page_title: 19th century
section_title: Culture
hierarchical_section_title: 19th century / Culture
caption_attribution_description: English: McNeven, J., The Foreign Department, viewed towards the transept, coloured lithograph, 1851, Ackermann (printer), V&amp;A. The interior of the Crystal Palace in London during the Great Exhibition of 1851.
context_page_description: The 19th century was a century that began on January 1, 1801, and ended on December 31, 1900.
  The 19th century saw large amounts of social change; slavery was abolished, and the First and Second Industrial Revolutions led to massive urbanization and much higher levels of productivity, profit and prosperity. The Islamic gunpowder empires were formally dissolved and European imperialism brought much of South Asia, Southeast Asia and almost all of Africa under colonial rule.
  It was marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Zulu Kingdom, First French, Holy Roman and Mughal empires. This paved the way for the growing influence of the British Empire, the Russian Empire, the United States, the German Empire, the Second French Empire, the Kingdom of Italy and Meiji Japan, with the British boasting unchallenged dominance after 1815. After the defeat of the French Empire, and its Indian allies in the Napoleonic Wars, the British and Russian empires expanded greatly, becoming the world's leading powers. The Russian Empire expanded in the Caucasus, central and far eastern Asia.
context_section_description: 1808: Beethoven composes Fifth Symphony
  1813: Jane Austen publishes Pride and Prejudice
  1818: Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein.
  1819: John Keats writes his odes of 1819.
  1819: Théodore Géricault paints his masterpiece The Raft of the Medusa, and exhibits it in the French Salon of 1819 at the Louvre.
  1824: Premiere of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
  1829: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust premieres.
  1837: Charles Dickens publishes Oliver Twist.
  1841: Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes Self-Reliance.
  1845: Frederick Douglass publishes Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
  1847: The Brontë sisters publish Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey.
  1849: Josiah Henson publishes The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself.
  1851: Herman Melville publishes Moby-Dick.
  1851: Sojourner Truth delivers the speech Ain't I a Woman?.
  1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin.
  1855: Walt Whitman publishes the first edition of Leaves of Grass.
  1855: Frederick Douglass publishes the first edition of My Bondage and My Freedom.
  1862: Victor Hugo publishes Les Misérables.
  1865: Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
  1869: Leo Tolstoy publishes War and Peace.
  1875: Georges Bizet's opera Carmen premiers in Paris.
  1876: Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle is first performed in its entirety.
  1883: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island is published.
  1884: Mark Twain publishes the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
  1886: "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson is published.
  1887: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle publishes his first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet.
  1889: Vincent van Gogh paints Starry Night.
  1889: Moulin Rouge opens in Paris.
  1892: Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite premières in St Petersberg.
  1894: Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book is published
  1895: Trial of Oscar Wilde and premiere of his play The Importance of Being Earnest.
  1897: Bram Stoker writes Dracula.
  1900: L. Frank Baum publishes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
caption: The Great Exhibition in London. Starting during the 18th century, the United Kingdom was the first country in the world to industrialise.
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