1766:   (3 December).  Robert Bloomfield born in Honington, Suffolk.  His father George was a poor tailor, his mother Elizabeth a village schoolteacher.

George Colman, sen., & David Garrick, The Clandestine Marriage.

Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield: a Tale.

1767:  Bloomfield’s father dies of smallpox. 

William Duff, Essay on Original Genius.

Richard Farmer, Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare. 

Adam Ferguson, Essay on the History of Civil Society.

David Garrick, Peep behind the Curtain: or the New Rehearsal.

Richard Jago, Edge-Hill.  A Poem.  In Four Books. 

Joseph Priestley, The History and Present State of Electricity.

1768:   James Cook embarks on the first of three voyages to the Pacific.

Royal Academy founded.

James Boswell, An Account of Corsica.

Stuart Gilbert, An Historical Dissertation concerning the Antiquity of the English Constitution.

Oliver Goldsmith, The Good Natur’d Man: a Comedy.

Thomas Gray, Poems.           

John Home, The Fatal Discovery.           

Richard Jago, Labor and Genius, a Fable.

Hugh Kelly, False Delicacy.           

Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, by Mr. Yorick.

1769:   Shakespeare Jubilee takes place at Stratford-on-Avon.

Thomas Chatterton, ‘Elinoure and Juga’.  (Rowley poem in Town and Country Magazine).

Richard Cumberland, The Brothers.

Oliver Goldsmith, The Roman History.

William Robertson, The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V.

Arthur Young, Six Weeks Tour through the Southern Counties of England and Wales.  (Published following some of the worst harvests of the century.  Considers the waste of unenclosed land that might be ploughed into profit).

1770:   Patenting of the spinning jenny, which enabled one spinning wheel to drive eight spindles.          

Printers and publishers of the elusive ‘Junius’ are tried for seditious libel.

James Beattie, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth.             

Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discontents.

Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village. 

Samuel Johnson, The False Alarm.          

Arthur Young, A Six Month’s Tour through the North of England.

1771:   Spain cedes Falkland Islands to Britain.           

Arkwright’s spinning mill introduced.

James Beattie, The Minstrel.

Sir John Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland.

Samuel Foote, The Maid of Bath.

Oliver Goldsmith, History of England.

Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling.

John Millar, Observations concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society.

Thomas Percy, The Hermit of Warkworth.  A Northumberland Ballad.

Arthur Young, The Farmer’s Tour through the East of England.

1772:   Bloomfield sent to Mr Rodwell’s school at Ixworth to be ‘improved in writing’, where he stays for three months.

Legally recognized that persons could not be slaves in Britain.           

Thomas Chatterton, ‘Bristowe Tragedy’.  (Rowley poem in Town and Country Magazine).           

William Mason, The English Garden.  (First book).

1773:   Bloomfield’s mother marries John Glover.

The House of Commons debated settlement acts, with Mr. Graves introducing a bill prohibiting the needless removal of the poor from parishes other than those of their homes.           

Hester Mulso Chapone, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind.

Robert Fergusson, Poems.           

Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer.

Richard Graves, The Spiritual Quixote.

John Hawkesworth, Account of the Voyages Undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere.

William Mason, An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers.

Lord James Burnett Monboddo, On the Origin and Progress of Language.

1774:   4^th Earl of Chesterfield (P.D. Stanhope), Letters to his Son.

Oliver Goldsmith, Grecian History; History of the Earth and Animated Nature.

Oliver Goldsmith, Retaliation.           

John Langhorne, The Country Justice.           

Samuel Johnson, The Patriot.           

Thomas Warton, History of English Poetry.

1775:   Watt’s steam engine perfected.           

Samuel Johnson, Taxation no Tyranny.           

Samuel Jackson Pratt, Liberal Opinions, or the History of Benignus.           

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals.

1776:   United States Declaration of Independence.

Charles Burney, A General History of Music, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period.

Edward Gibbon’s first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Richard Watson, Apology for Christianity.

1777:   Bloomfield sent to the nearby Sapiston farm of his Uncle, William Austin.           

James Boswell, The Hypochondriack.

