Calendar of Literary Facts

1838

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson delivers his “Divinity School Address” at Harvard Divinity School
  • Edgar Allan Poe publishes The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, of Nantucket
  • The Daguerre method of photography is developed
  • American Indians living in the eastern United States embark on the “Trail of Tears”: a forced migration to land west of the Mississippi
  • The Dutch Boers defeat the Zulus in the Battle of Blood River in Natal
  • The First Afghan War is fought, with British troops massacred during their retreat from Kabul
  • Henry Adams is born (February 16)