1905

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

June – Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
September – Treaty of Portsmouth sees the end of the Russo-Japanese war.
December – Cadbury’s Dairy Milk first appears. Balfour resigns as Prime Minister.
Unemployed Workmen Act allows local authorities to use limited public funds to provide work for the unemployed.
Aliens Act restricts settlement of foreign immigrants following the Jewish pogroms in Russia.
Motor omnibuses in London.

Deaths

Henry Irving.
George Macdonald.
Jules Verne.
Alfred Waterhouse.

Literature

Where Angels Fear to Tread – E. M. Forster
Kipps – H. G. Wells
The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
The Four Just Men – Edgar Wallace
Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
The Return of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
The Scarlet Pimpernel – Baroness Orczy
Ayesha: The Return of She – H. Roder Haggard
The Hill – H.A. Vachell
De Profundis – Oscar Wilde [posthumously published].

Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall, Our Island Story: A Child’s History of England.
Studies in the Pyschology of Sex – Havelock Ellis

Nobel prize: Henryk Sienkiewicz

Art & Architecture

October – Opening of the Hull School of Art (designed by Lanchester, Stewart and Rickards).
Completion of ‘Home Place’, Norfolk house designed by Edward Prior.
‘Bishopsbarns’, York, designed by Walter Brierly, with garden design by Gertrude Jekyll.

Impressionist exhibition at the Grafton Galleries.

Works:

Theatre

George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman and Major Barbara first performed.

Music

Claude Debussy’s La Mer first performed