Thomas Chatterton, Poems, supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley, and others, in the Fifteenth Century.           

David Hume, The Life of David Hume.           

Clara Reeve, The Champion of Virtue.  A Gothic Story.           

William Robertson, The History of America.

Thomas Warton, Poems.

1778:   Parliament passed the Relief Act.  (Repealed harsh anti-Catholic legislation from the seventeenth century).           

Frances Burney, Evelina.

Richard Cumberland, The Battle of Hastings.           

Vicesimus Knox, Essays, Moral and Literary.           

Percival Stockdale, An Inquiry into the Nature and Genuine Laws of Poetry.           

Gilbert Stuart, A View of Society in Europe, in its Progress from Rudeness to Refinement.

1779:   Invention of the mule, which mechanised the production of fine high quality muslins.           

William Cowper and John Newton, Olney Hymns.           

David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion.           

Samuel Johnson, Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets; 10 vols., 1779-81.           

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic: or a Tragedy Rehearsed.

1780:   Yorkshire petition for parliamentary reform.  Anti-Catholic riots break out in London as Lord George Gordon delivers a petition to parliament demanding the repeal of the Relief Act.           

John Nichol, Anecdotes of Mr Hogarth.

1781:   Bloomfield joins his brothers George (a shoemaker) and Nathaniel (a tailor) in London, running errands and learning his trade.           

Vicesimus Knox, Liberal Education.

1782:   Gilbert’s Act instituted.  (Commands the physically able poor to obtain outside work and become self-sufficient while being housed.  The act initiated the major reform of poor laws that would extend into the nineteenth-century).           

Ireland granted legislative independence.

William Cowper, Poems.

William Gilpin, Observations on the River Wye.

Joseph Priestley, History of the Corruptions of Christianity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions.  (The bible of meditative ramblers)

Joseph Warton, An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope (ii).

Thomas Warton, An enquiry into the authenticity of the poems attributed to Thomas Rowley.

1783:   William Beckford, Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents.           

James Beattie, Dissertations Moral and Critical.

Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres.

William Blake, Poetical Sketches.

George Crabbe, The Village.

Thomas Day’s first volume of The History of Sandford and Merton: a Work intended for the Use of Children.  (Important exploration of natural instruction and rustic virtue).

1784:   Trade dispute over apprenticeships among the shoemakers. Bloomfield returns to the country, where he first conceives The Farmer’s Boy. Bloomfield stays with William Austin for two months, before going back to London as an apprentice.

1785:   William Cowper, The Task.           

Ann Yearsley, Poems, on Several Occasions

1786:   (24 May). ‘A Village Girl’ printed in Say’s Gazetteer.  Bloomfield sets up on his own as a shoemaker.           

Coal-gas first used for lighting.           

Robert Burns, Poems (Kilmarnock Edition)           

William Beckford, Vathek.

William Gilpin, Observations on the Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland.

1787:   Ann Yearsley, Poems, on Various Subjects

Sir John Hawkins, Life of Johnson.           

John Millar, Historical View of the English Government.

John Wolcot, Instructions to a Celebrated Laureat.

Mary Wollstonecraft, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters.

1788:   Act passed barring the employment of children under 8 and sending them up a lit chimney; it was hardly enforced.           

Richard Graves, Recollection of the Life of Shenstone.           

Vicesimus Knox, Winter Evenings.

Hannah More, Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great.

Thomas Reid, Essay on the Active Powers of Man.

1789:   French Revolution; the Bastille falls; Declaration of the Rights of Man.           

William Blake, Songs of Innocence.           

William Lisle Bowles, Sonnets.           

Gilbert White, Natural History of Selborne.

1790:   (12 December). Bloomfield marries Mary Ann Church.

Thomas Bewick, A General History of Quadrupeds. 

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Men.

1791:   (25 October). Birth of Hannah (Bloomfield’s first child).

Annual Register records the execution of two boys, 14 and 15, for stealing at Newport.  Children were committed to Houses of Correction in their hundreds in several districts.

Thomas Paine, Rights of Man. 

