Timeline

Late 1700s: Fueled by steam, the Industrial Revolution begins in Britain and spreads throughout Western Europe and North America.

1775: Jane Austen is born on December 16 in the village of Steventon, Hampshire, England.

1776: The U.S. declares independence from Great Britain.

1782: James Watt patents the double-acting steam engine.

1785: The first issue of the Daily Universal Register, later renamed The Times, is published in London.

1787-1793: Jane Austen writes her Juvenilia.

1787: The first ship of convicts leaves Britain to establish a penal colony in Botany Bay, Australia.

1789: The French Revolution begins.

1792: Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. William Murdock invents gas lighting.

1793: Marie Antoinette is guillotined.

1796: Edward Jenner introduces the smallpox vaccine.

1797: The Bank of England issues the first one pound note.

1799: Napoleon Bonaparte seizes power in France.

1801: Britain and Ireland are joined as the United Kingdom. Joseph Marie Jacquard develops an automatic loom capable of weaving intricate patterns by means of punched cards.

1803: Britain enters the Napoleonic Wars.

1804: The world population reaches 1 billion. Richard Trevithick builds the first steam powered locomotive to run on rails. Napoleon crowns himself Emperor of France.

1805: Napoleon’s planned invasion of England is defeated when Lord Nelson defeats the combined French and Spanish fleet at Trafalgar. Britain remains the world’s leading naval power until the 20th century.

1807: The slave trade is abolished within the British Empire. Robert Fulton builds the first commercially successful steamboat.

1811: Sense and Sensibility is published. The British Parliament appoints George, Prince of Wales, Regent when his father, King George III, is declared insane. English workers riot, destroying machinery which they hold responsible for their unemployment and low wages.

1813: Pride and Prejudice is published.

1814: Mansfield Park is published.

1815: Emma is published. Napoleon is defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.

1817: Jane Austen dies in Winchester, Hampshire, England, leaving Sanditon unfinished. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are published posthumously.

Sources

• Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Edited with an introduction and notes by Vivien Jones, with the original Penguin Classic Introduction by Tony Tanner. Penguin Books, 2003.
• BBC
• Encyclopedia Britannica
• United Nations
• World Book Online