Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a development of the story he had told Alice Liddell three years earlier

Richard Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde has its premiere in the Munich court theatre

A committee to campaign for women's suffrage is formed in Manchester, the first of many in Britain

Leo Tolstoy publishes the first volume of his epic novel War and Peace, following the lives of several aristocratic families during the Napoleonic wars

Prussia invades its neighbouring German states and launches the Seven Weeks' War

The Prussians achieve the first blitzkrieg in their Seven Weeks' War defeat of the Austrians

The terms of the treaty of Prague, ending the Seven Weeks War, make plain the transfer of German leadership from Austria to Prussia

Austrian rule ends in the Venetian territories, which now join the new kingdom of Italy

Algernon Swinburne scandalizes Victorian Britain with his first collection, Poems and Ballads

Dostoevsky publishes Crime and Punishment, a novel narrated by Raskolnikov, a St Petersburg student and murderer

Britain's new Reform Act extends the franchise to working men in British towns

Francis Joseph, emperor of Austria, is also crowned king of Hungary – to become ruler of the 'dual monarchy' of Austria-Hungary

French author Paul Verlaine wins a reputation with his first published collection, Poémes saturniens ('Saturnine Poems')

The first volume of Das Kapital is completed by Marx in London and is published in Hamburg

The world's first croquet tournament takes place in Evesham and is won by Walter Jones-Whitmore

A revival of the Prussian Zollverein, or customs union, includes all the German states except Austria

The Queensberry rules, named after the Marquess of Queensberry, introduce padded gloves in boxing, and rounds of three minutes

Modest Mussorgsky composes his orchestral work St John's Night on the Bare Mountain, based on a story by Gogol

Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel patents dynamite, making the volatile explosive nitroglycerine safer by combining it with kieselguhr

Benjamin Disraeli becomes British prime minister for the first time, at the head of a Conservative government, but only for a few months

Richard Wagner's opera The Mastersingers of Nuremberg has its premiere in Munich

Dostoevsky publishes The Idiot, a novel about the simple-minded and truthful Prince Myshkin

Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone becomes British prime minister, for the first of four times, and remains in office for six years

Johannes Brahms' German Requiem, setting passages from Luther's translation of the Bible, has its first complete performance in Leipzig

Dmitry Mendeleyev reads to the Russian Chemical Society in St Petersburg his formulation of the periodic table