1792:   Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

1793:   (July). Birth of Mary (Bloomfield’s second daughter).

William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.

1794:   William Pitt introduced bills that made meetings of over 50 people illegal and expanded the scope of sedition to include any endorsement of amendments to the government, other than through acts of parliament.

Thomas Hardy, John Thelwall, John Horne Tooke and 11 other members of the London Corresponding Society were arrested and denied the right of habeas corpus.  By late in the year 2000 people were being held without due process.  A mass meeting at Chalk Farm declared that Britain had ‘lost its liberties’.

William Blake, Songs of Experience.

1795:   Speenhamland system introduced.  (A new form of poor relief of near national coverage, fixing poverty into capitalist social relations on the employer’s terms).

Food riots.

1796:   (May). Bloomfield begins composing The Farmer’s Boy.           

Edward Jenner’s experiment to prove that contracting cowpox provided immunity against smallpox.           

(21 July). Death of Robert Burns.

1797:   Mutiny in the Royal Navy, at the base at Spithead in the Solent, off Portsmouth.

1798:   (June). Bloomfield sends a version of The Farmer’s Boy to several London booksellers in the hope that they will print the poem. They turn it down.

(15 September). Birth of Charles Bloomfield (Bloomfield’s first boy).

(16 September). Bloomfield sends the manuscript of The Farmer’s Boy as a present for his mother. En route it is read by his brother George, who approaches the classical scholar, poet and political activist Capel Lofft in hopes of obtaining patronage (Nov).           

Results of Edward Jenner’s experiments on smallpox published.  He coins the word ‘vaccine’.           

At least 30,000 Irish slaughtered as United Irish uprising quelled.           

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads.

1800:   (1 March). The Farmer’s Boy: A Rural Poem published by Vernor and Hood, introduced by Bloomfield’s patron, Capel Lofft, with woodcuts by Thomas Bewick’s workshop.           

(4 March). Bloomfield receives copies of The Farmer’s Boy, describing it as ‘larger and more beautifull than I had conceived’.           

(12 September). Third edition of The Farmer’s Boy published.

1801:   Birth of Charlotte Bloomfield (familiarly known as ‘Shot’).           

(February). Bloomfield learns that Dr William Clubbe has translated the first quarter of The Farmer’s Boy into Latin.           

(October). Bloomfield and Lofft quarrel over notes intended for Bloomfield’s next publication and editorial matter introduced into editions of The Farmer’s Boy.           

Samuel Jackson Pratt, Bread; or the Poor, a Poem.           

George Dyer, Poems.

1802:   (24 May).  William Windham refers to Bloomfield during a Parliamentary debate on bull-baiting.

(July).  Rural Tales, Ballads and Songs published.  Bloomfield is befriended by Edward Jenner.

Signing of the Peace of Amiens briefly opened the sea lanes to safe passage in and out of France.

William Holloway, The Peasant’s Fate: a Rural Poem. With Miscellaneous Poems

1803:   The Duke of Grafton secures Bloomfield a clerical post in the Stamp Office, but ill health and frustration with the job force his resignation after just a few months. Reports in the press suggest that his appointment to this ‘handsome situation’ prove ‘he has not courted the Muses unsuccessfully’.           

(February). Bloomfield’s son, George, develops ‘an unusual swelling’ on his right knee, which eventually leads to his becoming lame.

(17 May). Sings a ‘Song’ composed for the occasion to honour Edward Jenner’s birthday.           

Vernor and Hood publish Nathaniel Bloomfield’s An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The Culprit, an Elegy; and other Poems, with an introduction by Lofft.

Report published in which radical pamphleteer William Cobbett states that there are around 1 million paupers in England and Wales. One in four receiving poor law relief in Sussex.

Britain resumes war against France, following an appeal from the Maltese.

Anne Grant, Poems on Various Subjects.

1804:   (21 January). Birth of Robert Bloomfield (Bloomfield’s second son), who died the same year (27 September).         

Death of Bloomfield’s mother (27 November).           

(November). William Clubbe writes to Bloomfield about a proposed English and Latin edition of The Farmer’s Boy.

