Selected Essays Read Online

New Statesman started; Suffragettes active.

Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

1914

(16 Feb.) Last nurse leaves. Moves to Richmond, Surrey.

Irish Home Rule Bill passed by Parliament; First World War begins (4 Aug.); Dylan Thomas born.

Lewis, Blast

Joyce, Dubliners

Yeats, Responsibilities

Hardy, Satires of Circumstance

Bell, Art

1915

Purchase of Hogarth

House, Richmond.

(26 March) The Voyage Out

published. (April, May)

Bout of violent madness;

under care of nurses until

November.

Death of Rupert Brooke; Einstein,

General Theory of Relativity;

Second Battle of Ypres; Dardanelles Campaign; sinking of SS Lusitania;

air attacks on London.

Ford, The Good Soldier

Lawrence, The Rainbow

Brooke, 1914 and Other Poems

Richardson, Pointed Roofs

1916

(17 Oct.) Lectures to Richmond branch of the Women’s Co-operative Guild. Regular work for TLS.

Death of James; Lloyd George Prime Minister; First Battle of the Somme; Battle of Verdun; Gallipoli Campaign; Easter Rising in Dublin.

Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

1917

(July) Hogarth Press commences publication with The Mark on the Wall. VW begins work on Night and Day.

Death of Edward Thomas. Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele); T. E. Lawrence’s campaigns in Arabia; USA enters the War; Revolution in Russia (Feb., Oct.); Balfour Declaration.

Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations

1918

Writes reviews and Night and Day; also sets type for the Hogarth Press.

(15 Nov.) First meets T. S. Eliot.

Death of Owen; Second Battle of the Somme; final German offensive collapses; Armistice with Germany (11 Nov.); Franchise Act grants vote to women over 30; influenza pandemic kills millions.

Lewis, Tarr

Hopkins, Poems

Strachey, Eminent Victorians

1919

(1 July) Purchase of Monk’s House, Rodmell, Sussex. (20 Oct.) Night and Day published.

Treaty of Versailles; Alcock and Brown fly the Atlantic; National Socialists founded in Germany.

Sinclair, Mary Olivier

Shaw, Heartbreak House

1920

Works on journalism and Jacob’s Room.

League of Nations established.

Pound, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

Lawrence, Women in Love

Eliot, The Sacred Wood

Fry, Vision and Design

1921

Ill for summer months. (4 Nov.) Finishes Jacob’s Room.

Irish Free State founded. Huxley, Crome Yellow

1922

(Jan. to May) Ill. (24 Oct.) Jacob’s Room published. (14 Dec.) First meets Vita Sackville-West.

Bonar Law Prime Minister; Mussolini forms Fascist Government in Italy; death of Proust; Encyclopaedia Britannica (12th edn.); Criterion founded; BBC founded; Irish Free State proclaimed.

Eliot, The Waste Land

Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga

Joyce, Ulysses

Mansfield, The Garden Party

Wittgenstein, Tractatus

Logico-Philosophicus

1923

(March, April) Visits Spain. Works on ‘The Hours’, the first version of Mrs Dalloway.

Baldwin Prime Minister; BBC radio begins broadcasting (Nov.); death of K. Mansfield.

1924

Purchase of lease on 52 Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury. Gives lecture that becomes ‘Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown’. (8 Oct.) Finishes Mrs Dalloway.

First (minority) Labour Government; Ramsay MacDonald Prime Minister; deaths of Lenin, Kafka, and Conrad.

Ford, Some Do Not

Forster, A Passage to India

O’Casey, Juno and the Paycock

Coward, The Vortex

1925

(23 April) The Common Reader published. (14 May) Mrs Dalloway published. Ill during summer.

Gerhardie, The Polyglots

Ford, No More Parades

Huxley, Those Barren Leaves

Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

1926

(Jan.) Unwell with German measles. Writes To the Lighthouse.

General Strike (3–12 May); Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th edn.); first television demonstration.

Ford, A Man Could Stand Up

Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

1927

(March, April) Travels in France and Italy. (5 May) To the Lighthouse published. (5 Oct.) Begins Orlando.

Lindburgh flies solo across the Atlantic; first ‘talkie’ films.

1928

(11 Oct.) Orlando published. Delivers lectures at Cambridge on which she bases A Room of One’s Own.

Death of Hardy; votes for women over 21.

Yeats, The Tower

Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Waugh, Decline and Fall

Sherriff, Journey’s End

Ford, Last Post

Huxley, Point Counter Point

Bell, Civilization

1929

(Jan.) Travels to Berlin. (24 Oct.) A Room of One’s Own published.

2nd Labour Government, MacDonald Prime Minister; collapse of New York Stock Exchange; start of world economic depression.

Graves, Goodbye to All That

Aldington, Death of a Hero

Green, Living

1930

(20 Feb.) First meets Ethel Smyth; (29 May) Finishes first version of The Waves.

Mass unemployment; television starts in USA; deaths of Lawrence and Conan Doyle.

Auden, Poems

Eliot, Ash Wednesday

Waugh, Vile Bodies

Coward, Private Lives

Lewis, Apes of God

1931

(April) Car tour through France.

(8 Oct.) The Waves published. Writes Flush.

Formation of National Government; abandonment of Gold Standard; death of Bennett; Japan invades China.

1932

(21 Jan.) Death of Lytton Strachey.