James Joyce's "Chamber Music"
Timeline
1798: Irish Rebellion
1801: Act of Union
1803: Robert Emmet’s rebellion
1816: Ludwig van Beethoven, An die ferne Geliebt (To the Distant Beloved) (Jeitteles)
1828: Franz Schubert, Winterreise (Muller)
1829: Catholic Emancipation in the United Kingdom
1833: Alfred Tennyson, ‘The Lady of Shalott’
1840: Robert Schumann, Dichterliebe (Heine)
1843: Soren Kierkegaard, Repetition
1846: Thomas Davis, ‘Ballad Poetry in Ireland’
1847 to 52: Potato Famine
1848: Revolt in Ireland
1849: Death of James Clarence Mangan
Alfred Tennyson, In Memorium A.H.H.
1855: Alfred Tennyson, Maud and Other Poems
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (first edition)
1857: Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal
1859: Ernest Renan, The Poetry of the Celtic Races
1862: George Meredith, Modern Love
1866: Paul Verlaine, Poème Saturniens
Algernon Charles Swinburne, ‘The Triumph of Time’
Death of Baudelaire
1867: Fenian Rising
Matthew Arnold, On the Study of Celtic Literature
1870: Paul Verlaine, La Bonne Chanson
1875: Edward Dowden, Shakespeare: His Mind and Art
1877: Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
1879: Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House
1881: Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts
1882: James Joyce born in Dublin
Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People
1884: Paul Verlaine, Les Poètes Maudits
Birth of Nora Barnacle
1885: Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean
1886: Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations
First Home Rule Bill
1887: Charles Villiers Stanford, Irish Symphony
Walter Pater, Imaginary Portraits
1888: JJ enrolled at Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare
1889: W.B. Yeats, Crossways
Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
1890: Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler
Foundation of the Rhymers Club in London by W.B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys
1891: Death of Charles Stewart Parnell
The nine-year-old Joyce composes ‘Et Tu, Healy’
Rimbaud, Le Relinquaire (Collected Poems)
Death of Rimbaud
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
G.B. Shaw, The Quintessence of Ibsenism
1892: Beginning of Joyce family’s financial decline
Death of Alfred Tennyson
Charles Gavan Duffy, ‘The Revival of Irish Literature’
Douglas Hyde, ‘The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland’
1893: Ernest Chausson, Poème de l’amour et de la mer (Bouchor)
Yeats, The Rose
JJ enrolled at Belvedere College, Dublin
Second Home Rule Bill
Gaelic League founded
1895: Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
1896: Gabriel Fauré, La Bonne Chanson (Verlaine)
Ernest Dowson, Verses
A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
1897: An tOireachtas (The Gathering) and the Feis Ceoil (Music Festival) both inaugurated this year
Lionel Johnson, Ireland and Other Poems
1898: Arthur Somervell, Maud (Tennyson)
Katharine Tynan, The Wind in the Trees (poetry)
JJ enters Royal University (now University College, Dublin)
1899: Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds
Yeats, The Countess Cathleen
Henrik Ibsen, When We Dead Awaken
John Eglinton (ed.), Literary Ideals in Ireland
Arthur Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature
Foundation of the Irish Literary Theatre by Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn
JJ attends premiere of Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen
1900: Death of Wilde
JJ reads ‘Drama and Life’ for the Literary and Historical Society
JJ review of When We Dead Awaken, 'Ibsen's New Drama' published in Fortnightly Review
1901: Michel Esposito, Roseen Dhu (Graves)
Lady Gregory, Ideals in Ireland
JJ publishes The Day of the Rabblement, an attack on the Irish Literary Theatre
1902: JJ, ‘James Clarence Mangan’
JJ graduates from university; moves to Paris temporarily
Death of George Joyce (brother)
1903: Death of May (Mary) Joyce (mother)
Foundation of the Irish National Theatre (Yeats, George Russell, Martyn, Gregory and J.M. Synge)
