French author Honoré de Balzac publishes Le Père Goriot, one of the key novels that he later includes in La Comédie Humaine

Alexis de Tocqueville publishes in French the first two volumes of his extremely influential study Democracy in America

Gaetano Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor has its premiere in Naples

English artist Edward Lear begins a series of travels, sketching around the Mediterranean and in the Middle East

24-year-old Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers (published in book form in 1837)

The Inspector General, a farce by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol satirising Russian offialdom, has tsar Nicholas I in the audience for the premiere

The Tolpuddle Martyrs are brought back to England from Australia after public protest leads to their sentences being remitted

The Portuguese ban the shipping of slaves from the coast of Angola

Work begins on the suspension bridge over the river Avon, at Clifton, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel

HMS Beagle reaches Falmouth, in Cornwall, after a voyage of five years, and Charles Darwin brings with him a valuable collection of specimens

Louis Agassiz builds a hut on the Aar glacier in Switzerland and succeeds in recording gradual movement of the ice

The 18-year-old Victoria comes to the throne in Britain, beginning the long Victorian era

Alexander Pushkin dies from a stomach wound received in a duel with his brother-in-law, Georges d'Anthès

Work begins on Charles Barry's spectacular design for London's new Houses of Parliament

Hector Berlioz's requiem mass, the Grande messe des morts, has its first performance in Paris

Charles Dickens' first novel, Oliver Twist, begins monthly publication (in book form, 1838)

An Irish packet steamer, the Sirius, becomes the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, completing the journey to New York in 19 days

Brunel's Great Western, a wooden paddle-steamer, arives in New York the day after the Sirius, with the record for an Atlantic crossing already reduced to 15 days

The London Prize Ring rules disallow kicking, gouging, head-butting and biting in the sport of boxing

The People's Charter, with its six political demands, launches the Chartist movement in England

J.M.W. Turner paints an icon of British art, The Fighting Téméraire

Seven Manchester merchants and mill-owners found the Anti-Corn Law League

Polish composer Frédéric Chopin completes his Preludes under difficult conditions in Majorca

The French painter Gustave Courbet moves from his native town of Ornans to Paris

Swiss scientist Louis Agassiz argues, in his Study on Glaciers, that much of Europe was recently in the grip of an ice age