge publishes
Christabel and Other Poems.

Coleridge publishes
Kubla Khan.

Shelley publishes
Alastor.

Scott publishes
Old Mortality
and
The Antiquary.

1817:
The Prince Regent is shot at while returning from the opening of Parliament (28 January).

Habeas Corpus is suspended (4 March).

James Monroe becomes fifth president of the US (4 March).

Madame de Staël dies (14 July).

Jane Austen dies (18 July).

Princess Charlotte dies in child-bed (6 November).

Keats publishes his
Poems.

Coleridge publishes
Biographia Literaria.

Thomas Love Peacock publishes
Melincourt.

Blackwood’s Magazine
founded.

The Scotsman
founded.

1818:
Habeas Corpus restored (31 January).

Matthew ‘Monk’ Lewis dies (14 May).

William, Duke of Clarence, marries Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen.

Edward, Duke of Kent, marries Victoria Mary Louisa, widow of the Prince of Leiningen.

Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, marries Augusta of Hesse-Cassel.

Mary Shelley publishes
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.

Scott publishes
Rob Roy
and
The Heart of Midlothian.

Keats publishes
Endymion.

Austen’s
Northanger Abbey
and
Persuasion
published posthumously.

Thomas Bowdler publishes his ‘sanitised’
Shakespeare
.

1819:
Princess Alexandrina Victoria (later Queen Victoria) is born to the Duke and Duchess of Kent (24 May).

The Peterloo Massacre at St Peter’s Fields, Manchester (16 August).

James Watt dies at Heathfield aged eighty-three (19 August).

Albert, Prince Consort to Queen Victoria born (26 August).

George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans) born (22 November).

British Parliament passes the Six Acts (17 December).

Byron publishes
Don Juan.

Keats publishes
Ode to a Nightingale.

Scott publishes
Ivanhoe.

1820:
George III dies at Windsor (29 January).

The Prince Regent is proclaimed King George IV at Carlton House (31 January).

The Cato Street conspirators arrested while planning to murder the Cabinet (23 February).

Five of the Cato Street conspirators executed (1 May).

George IV’s wife, Queen Caroline, returns to England from Europe.

Queen Caroline’s trial for adultery (June).

Bill of Pains and Penalties against George IV’s wife, Queen Caroline, introduced into Parliament (6 July).

Bill against Queen Caroline fails.

Shelley publishes
Prometheus Unbound.

Keats publishes
Isabella and Other Poems.

Keats sails for Italy.

1821:
Napoleon dies (5 May).

George IV’s coronation at Westminster Abbey (19 July).

Queen Caroline is refused admittance to the Abbey.

Queen Caroline dies (7 August).

Pierce Egan publishes
Life in London.

Thomas Malthus publishes
Principles of Political Economy.

John Constable exhibits
The
Hay Wain.

Keats dies.

1830:
George IV dies (26 June).