J.M. Synge, The Shadow of the Glen
George Russell (AE), The Divine Vision and Other Poems
1904: JJ commences Stephen Hero
JJ receives Tenor Bronze Medal at Feis Ceoil
Synge, Riders to the Sea
JJ meets Nora Barnacle 10 June
Hamilton Harty, Irish Symphony
Gustave Mahler, Kindertotenlieder (Rückert)
Somervell, The Shropshire Lad (Housman)
Yeats, In the Seven Woods
JJ publishes three stories in the Irish Homestead
1905: JJ and Barnacle move to Trieste in March; they are joined by Joyce's brother Stanislaus in October
Birth of Giorgio Joyce
Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Féin
Seumas O’Sullivan, Twilight People (poetry)
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours
Chamber Music submitted to and refused by four publishing houses in Dublin and London
1906: Death of Henrik Ibsen
1907: Publication of Chamber Music in May by Elkin Mathews in London
Birth of Lucia Joyce in Trieste
W.B. Yeats, ‘Poetry and Tradition’
Ernest Dowson, Cynara – A Little Book of Verse
Riots at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin over Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World
1909: Death of Algernon Charles Swinburne
Michele Esposito, Irish Rhapsody No. 2 for Violin and Piano
Ezra Pound, Personae and Exultations (poems)
O’Sullivan, The Earth Lover (poems)
A.C. Bradley, Lectures on Poetry
Charlotte Milligan Fox, Four Irish Songs
JJ visits Dublin twice; crisis with Nora – has special edition of Chamber Music made for her
1910: W.B. Yeats, The Green Helmet and Other Poems
1911: Frederick Delius, Songs of Sunset (Dowson)
Home Rule passed House of Commons, defeated in the House of Lords
1912: Third Home Rule Bill
JJ last trip to Ireland. Begins writing poetry again
1913: JJ comes to the attention of Ezra Pound
Strikes and lockout in Dublin
1914: Dubliners published by Grant Richards.
W.B. Yeats, Responsibilities
Commencement of the Great War Ezra Pound publishes ‘I Hear an Army’ in an Imagist anthology in the US.
JJ writes Giacometti Joyce; drafts notes for Exiles; begins Ulysses
1915: Stanislaus Joyce interned by Austro-Hungarian authorities
Joyce family moves to Zurich in neutral Switzerland
JJ receives a small grant from the Royal Literary Fund
1916: JJ, A Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man
Easter Rising in Dublin; execution of leaders
Death of Thomas Kettle at the Battle of Ginchy
Murder of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington in Dublin
1917: First of a long series of eye operations
1918: JJ, Exiles
Anti-Conscription disturbances in Ireland
Sinn Féin win the Irish General Election
1919: Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole
1919 to 21: War of Independence in Ireland
1920: Joyce family move to Paris
Fourth Home Rule Bill
T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism
1921: Yeats, Michael Robartes and the Dancer
1922: Anglo-Irish Treaty; formation of the Irish Free State
Irish Civil War
Eliot, The Waste Land
Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus
Ulysses published in Paris by Sylvia Beach
1923: Commences Work in Progress (Finnegans Wake)
1927: JJ, Pomes Penyeach
1928: Anna Livia Plurabelle (extract from Finnegans Wake) published in book form
Yeats, The Tower
1929: Tales Told of Shem and Shaun (extract from Finnegans Wake) published in book form
1930: Haveth Childers Everywhere (extract from Finnegans Wake) published in book form
1931: Death of John Stanislaus Joyce (father)
JJ and Nora married in London for inheritance reasons
1932: Lucia Joyce (daughter) suffers mental breakdown
1933: Yeats, The Winding Stair and Other Poems
Fianna Fail come to power in the Free State under Éamon de Valera
1934: Ulysses published in New York after being deemed non-pornographic
1935: Yeats, A Full Moon in March
1936: JJ, Collected Poems published in New York
1937: Irish Constitution: replacement of Irish Free State by Éire
1938: Douglas Hyde becomes first Irish president
1939: Yeats, Last Poems
1939: Finnegans Wake
Death of Yeats
1941: Death of JJ in Zurich