[<<] 1850s [>>]
Parent 1800s
By year: 1850 - 1851 - 1852 - 1853 - 1854 - 1855 - 1856 - 1857 - 1858 - 1859
Literature: Les Fleurs du mal (1857) - Madame Bovary (1857) - Artifical Paradises (1850s) - The Origin of Species (1859)
Events and trends: rise of photography as an art form - the Great Exhibition (UK world fair) - invention of pulp paper - first purpose-built music halls - start of "industrial design" - start of modernism
The Crystal Palace (1851) - Joseph Paxton
Poem of the Soul, Nightmare (1854) - Louis Janmot (1814-1892)
Great Day of His Wrath (1851-53) - John Martin
Image sourced here.
Fading Away (1858) - Henry Peach Robinson
“The degenerate human being, if he is abandoned to himself, falls into a progressive degradation. He becomes…not only incapable of forming part of the chain of transmission of progress in human society, he is the greatest obstacle to this progress through his contact with the healthy proportion of the population.” Bénédict Augustin Morel, Treatise on the Physical, Intellectual and Moral Degeneration of the Human Race, 1857
Wood pulp [...]
Around 1850, a German named Friedrich Gottlob Keller crushed wood with a wet grindstone to obtain wood pulp. Further experimentation by American chemist C.B. Tilghman and Swedish inventor C.F. Dahl enabled the manufacture of wood pulp using chemicals to break down the fibres. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_pulp#History [Nov 2005]
Variety Shows, Music Hall Entertainment, and Dance Halls
1852: Canterbury Hall entrance, the first purpose built music hall
Image sourced here. [Dec 2004]
Music Hall is a type of British theatre which had its start in the public "song and supper" rooms of the 1850s. It flourished from the 1890s to the Second World War, when other forms of popular music evolved and it began to be replaced by films as the most popular form of entertainment.
British Music Hall was similar to American vaudeville, featuring rousing songs and standard jokes, while in the United Kingdom the term vaudeville referred to more lowbrow entertainment that would have been termed burlesque in the United States. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Hall
Early in the nineteenth century, many British taverns had a "music room" adjacent to the bar in which entertainment was performed. These variety shows presented singers, dancers, and comedians. In 1850, these entertainment lounges were separated from taverns to appeal to more middle-class, family audiences.
Despite the move, British music hall entertainment still had much to offer non-heterosexual patrons, for it often featured a "best boy" (a woman in a breeches role) and the "dame" (played by a man in drag). The fact that men were playing men, women playing women, men playing women, and women playing men on the same stage allowed for numerous double entendres, comic misconceptions, and sexual layerings.
These same conventions were employed in British pantomime, which began in the 1870s and continues to this day in the form of the English Christmas pantomime.
While the famous dance halls of Paris--such as the Folies Bergères (est. 1869) and the Moulin Rouge (est. 1889)--might seem wholly dedicated to heterosexual titillation, most of the Montmartre halls did their part to expand the sexual continuum. Nude show-girls did not appear until 1910, but female impersonators had been part of the bill since the beginning.
One of the most famous was Barbette (Vander Clyde, 1904-1973), an American acrobat who wowed audiences in the 1920s and 1930s as the "jazz-age Botticelli." --http://www.glbtq.com/arts/cabarets_revues.html [Oct 2004]
Births: Guy de Maupassant (1850 - 1893) - Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894) - Jose Posada (1851 - 1913) - Antoni Gaudí (1852 - 1926) - Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890) - Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) - Arthur Rimbaud (1854 - 1891) - H. Rider Haggard (1856 - 1925) - Max Klinger (1857 - 1920) - Émile Durkheim (1858 - 1917) - Henri Bergson (1859 - 1941) - Havelock Ellis (1859 - 1939)
A Biased Timeline of the Counter-Culture [...]
1850 The Vegetarian Society founded, Manchester 1851 or 53? Ruskin: The Stones of Venice (man can only be free if he is being creative, and industrialism destroys this) 1852 Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte declares himself emperor of France; Victor Hugo opposes this and flees into exile First Congress of Co-operative Societies meets, London 1853 Haussman begins redesign of Paris, creating boulevards through lower class areas for ease of moving the army around and to keep the middle classes from moving out Crimean War begins: xx die of cholera until Florence Nightingale introduces sanitation William Morris starts college, meets Edward Burne-Jones, and discusses John Ruskin's Modern Painters with him Saltaire model village built, ne of Manchester 1854 "War for Bleeding Kansas" between free and slave states Thoreau: Walden, or Life in the Woods First street-poster pillars erected in Berlin 1854/5 James Whistler, American artist, is one of many artists who flow into Paris after having read Murger's accounts 1856 + Karl Marx living in London (observing cap sys) (when to when?) 1856? Golden spike joins the west coast of U.S. to the east 1857 US-wide depression, & economic crisis throughout Europe, caused by speculation in U.S. railroad shares Irish Republican Brotherhood (Fenians) founded Charles Baudelaire: "Les Fleurs du mal" Pasteur shows that fermentation is caused by living organisms New Orleans legalizes licensed prostitutes 1858 Olmsted's design for New York's Central Park when? City Beautiful movement 1859 Darwin's Origin of the Species published John Stuart Mill (1806-73): On Liberty Internal combustion engine invented first self-help manual published (how to succeed in life)
your Amazon recommendations