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Due to a deficiency of first-hand sources, this timeline has been approximated. Though few of her own letters have been transcribed, important dates can be found in letters to Stoddart from people like the Lambs and Hazlitt (none of whom were the most regular correspondents), which have been sourced from texts in the “Related Biographies” section of the bibliography. 

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• C. 1774: Sarah Stoddart was born to Lieutenant John Stoddart and Sarah Brown Stoddart in Wiltshire, England. Her parents also marry that year, but it is unclear whether they do before or after Stoddart's birth (her older brother John was born out of wedlock)

• 1796: John invests some inheritance money he and Stoddart received, likely from their mother's parents, from which Stoddart also likely inherited a Winterslow cottage, where she and Hazlitt live later in life

• C. 1802: Stoddart meets Charles (a longtime friend of her brother’s) and Mary Lamb, who remain close friends for the rest of her life

• Late 1803-1805: Stoddart travels to Malta with her brother Sir John Stoddart (Advocate of the Crown and of the Admiralty for Malta) and his wife Isabella Wellwood-Moncrieff

• • C. 1803-1804: Stoddart courts with multiple suitors, and possibly has a ruinous affair with one man toward the end of her stay

  • 1804: Stoddart meets the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge at John's house

  • Spring 1805: Lieutenant John Stoddart dies, Stoddart inherits property in Winterslow and is sent back to England to be with her mother

  • 1805: Unable to care for her mentally-ill and newly widowed mother on her own, Stoddart places her in a Salisbury madhouse

• C. 1806: Stoddart moves into her Winterslow cottage 

• 1806: Courtships (and possible engagements) with a Mr. White, a Mr. Turner, and a farmer named Mr. Dowling

• 1806: Mary Lamb tells Stoddart about William Hazlitt for the first time in a letter

• C. 1807: Courtship with Hazlitt

• C. December 1807: Stoddart and Hazlitt officially become engaged without telling her brother

• May 1808: Stoddart marries Hazlitt by special license at St. Andrew's Church in Holborn and they move to her property in Winterslow (some account suggest this occurred on May 1st, others on May 12th)

• January 15th, 1809: The Hazlitts’ first son, William, is born 

• July 5th, 1809: William dies from an unknown illness

• July, 1809: The Lambs, Martin Burney, and Ned Phillips visit Winterslow and often take daily walks of eight to twenty miles through the Salisbury Plains 

• Early 1810: Stoddart visits the Lambs in London

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• March 1822: Despite Hazlitt's earlier requests, Stoddart finally leaves Winterslow for London, but spends some time with her son at his London school before leaving for Scotland

• April 14th, 1822: Stoddart departs London for Edinburgh

  • May 13th-20th, 1822: Stoddart goes on her first walking tour in Scotland, walking 170 miles through parts of the highlands

  • May 31st-June 5th, 1822: Stoddart walks 112 miles on her second walking tour through Perthshire and parts of the highlands

  • June 14th, 1822: Stoddart swears the Oath of Calumny 

  • June 18th-28th, 1822: Stoddart leaves Scotland for the only time during her divorce proceedings and travels to Ireland

  • July 17th, 1822: The Hazlitts’ divorce is finalized. Stoddart leaves Scotland the following day

• Summer 1824: Stoddart travels in France, writing to Hazlitt and visiting him and his new wife (she had previously visited them at their London home as well)

• September 18th, 1830: Hazlitt dies in London. Stoddart writes his death notice for The Times and possibly the inscription on Hazlitt’s tombstone

• 1840: By this time Stoddart has been afflicted with rheumatism and has nearly lost the use of her hands

• 1843: Stoddart dies at her lodgings at No. 4 Palace St. in Pimlico, where she had been living with Mrs. Elizabeth Pinney, an old friend, in the years before her death

  • C. 1843: Stoddart is buried at the Church of St John the Evangelist​

• 1867: Parts of the Journal are published for the first time in Memoirs of William Hazlitt: With Portions of His Correspondence, Volume 2, written by the Hazlitts’ grandson, William Carew Hazlitt

• 1885: The burial ground of St. John's is opened as a public garden, with all evidence of Stoddart's grave eliminated only forty-two years after her death

• 1894: The Journal is published in full for the first time within Richard Le Gallienne’s edition of Hazlitt’s Liber Amoris

• 1959: Willard Hallam Bonner publishes an edited version of the Journal as The Journals of Sarah and William Hazlitt, 1822-1831

• 1970: Ena Lamont Stewart's play Business in Edinburgh, an adaptation of Stoddart's Journal, receives a dramatic reading by the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow 

  • 1979: Business in Edinburgh is produced for the first and only time by the Phoenix Drama Group of Newport in St Andrews​

• 2022: The 200th anniversary of Stoddart’s walking tours. It has been over 60 years since a new edition of the Journal has been published

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