1880s
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"In giving to the world the record of what, looked at as an adventure only, is I suppose one of the most wonderful and mysterious experiences ever undergone by mortal men, I feel it incumbent on me to explain what my exact connection with it is. And so I may as well say at once that I am not the narrator but only the editor of this extraordinary history, and then go on to tell how it found its way into my hands."--She: A History of Adventure (1887) by H. Rider Haggard "In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction—pictures portraying intolerable suffering—pictures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful detail—and similar pictures are being put on the canvas every day and publicly exhibited—without a growl from anybody—for they are innocent, they are inoffensive, being works of art. But suppose a literary artist ventured to go into a painstaking and elaborate description of one of these grisly things—the critics would skin him alive. Well, let it go, it cannot be helped; Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost hers. Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores and the consistencies of it—I haven't got time."--1601 (1880) by Mark Twain |
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The 1880s was a decade that began on January 1, 1880 and ended on December 31, 1889. They occurred at the core period of the Second Industrial Revolution. Most Western countries experienced a large economic boom, due to the mass production of railroads and other more convenient methods of travel. The modern city as well as the sky-scraper rose to prominence in this decade as well, contributing to the economic prosperity of the time. The 1880s were also part of the Gilded Age, which lasted from 1874 to 1907.
During the decade, Paris holds the Exposition Universelle with the Eiffel tower as main attraction. The Arts and Crafts movement is founded in England. Art Nouveau emerges. A group of French writers refer to themselves as decadents. The manifesto of the Symbolist movement is pubished. Peak popularity of music halls. Rise of Tin Pan Alley. Introduction of phonograph and cars. The Moulin Rouge opens its doors. Electric lighting is introduced. Jack the Ripper kills in London.
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Art and culture
- Isle of the Dead (painting) (1880) by Böcklin
- Paraphrases about the Finding of a Glove (1881) by Max Klinger
- Negroes Fighting in a Tunnel at Night (1882) by Paul Bilhaud
- The Misshapen Polyp Floated on the Shores, a Sort of Smiling and Hideous Cyclops (1883) by Odilon Redon
- Self-Portrait at the Age of Twenty (1885) by Félix Vallotton
- First Gymnopédie by Erik Satie published on August 18 1888 as a supplement to the magazine La musique des familles.
- Friedrich Nietzsche publishes Thus Spoke Zarathustra
- Mark Twain publishes Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Fyodor Dostoevsky writes The Brothers Karamazov
- Robert Louis Stevenson publishes Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
- First edition of Oxford English Dictionary published
- Arthur Conan Doyle publishes his first Sherlock Holmes tale
- Frontispiece by Fernand Khnopff to Joséphin Péladan’s Istar (1888)
- Incoherents, Parisian art movement
- Flatland (1884), À rebours (1884), Catena Librorum Tacendorum (1885), Psychopathia Sexualis (1886)
- History Of Painting Vol II The Painting Of The Renascence by Woltmann and Woermann, translated by Clara Bell
Technology
- Development and commercial production of electric lighting
- Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered automobile
- First commercial production and sales of phonographs and phonograph recordings.
- First steel frame construction of "sky-scrapers"
Other
- 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, a volcano in Indonesia, erupts cataclysmically; 36,000 people are killed, the majority by the resulting tsunami
- 1886 - the Pall Mall Gazette begins a series titled "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon"
Births
Guillaume Apollinaire - James Joyce - Virginia Woolf - Edgar Varèse - Franz Kafka - Sax Rohmer - Mussolini - Lon Chaney, Sr. - José Ortega y Gasset - Gaston Bachelard - D.H. Lawrence - Sylvia Beach
Deaths
Art
- A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1886) by Seurat
- Skull with a Cigarette (1886) - Vincent van Gogh
Timeline
- 1880 Skene's glands discovered by Alexander Skene
- 1881 the French government withdraws its support from the official Salons
- 1882 'Zuiderpershuis' built
- 1883 The Shapeless Polyp Floated along the Bank, a Sort of Hideous, Smiling Cyclops by Odilon Redon
- 1883 Théorie de la décadence by Paul Bourget, Essais de psychologie contemporaine
- 1884 Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
- 1885 Catena Librorum Tacendorum by Henry Spencer Ashbee
- 1886 Psychopathia Sexualis by Richard Von Krafft-Ebing
- 1887 Le fétichisme dans l'amour by Alfred Binet
- 1887 She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard
- 1888 Jack the Ripper kills his first victim
- 1889 Paris Exposition
- More than a million people took the elevator to the top of the Eiffel tower.
