Dr Thorne - Anthony Trollope [10]
NOTES
1 From Trollope: A Commentary by Michael Sadleir, 1927.
2 From Partial Portraits by Henry James, first published in the New York Century Magazine, 1883.
3 From Anthony Trollope by A. O.J. Cockshut, 1955.
4 Ibid.
Chronology
1815 Battle of Waterloo
Lord George Gordon Byron, Hebrew Melodies
Anthony Trollope born 24 April at 16 Keppel Street, Blooms-bury, the fourth son of Thomas and Frances Trollope. Family moves shortly after to Harrow-on-the-Hill
1823 Attends Harrow as a day-boy (–1825)
1825 First public steam railway opened
Sir Walter Scott, The Betrothed aaà The Talisman
Sent as a boarder to a private school in Sunbury, Middlesex
1827 Greek War of Independence won in the battle of Navarino
Sent to school at Winchester College. His mother sets sail for the USA on 4 November with three of her children
1830 George IV dies; his brother ascends the throne as William IV
William Cobbett, Rural Rides
Removed from Winchester. Sent again to Harrow until 1834
1832 Controversial First Reform Act extends the right to vote to approximately one man in five
Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans
1834 Slavery abolished in the British Empire. Poor Law Act intro duces workhouses to England
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii
Trollope family migrates to Bruges to escape creditors. Anthony returns to London to take up a junior clerkship in the General Post Office
1835 Halley’s Comet appears. ‘Railway mania’ in Britain
Robert Browning, Paracelsus
His famer dies in Bruges
1840 Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Penny Post introduced
Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (–1841)
Dangerously ill in May and June
1841 Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History
Appointed Postal Surveyor’s Clerk for Central District Of Ireland. Moves to Banagher, King’s County (now Co. Offaly)
1843 John Ruskin, Modem Painters (vol. I)
Begins to write his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran
1844 Daniel O’Connell, campaigner for Catholic Emancipation, imprisoned for conspiracy; later released
William Thackeray, The Luck of Barry Lyndon
Marries Rose Heseltine in June. Transferred to Clonmel, Co. Tipperary
1846 Famine rages in Ireland. Repeal of the Corn Laws
Dickens, Dombey and Son (–1848)
First son, Henry Merivale, born in March
1847 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights A second son, Frederic James Andiony, born in September The Macdermots of Ballycloran
1848 Revolution in France; re-establishment of the Republic. The ‘Cabbage Patch Rebellion’ in Tipperary fails
Trollopes move to Mallow, Co. Cork
The Kellys and the O’Kellys
1850 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam
La Vendée. Writes The Noble Jilt, a play and the source of his later novel Can You Forgive Her?
1851 The Great Exhibition
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Sent to survey and reorganize postal system in southwest England and Wales (–1852)
1852 First pillar box in the British Isles introduced in St Helier, Jersey, on Trollope’s recommendation
1853 Thackeray, The Newcomes (–1855)
Moves to Belfast to take post as Acting Surveyor for the Post Office
1854 Britain becomes involved in the Crimean War (–1856)
Appointed Surveyor of the Northern District of Ireland
1855 David Livingstone discovers Victoria Falls, Zambia (Zimbabwe)
Dickens, Little Dorrit (–1857)
Moves to Donnybrook, Co. Dublin
The Warden. Writes The New Zealamder (published 1972)
1857 Indian Mutiny (–1858)
Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays
Barchester Towers
1858 Irish Republican Brotherhood founded in Dublin
George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life
Travels to Egypt, England and the West Indies on postal business
Doctor Thorne
1859 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Leaves Ireland to settle in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, after being appointed Surveyor of the Eastern District of England The Bertrams and The West Indies and the Spanish Main
1860 Dickens,