What is the Edwardian Era?

No age begins and ends so precisely with a death and a coronation. The seeds are sown for years before; and the harvest is collected for decades on.

History is a continuum, each act leading into another. Lifetimes overlap and events, both major and minor, create waves which stream away from them in all directions. Like a stone being dropped into a still lake.

That said, chapters help us make sense of the past and the Edwardian age is just one of those. For sheer convenience we place the start in 1901 with the death of Queen Victoria; and the accession to the throne of her son King Edward VII.

This was more than a mere changing of the face on the coinage. It was a brand new century too.

Edward was already 59 years old when he became King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India. Nine years later, he was dead.

That should have been the end of the Edwardian times. After all, it was named after him (unless you're American, in which case the Gilded Age is often used instead, while the French prefer La Belle Époque (The Beautiful Era)).

If we're going with the end of Edward, then this period stops in 1910. 

No-one ever does that. 

History, once the gears have been set in motion, is slow to grind down. This was particularly true when the King was so popular in his lifetime. It also makes sense to continue the period until a certain line can be drawn under it.

Four years after the death of King Edward VII, one of the most major events of recent history began. This was the First World War, which erupted out of the political manoeuvrings of the Edwardian Age. For some that era ended with this - the Great War of 1914.

But there's a kind of morality tale in letting the hubris and arrogance of the Edwardians result in wholesale destruction. They caused it, so they should remain associated with it. For historians who take this view, then the period is put to rest in 1919 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

The end of war and the end of the Edwardians.

So what is after the Edwardian era? It's either a kind of limbo half decade of the new Georgians. That's too messy. It sounds too much like the Georgian period over a century before. Or it's the First World War.

For the majority of people, what followed the Edwardian era is none of those. It's the 1920s and the Inter-War Period. It's Austerity or, if you're looking at the positive attempts at kicking-starting the fun and games again, it's the Roaring Twenties.

Asking what dates are Edwardian is problematic though. It's 1901-1910; 1901-1914; or 1901-1919. Take your pick. We can make a case for them all.

The first fourteen years of the 20th century have been described as 'a long, sunlit afternoon'.  Remembered from the other side of two world wars, Austerity, The Great Depression and the grim Post-War Period, nostalgia placed rose-tinted glasses onto the most down-to-earth of people.

We tend to recall it in terms of Downton Abbey or the first class apartments of the Titanic. But it was so much more than that. This was an era of huge change, especially for the poorest in society.

Until now aristocracy and wealth could command instant respect, particularly in Britain. Here the class system kept everyone solidly in their place.

The super-rich, often the same aristocrats, lost all of their Victorian predecessors' sense of duty over spending money.  Good works were still done and charity events hosted, but there was no shame now in ostentatious spending. People competed over the greatest display and purchase of luxury items.

The nobility could expect deference from everybody, even the newspapers would hesitate to print anything negative about them. They were untouchable in their large stately homes. Strict rules of etiquette dominated their lives; and an army of servants saw to their every need.

All of this was about to crumble. It's no accident that today we look at the Edwardians through the lens of such programs as Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs. This is the first era in which we start looking past the upper crust to the people waiting on them; and the less wealthy per se.

This was the rise of Socialism and the Labour Party.  Suddenly the lower classes became less an amorphous blob to be controlled or given alms in 'good works', but human beings in their own right.

By the end of the Edwardian era, this political and social explosion led to lower class men and even women gaining the vote. The aristocracy was in decline and a whole new democracy was taking shape. But it also led into the carnage of the Great War and the pinch of Austerity measures.

Britain simply couldn't afford to be Edwardian anymore.

Many Edwardian events have taken on almost mythical status in today's culture. I'll run through some of the biggies.

• Art Nouveau is the biggest style movement of the era (throughout until 1914).
• Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States (1901).
• Rudyard Kipling wrote Kim (1901) and the Just So Stories (1902), and many more besides.
• Edward Elgar began composing Pomp and Circumstance (1901), including Land of Hope and Glory (1902).
• The Second Boer War ends in Africa (1902).
• J.M.Barrie wrote Peter Pan (1902).
• Beatrix Potter wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), as the start of a series spanning the Edwardian period and beyond.
• Emmeline Pankhurst created the Suffragette Movement (1903).
• The Wright Brothers had their first powered flight (1903).
• Paul Poiret opened his Haute Couture Fashion House in Paris (1903).
• Roald Amundsen and his team traversed the North-West Passage (1903-1906).
• The first hacker interrupted a demonstration of the Marconi telegraphic system (1903).
• The first World Series was held in America (1903).
• W. Somerset Maugham had four plays simultaneously running in London (1904).
• The Panama Canal zone was acquired (1904).
• The Olympic Games were held in St Louis, USA (1904).
• Albert Einstein published a paper explaining his Special Theory of Relativity (1905).
• Fauvism became a major art movement with Henri Matisse at its helm (1905-1908).
• E.M. Forster wrote several famous novels, including A Room with a View (from 1905).
• Theodore Roosevelt negotiates the Portsmouth Treaty to end the Russo-Japanese War (1905).
• Playwright Henrik Ibsen died at home (1906).
• San Francisco was practically destroyed in a large earthquake and resultant fire (1906).
• John Galsworthy started writing The Forsyte Saga (1906).
• Mount Vesuvius erupted over Naples, Italy (1906).
• Vaughan Williams and Percy Dreamer published The English Hymnal (1906).
• Edith Nesbit wrote The Railway Children (1906).
• A mining disaster in West Virginia killed 361 people (1907).
• Oklahoma became an American state (1907).
• The Olympic Games were held in London (1908).
• Kenneth Grahame wrote Wind in the Willows (1908).
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was established (1908).
• William Howard Taft became President of the USA (1909).
• Roald Amundsen led an unsuccessful expedition to the North Pole (1910-1912).
• H.G.Wells wrote The Sleeper Awakes (1910).
• New Mexico and Arizona become American states (1912).
• The Titanic sank on her maiden voyage (1912).
• George Bernard Shaw wrote Pygmalion (1912), better known to us as My Fair Lady.
• Woodrow Wilson becomes President of the United States (1913).
• Henry Ford creates the modern assembly line (1913).
• Emily Wilding Davison became a martyr for women's rights (1913).
• World War One erupted across Europe (1914).
• Gustav Holst composed The Planet Suite (1914-1916).
• P.G.Wodehouse started writing about Jeeves and Wooster (1915).
• RMS Lusitania is torpedoed and sinks (1915).
• The Easter Rising occurred in Dublin, Ireland (1916).
• The Halifax Explosion killed thousands. (1917)
• Max Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his introduction of quantum theory (1918).
• The Spanish Flu Epidemic killed thousands in Europe (1918-1919).
• The Treaty of Versailles was signed (1919).
• The Irish War of Independence begins (1919).
• The 18th Amendment started Prohibition in the USA (1919).