Vernor and Hood pay Bloomfield upwards of £4000 for his 2 volumes The Farmer’s Boy and Rural Tales.

Good Tidings, or News from the Farm: a Poem, his poem on small-pox vaccination, published (December).

Thomas Bachelor, Village Scenes, the Progress of Agriculture, and other Poems

Thomas Bewick, History of British Birds. 

1805:   Bloomfield’s wife, Mary, takes their son Charles to Worthing for the summer in the hope that his leg can be treated there.

Nelson’s victory over Napoleon at Trafalgar.           

Sir Walter Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel.

1806:   Wild Flowers; or, Pastoral and Local Poetry published.

Bloomfield takes up ‘a new and most agreeable trade, that of constructing Eolian harps’.

(May). Bloomfield quarrels with his brother George over George’s support for Capel Lofft.

Publication of Views in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Northamptonshire; Illustrative of the Works of Robert Bloomfield; Accompanied with Descriptions: To which is Annexed, A Memoir of the Poet’s Life, by Edward Wedlake Brayley, edited by James Storer and John Grieg.

9^th edition of The Farmer’s Boy.           

(November). After prefatory material he had wished to be included in the latest edition of The Farmer’s Boy is ignored, Capel Lofft declares: ‘As to the Farmers Boy & all future works of Mr Bloomfield I have done with them’.

Death of Henry Kirke White.

Nelson’s funeral.

Joseph Holland, An Appendix to the Season of Spring, in the Rural Poem “The Farmer’s Boy”. With other Poems.

1807:   (23 March). Birth of Robert Henry Bloomfield (Bloomfield’s third son).

(August). Bloomfield tours the Wye Valley and the Welsh border country, with Mr and Mrs T. J. Lloyd Baker and their friends.

Publication by subscription of Isaac Bloomfield’s Six Anthems: for the use of Choirs where there is no Organ.

(25 March). Slave Trade Act, abolishing the slave trade within the British Empire.

George Crabbe, The Parish Register.

Anne Grant, The Highlanders: and Other Poems.

Henry Kirke White, The Remains of Henry Kirke White … with an Account of his Life by Robert Southey.

Wordsworth, Poems in Two Volumes.

1808:   Nature’s Music: Consisting of Extracts from Several Authors, with Practical Observations and Poetical Testimonies, in Honour of the Harp of Aeolus published, assembled and edited by Bloomfield.           

Sir Walter Scott, Marmion: a Tale of Flodden Field.           

William Holloway, The Minor Minstrel; or Poetical Pieces, Chiefly Familiar and Descriptive.

1809:   Publication of the 2 volume stereotype edition of Bloomfield’s Poems, containing new prefaces and revised texts of some of his work.

Bloomfield brothers satirised in Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

William Cobbett, The Life of William Cobbett: Written by Himself.           

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Friend.

1810:   George Crabbe, The Borough.           

Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake.

1811:   The Banks of Wye: a Poem, based on Bloomfield’s tour of Wales, published.           

Death of Bloomfield’s patron, August Henry Fitzroy, 3^rd Duke of Grafton.           

(August). Death of the bookseller Thomas Hood.           

Death of Isaac Bloomfield.

Luddite machine-breaking commences in Nottingham.

Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility.

1812:   Bloomfield leaves London and moves to Shefford, Bedfordshire.

Prime Minister Spencer Percival is assassinated.

Lord Byron, Childe Harold, I and II.

Bankruptcy of Vernor and Hood, Bloomfield’s publishers.

1813:   Bloomfield discovers that his publishers’ bankruptcy means that he will receive only a tiny proportion of royalties owed him on the sale of editions of his works. Rights to these works are purchased by a congerie of booksellers in which Longmans plays the leading role.

17 Luddites executed in York, hastening the demise of the movement.           

Robert Southey made Poet Laureate.           

Lord Byron, Giaour.

Percy Shelley, A Vindication of Natural Diet.

1814:   (June). Travels to Dover with Joseph Weston, where he witnesses the landing of Tsar Alexander, ruler of Russia.

