Thursday, November 8, 2007

1846 to 1847

Literature
Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. Herman Melville. American. 1846. Novel. Sailors jump ship and wander into the Valley of Typee, inhabited by cannibals. Tempted to enjoy a somnolent vegetative existence, an American returns to civilization.

Mosses from an Old Manse. Nathaniel Hawthorne. American. 1846. Stories. Contains "Young Goodman Brown," "The Birthmark," and "Rappaccini's Daughter."

The Double. Fyodor Dostoevsky. Russian. 1846. Novel. Double appears in the life of an ineffectual civil servant, Golydakin. Opposite personality. G. ends up a madman.

Poor Folk. Fyodor Dostoevsky. Russian. 1846. Novel. Epistolary. Hopeless love of poor timid clerk for poor woman who marries wealthy landowner.

La Cousine Bette. Honore de Balzac. French. 1846. Novel. Harsh old spinster masks frustration, bitterness behind facade of good will. Destroys romance.

Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs, Late of the Tallapoosa Volunteers. Johnson Jones Hooper. American. 1846. Novel. Ridicules folkways of the South.

"The Birthmark." Nathaniel Hawthorne. American. 1846. Story. Scientist insists on removing small birthmark from wife's otherwise perfect face. With her imperfection removed, she is no longer human, and dies.

Society
1847. The Battle of Buena Vista ends in a rout of Mexican forces under Gen. Santa Anna by U.S. troops led by Gen. Zachary Taylor.

1847. Escaped slave Frederick Douglass begins publication at Rochester, NY, of an abolitionist newspaper, the North Star.

1847. The communist Manifesto published late in the year says, "Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!" The pamphlet is the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

1847. Nearly 15,000 Mormons led across the mountains by frontiersman Jim Bridger arrive on the shores of Great Salt Lake in Mexican territory that will soon be ceded to the U.S.

1847. Nitroglycerin is discovered by Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero whose highly explosive liquid will be used chiefly in dynamite. However, nitroglycerin will also prove useful in relieving symptoms of angina pectoris.

1847. More than 200,000 emigrants leave Ireland, up from 60,000 in 1842 and many come to America.

1847. The New York Commissioners of Emigration begin to keep accurate records for the first time. Between now and 1860 some 2.5 million immigrants will enter the U.S. through the port of New York alone and more than a million of these will be Irish.

No comments: