1902

The timelines on this site are an attempt to highlight the major political and cultural events of the years 1895-1914. They are by no means definitive or canonical; aiming instead at a representative selection, gleaned from various texts.  Additions to the timeline are especially welcome: please leave suggestions in the comments box below.

Key Events

April – Opening of the Electric Theatre, the first cinema in America.
June – British women in America gain the right to vote under the Uniform Franchise Act.
July – A.J.Balfour becomes Conservative Prime Minister
August – Edward VII crowned King.
May – Boer War ends.

Midwives Act licenses and improves standards in midwifery.

Deaths

Samuel Butler.
Levi Strauss.
Elizabeth Cady Santon.
Emile Zola.

Literature

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Just so Stories – Rudyard Kipling
The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
Five Children and It – E. Nesbit
The Tale of Peter Rabbit – Beatrix Potter
The Valley of Decision – Edith Wharton
The Four Feathers – A.E.W Mason
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Arthur Conan-Doyle
Anna of the Five Towns – Arnold Bennett
Haunts of Ancient Peace – Alfred Austin

Launch of Times Literary Supplement
With Roberts to Pretoria: A Tale of the South African War – G.A.Henty
The Path to Rome – Hilaire Belloc,
Imperialism: A Study – J A Hobson,
The Varieties of Religious Experience – William James,
A Free Man’s Worship – Bertrand Russell

Nobel Prize: Theodor Mommsen.

Art & Architecture
 

Exhibition of Art and Industry held in Wolverhampton.
Opening of the Wolverhampton Public Library (designed by Henry Hare).
‘Banney Royd’, house in Huddersfield, designed by Edgar Wood.
Rodin’s St John The Baptist acquired by the V&A.

Lord Ribblesdale – John Singer Sargent.

Theatre

J. M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton.
Maurice Maeterlinck, Monna Vanna.
First science fiction film, A Trip to the Moon, opens in Paris.

Music

Pelléas et Mélisande – Claude Debussy