Death of Mary (Bloomfield’s daughter).

(October). Bloomfield informs T. J. Lloyd-Baker that his wife has become ‘a staunch disciple [sic] of Johanna Southcott’.

Sir Walter Scott, Waverley.

William Wordsworth, The Excursion.

1815:   The History of Little Davy’s New Hat, a prose-work for children, published.

Bloomfield begins to suffer problems with his eyesight. Although temporarily corrected through use of spectacles, his sight continues to deteriorate until the end of his life.

Napoleon defeated at Waterloo by Wellington and his Prussian allies.

Coinciding with the appearance of Cobbett’s two-penny Political Register, there emerged a wave of protest songs within the farming and labouring class.

Lord Byron, Hebrew Melodies.

1816:   (September). Sir Egerton Brydges issues an appeal for a public subscription to aid Bloomfield who finds himself in financial distress, owing largely to ‘the failure of his former booksellers’. This proves less successful than planned, and in November Bloomfield writes to his daughter, Hannah: ‘I am afraid that my friends have been too sanguine in their hopes of the subscription’. 

Bread or Blood riots occur in Suffolk, Norfolk, Huntingdon, and Cambridgeshire.           

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel and Kubla Khan.

1817:   (20 January). William Wordsworth writes to Benjamin Haydon about the ‘considerable distress’ Bloomfield finds himself in, and laments the current state of patronage. 

Grief pervades the country as Princess Charlotte Augusta dies.           

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria.                                          

John Keats, Poems. 

1818:   (April). Bloomfield spends a short time with his son Charles who has been appointed as a teacher at the National School in Putney.           

Cobbett’s Political Register incorrectly reports that Bloomfield has been ‘taken in tow’ by the government and ‘pensioned for fear he should write for the people’.           

(November). An application on Bloomfield’s behalf is made to the Royal Literary Fund. The Fund awards him £40.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion.

John Keats, Endymion.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.

1819:   (8 March). Bloomfield writes to Samuel Rogers, informing him that he has ‘composed nearly a thousand lines of a new work’.           

(July). Despite his failing eyesight, Bloomfield finishes writing a new work; a play.           

(September). Bloomfield travels to London to search for lodgings for his family and to find a publisher for his latest work.

(16 August). Peterloo Massacre.           

New stamp duty of six pence made many popular publications unaffordable for literate working class men and women.           

Lord Byron, Don Juan, I and II.           

George Crabbe, Tales of the Hall.           

William Wordsworth, Peter Bell.

1820:   (July). An overjoyed John Clare receives a letter from Bloomfield addressed to him as ‘Brother Bard, and fellow labourer’.  ‘Nothing upon the great theatre of what is called the world (our English world)’, wrote Bloomfield, ‘can give me half the pleasure I feel at seeing a man start up from the humble walks of life and show himself to be what I think you are.’

(29 January). Accession of George IV.

(23 February). Arrest of the Cato Street conspirators.           

William Blake, Jerusalem.

John Clare, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery.           

John Keats, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and Other Poems           

Percy Shelley, Prometheus Unbound.

1821:   (May). Bloomfield is forced to defend himself to T. J. Lloyd-Baker over rumours of his radical sympathies and lack of religious attendance.

John Clare, The Village Minstrel.

1822:   May Day with the Muses, Bloomfield’s final volume of poetry, published.

The Society for the Suppression of Vice, which had been established by the evangelicals, had Richard Carlile prosecuted for selling ‘Queen Mab’.

Richard Martin’s Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle is passed by Parliament, representing the first parliamentary legislation for animal welfare in the world.

William Blake, The Death of Abel.

1823:   Hazelwood Hill, a Village Drama, in Three Acts published.           

Bloomfield dies on 19 August, in poverty and distress.

(September). Bloomfield’s literary reputation is attacked in the Monthly Magazine.

1824:   Bloomfield’s friend Joseph Weston edits the Remains of Robert Bloomfield (two volumes, 1824) for the benefit of the Bloomfield family.           

Capel Lofft dies (26 May).

Michael Faraday is elected as a member of the Royal Society.