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