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- Ibsen born in
Skien, Norway, on March 20
- Leo Tolstoy born
in Russia
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- Financial problems
force the Ibsen family to move out of town to a smaller house
for eight years.
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- Ibsen leaves home,
at age 14, to earn his living as an apothecary's apprentice
in the seacoast town of Grimstad. Except for one brief visit,
he never returns to his hometown.
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- A maid in the Grimstad
household, considerably older than Ibsen, bears him an illegitamite
son. Ibsen was to support this son financially for many years,
despite his own impoverished circumstances.
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- Revolutions throughout
Europe which are one by one suppressed. Ibsen writes sonnets
in support of these revolutions.
- Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels publish Manifesto of the Communist Party.
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- Ibsen writes his
first play, Catiline, which is submitted to the Chrisiania
Theatre and rejected.
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- August Strindberg
born in Sweden.
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- Ibsen writes his
second play, The Burial Mound, which is performed at
the Cristiania Theatre.
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- Ibsen arrives in
Bergen to take up an appointment as playwright in residence
and stage manager of the new Norwegian Theatre, established
by Ole Bull. He was to spend six years in Bergen, learning every
aspect of dramatic and theatrical craft.
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- St. John's Night
is performed at Bergen.
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- Lady Inger of
Østraat performed at Bergen.
- Søren Kierkegaard,
Danish philosopher, dies.
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- The Feast at
Solhoug performed at Bergen. This is Ibsen's first success
in the theatre.
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- Olaf Liliekrans
performed at Bergen.
- Ibsen takes up new
post of artistic director, Norwegian Theatre in Christiania.
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- June 18, Ibsen marries
Suzannah Thoresen.
- The Vikings at
Helgeland performed at Christiania Theatre.
- Gustav Flaubert's
Madame Bovary.
- Apparition of the
Virgin Mary reputed to have appeared to Bernadette Soubirous
at Lourdes, France.
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- Ibsen's son, Sigurd,
born.
- Charles Darwin publishes
The Origin of Species.
- Karl Marx, Critique
of Political Economy.
- John Stuart Mill,
Essay on Liberty.
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- Outbreak of American
Civil War.
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- Love's
Comedy, Ibsen's first major play, published as a supplement
to a journal. The play subjected to harsh attacks as "an
offense against human decency." Ibsen himself now the subject
of critical abuse. The Christiania Theatre dared not perform
the play.
- The Norwegian Theatre
in Christiania goes bankrupt and Ibsen loses his job.
- In May, awarded
a grant from the University of Christiania to compile folk songs
and legends. This required extensive travel through Norway.
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- The Pretenders
published.
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- January, The Pretenders
performed at the Christiania Theatre. It is Ibsen's most successful
production to date.
- April 5, leaves
Christiania for Copenhagen and Rome. The beginning of a twenty-seven
year exile from Norway, in which most of his major work will
be written.
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- Ibsen in Rome. In
March, Brank published and creates a sensation throughout Scandinavia.
From now on, Ibsen will be Scaninavia's most prominent writer.
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- November 14, Peer
Gynt published.
- Karl Marx's Das
Kapital published.
- Emile Zola writes
Thérèse Raquin, his first "naturalist"
novel.
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- In October, after
staying in Florence, Bologna, and Venice, Ibsen moves to Dresden.
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- In September, The
League of Youth published. Ibsen's first realistic prose
play.
- Wyoming establishes
women's suffrage.
- John Stuart Mill
writes On the Subjection of Women.
- Ibsen begins his
long intellectual friendship with the young Danish critic, Georg
Brandes.
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- Franco-Prussian
War. Napoleon III capitulates to Prussia.
- Revolt in Paris,
proclamation of the Third Republic.
- Schliemann begins
excavations at Troy.
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- Election of socialists
to the Paris Commune, upon which troops, led by Thiers on behalf
of the French bourgeoisie massacred over 25,000 Communards—men,
women and children—in one week. Thousands more executed
or deported to tropical penal colonies. Ibsen wrote to Georg
Brandes about these events.
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- Friedrich Nietzsche's
The Birth of Trajedy.
- Jules Verne writes
Around the World in 80 Days.
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- First Impressionist
exhibition in Paris.
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- Leo Tolstoy's Anna
Karenina.
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- First performance
of Peer Gynt, with music by Edvard Grieg, at the Christiania
Theatre.
- In April, The
Vikings at Helgeland performed at the Court Theatre in Munich,
the first of Ibsen's plays produced outside Scandinavia.
- In June, Ibsen attends
a performace of The Pretenders by the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen's
players.
- Opening of Bayreuth
for first complete performance of Richard Wagner's Cycle, Der
Ring des Nibelungen. Ibsen is living close to Bayreuth,
in Munich.
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- In December, A
Doll House. The play quickly becomes notorious, first in
Scandinavia, then throughout Europe. Ibsen is soon to become
the most written about man of letters, internationally, until
his death in 1906.
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- Emile Zola's Nana.
- Dostoevsky's The
Brothers Karamazov.
- Rodin sculpts The
Thinker.
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- Publication of Ghosts
causes a major scandal internationally; the play is banned from
public performance in many countries, giving rise to the minority
theatre movement where, in Berlin, the Freie Bühne, and
in London, the Independent Theatre, will be founded to perform
Ibsen's play. No established theatre in Scandinavia dared put
on the play, and the bookshops returned copies of the play to
the publisher. It would be over ten years before the first edition
was sold out.
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- An
Enemy of the People published.
- World premiere of
Ghosts in Chicago, performed in Norwegian by Danish and
Norwegian amateurs before audiences of Scandinavian immigrants.
- James Joyce, Irish
novelist, and lifelong Ibsen admirer, born.
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- First European performance
of Ghosts by August Lindberg in Hälsingborg, Sweden. Lindberg
was regularly to direct and act ihn Ibsen's plays.
- Friedrich Nietzsche,
Also Sprach Zarathustra.
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- Andre Antoine establishes
his Théâtre Libre, the firest of the non-commercial
theatres to take up the cause of Ibsen.
- August Strindberg
writes The Father.
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- Otto Brahm and Paul
Schlenther open the independent theatre, Freie Bühne, in
Berlin, to evade censorship and produce Ghosts.
- Opening of the Eiffel
Tower in Paris.
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- Hedda
Gabler published.
- Andre Antoine produces
Ghosts at the Théâtre Libre. Lugné
Poë called the production "a thunderbolt in French
theatrical history."
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- J.T. Grein established
the Independent Theatre in London which opened on Friday March
13 with Ghosts. The performance causes the greatest scandal
and controversy in British theatrical history. Banned by Lord
Chamberlain, the play had to be performed at the Independent
Theatre as a private club.
- George Bernard Shaw's
The Quintessence of Ibsenism published.
- In July Ibsen returns
to settle in Norway after twenty-seven years exile.
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- The
Master Builder published.
- Maurice Maeterlinck
writes Pelléas et Mélisande.
- George Bernard Shaw's
first play, Widowers' Houses.
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- When
We Dead Awaken, Ibsen's "Epilogue" to the
Cycle, published.
- H.G. Wells' When
the Sleeper Wakes.
- Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection.
- Oscar Wilde's The
Importance of Being Earnest.
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- Ibsen suffers his
first stroke and has to stop writing. He has his second stroke
the following year.
- Sigmund Freud, The
Interpretation of Dreams.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
dies.
- Oscar Wild dies.
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- Queen Victoria dies.
- Strinberg's The
Dance of Death.
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- Chekhov's The
Cherry Orchard.
- Chekhov dies.
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- May 23, Ibsen
dies
- Samuel Beckett born
April 13 (or May13).
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