Ethan Frome, Summer, Bunner Sisters Read Online Free PDF

completes
War and Peace
.
1870

Death of Charles Dickens.
1871

Darwin:
The Descent of Man
. Birth of Proust.
    HISTORICAL EVENTS
    Lincoln US president (to 1865). Ten states secede from Union on the slavery issue. American Civil War (to 1865). Battle of Bull Run: Union forces are completely routed. Britain declares itself neutral in the conflict. Victor Emmanuel II becomes king of a united Italy. Russia abolishes serfdom. Battle of Shiloh – Union forces successful. Battle of Antietam in which 23,000 are left dead on the field. Lincoln proposes that slaves in all states in rebellion against the government should be free on or after 1 January 1863. Greatest battle of the war fought at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Colonel Robert E. Lee, commanding the Confederate Army, is forced to retreat. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Bismarck gains power in Prussia.
    Lincoln re-elected president. First Socialist International (to 1876).
    Assassination of Lincoln. Andrew Johnson president (to 1869). Civil War ends. A general pardon is granted to the South. Negroes given full rights as citizens in the 14th Amendment. No state can come back into the Union unless it ratifies this amendment.
    US Reconstruction under way. Petition requesting the franchise signed by 1500 women in Britain, and presented by John Stuart Mill to the House of Commons.
    US purchases Alaska from Russia. Building of the first elevated railroad.
    Gladstone becomes leader of the Liberal Party in Britain and prime minister the following year (to 1874). Austro-Hungarian empire formed.
    Ulysses S. Grant, ablest of Union generals, elected president.
    Union Pacific railroad completed.
    Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company begins to corner the market.
    The West is opened up. There follows mass cultivation of land, an ever expanding frontier and population growth through immigration. These factors spell the end of the ‘Wild West’.
    Two national associations for American women’s suffrage founded.
    Suez Canal opens.
    Franco-Prussian War (to 1871). Napoleon III defeated at Sedan, dethroned and exiled. Doctrine of papal infallibility.
    French Third Republic suppresses Paris Commune. Wilhelm I first German emperor. Bismarck becomes German chancellor. Ku Klux Klan outlawed.
     
DATE
AUTHOR’S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
1872
Family returns to United States.
Edith works with governess and reads widely in father’s library.
Eliot:
Middlemarch
.
Turgenev: ‘Spring Torrents’. Nietzsche:
The Birth of Tragedy
.
1874
1876

James:
Roderick Hudson
.
Twain:
Tom Sawyer
.
Eliot:
Daniel Deronda
.
Death of George Sand.
1877
Secretly completes manuscript of
Fast and Loose
, a short novel (30,000 words; unpublished).
Sarah Orne Jewett:
Deephaven
.
James:
The American
.
Tolstoy completes
Anna Karenina
.
Birth of Gertrude Stein.
1878
Mother has twenty-nine of
Edith’s poems (
Verses
) privately printed.
Hardy:
The Return of the Native
.
Stowe:
Poganuc People
.
1879
Longfellow shows Edith’s poems to William Dean Howells. One poem published in
Atlantic Monthly
. Edith’s social début in millionaire’s private ballroom on Fifth Avenue.
James:
Daisy Miller
.
Ibsen:
A Doll’s House
.
1880
Two poems published in New York
World
. Travels with family to France.
Dostoevsky:
The Brothers Karamazov
.
Death of George Eliot.
1881

James:
The Portrait of a Lady
;
Washington Square
.
Death of Dostoevsky.
1882
Father dies in Cannes. Edith inherits over $20,000. Brief engagement to Harry Stevens (his mother opposes the marriage).
Twain:
The Prince and the Pauper
.
Howells:
A Modern Instance
.
Birth of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.
1883
Returns to United States with her mother. Briefly becomes close to law student, Walter Berry. He considers marriage, but fails to propose. Edith meets Edward Wharton (Teddy), popular Bostonian and socialite.
Twain:
Life on the Mississippi
.
James:
Portraits of Places
(travel sketches).
Nietzsche:
Thus Spake Zarathustra
(to 1892).
Death of Turgenev.
    HISTORICAL EVENTS
    Grant wins