English author William Makepeace Thackeray begins publication of his novel Vanity Fair in monthly parts (book form 1848)

Frances, Lady Waldegrave, inherits Strawberry Hill on her husband's death in 1846, marries George Granville Harcourt, an elderly Liberal MP, and establishes herself as a leading Liberal hostess.

At a congress in London Engels persuades a group of radical Germans to adopt the name Communist League

Charlotte becomes the first of the Brontë sisters to have a novel published — Jane Eyre

English mathematician George Boole describes Boolean algebra in his pamphlet Mathematical Analysis of Logic

Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights follows just two months after her sister Charlotte's Jane Eyre

Kneller Hall is bought by the Committee of the Privy Council for Education. The house is largely demolished and rebuilt with nothing remaining of Kneller's original house.

Metternich and his family leave Vienna, in this year of revolutions, and live in Trumpeters' House until October 1849

Richmond's railway bridge, the first to cross the Thames, is built to continue the line on towards Windsor

Scottish physicist William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, proposes the 'absolute' scale of temperature

The Palm House, today "the world's most important surviving Victorian glass and iron structure" is completed. Although originally told to hide it among trees, Kew's director William Hooker succeeds in placing it in a prominent position, thanks to support from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

English art students Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Millais form the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë die within a period of eight months

Prince Albert is the driving force behind the plans for a Great Exhibition in London

Local painter and photographer George Hilditch sets up his easel under Richmond's new railway bridge

Charles Dickens begins the publication in monthly numbers of David Copperfield, his own favourite among his novels

Scottish painter David Roberts completes publication of his 6-volume The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt & Nubia

Expelled from Germany after the year of revolutions, Marx makes his home in tolerant London

Queen Victoria knights her favourite painter of animals, Edwin Landseer

Alfred Tennyson's elegy for a friend, In Memoriam, captures perfectly the Victorian mood of heightened sensibility

British engineer Robert Stephenson completes a box-girder railway bridge over the Menai Strait, between Anglesey and mainland Wales

Whitton Place is demolished and the grounds are rejoined with Whitton Park.

The Kneller Hall Training School for the Teaching of Pauper and Criminal Children opens with Dr Frederick Temple as Principal.

English cartoonist John Tenniel begins a 50-year career drawing for the satirical magazine Punch

Lord and Lady Russell of Pembroke Lodge found the Russell School in Petersham