English cricketer W.G. Grace scores a record 344 runs, playing for the Marylebone Cricket Club against Kent at Canterbury

Lewis Carroll publishes The Hunting of the Snark, a poem about a voyage in search of an elusive mythical creature

The first Test match is played in Melbourne between English and Australian cricket teams, with victory going to Australia

The first lawn-tennis championships are organized by the All-England Croquet Club at Wimbledon

George Eliot is devastated by the death from cancer of G.H. Lewes, her partner of 25 years

On a wave of jingoism Benjamin Disraeli sends six British ironclads, in support of Turkey, to confront the Russians near Istanbul

William Crookes develops a special tube, now known as the Crookes tube, for the study of cathode rays

English-born US photographer Eadweard Muybridge publishes closely linked photographs revealing how a horse goes through its paces

English physicist Joseph Swan demonstrates a practical electric light bulb, using an incandescent carbon filament in a vacuum

21-year-old Joseph Conrad, a Polish subject, goes to sea with the British merchant navy

George Eliot develops an emotional bond with her investment banker, John Walter Cross, whose beloved mother died a week after Lewes

English physicist Joseph Swan receives a patent for bromide paper, which becomes the standard material for printing photographs

Henry James's story Daisy Miller, about an American girl abroad, brings him a new readership

George Eliot marries John Walter Cross, 20 years her junior, and begins calling herself Mary Ann Cross

George Eliot and her new husband move into a splendid new house in Cheyne Walk, beside the Thames in London

George Eliot dies, of a long-standing kidney disease, and a week later is buried beside G.H. Lewes in Highgate cemetery

For the second time Gladstone replaces Disraeli as Britain's prime minister, following a Liberal election victory over the Conservatives

On their honeymoon in Venice, George Eliot's husband develops depression and throws himself, or falls, from their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal

The Tynwald in the Isle of Man becomes the first parliament to give women the vote

London's new Savoy Theatre is the first public building in the world to be lit throughout by electricity

The Aesthetic Movement and 'art for art's sake', attitudes personified above all by Whistler and Wilde, are widely mocked and satirized in Britain

Eadweard Muybridge projects slow-motion images of a trotting horse as a demonstration at London's Royal Institution

When Australia win the second Test match, in London, the Sporting Times declares that they will take home with them 'the ashes of English cricket'

Lord Napier heads a Royal Commission to look into the condition of crofters after the Battle of the Braes in Skye

English polymath Francis Galton publishes Inquiries in Human Faculty, developing the theme of eugenics and coining the term