1788 – Rev. David Williams assembles his friends in the Prince of Wales coffee house in Conduit Street after hearing about the death of Floyer Sydenham, an elderly translator of Plato. Sydenham died penniless in a debtors’ prison, inspiring Williams to create a literary fund to aid authors in distress.

1790 – The first committee meeting was held on 18 May 1790, and notable figures within literature and society were invited to be paid members or ‘subscribers’ to the fund.

1796-1800 – The first beneficiaries include Samuel Taylor Coleridge, François-René de Chateaubriand, the widow of Robert Burns, and the Gothic writers Eliza Parson, Regina Maria Roche and Ann Burke.

1792-1939 – Much of the Fund’s income came from subscriptions, legacies and donations from an annual dinner hosted by the Committee. Over the years, dignitaries including Prime Ministers Gladstone, Palmerston and Baldwin and the explorer Dr David Livingstone attended, as well as distinguished authors like Charles Dickens, William H. Thackeray, Robert Browning, J.M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling. Some writers, including Dickens and Barrie, also became involved with the Fund’s Committee.

1806 – Prince Albert is made Patron of the Fund and presents the charity with a house at 36 Gerrard Street, in London’s Soho, to use as its offices.

1842 – After receiving royal patronage for several years and thanks to the enthusiastic interest of Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, the Fund is allowed to add ‘Royal’ to its title.

1897 – John Galsworthy, acting as an advisor to a Polish-British seaman turned novelist named Joseph Conrad, lobbies the Royal Literary Fund, insisting “No living writer of English, to my mind, better deserves support”. Conrad goes on to complete his novel Heart of Darkness (1899).

1911 – On 25 February, Bram Stoker, author of Dracula (1897), writes to the RLF seeking help after suffering a ‘paralytic stroke’ which incapacitates him and prevents him from continuing his work. He is awarded a grant from the committee.

1914 – The RLF receives grant applications from Edith Nesbit, author of The Railway Children (1906), and D.H. Lawrence, author of Sons and Lovers (1913), who both receive grants to enable them to return to their writing.

1915 – Ezra Pound writes a letter of recommendation to the RLF in support of a struggling young Irish novelist and poet by the name of James Aloysius Augustine Joyce. RLF provides critical financial relief to Joyce, who resides in Trieste, Austria-Hungary, where he works as an English instructor. With the outbreak of World War I, Joyce moves to Zürich and begins work on his novel Ulysses.

1938 – Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas and his family receive financial support from the Fund over several decades, up until his death in 1953. Thomas’s file remains one of the most significant records of a twentieth-century writer in our archive today.

1948 –The illustrator and author of Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake, applies to the Fund after struggling financially to complete the second novel in his series of Gormenghast books. After Peake’s health declines in the 1960s, he is hospitalised and his wife Maeve writes to the Fund for support again. She leaves a legacy in her will to the RLF to thank the Fund for its continued support.

1955 – As a single parent seeking financial help, Doris Lessing applies to RLF. She knows very little about the Fund or if she qualifies for assistance but is awarded a grant to help sustain her writing career. Lessing is the only British female writer to date to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1956 – Rights to A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books are left to four beneficiaries: his family, Westminster School, the Garrick Club, and the Royal Literary Fund.

1965 – Playwright and novelist William Somerset Maugham leaves part of his Estate to the Royal Literary Fund. Literary estates from Maugham, as well as Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, Rupert Brooke, G. K. Chesterton and Arthur Ransome, remain a vital source of income for the RLF to this day.

1997 – The J.B. Priestley Award is set up in memory of the English novelist, playwright and social commentator at the bequest of his estate. The grant award is dedicated to helping young writers of promise. The first recipient is Ali Smith. Other recipients over the years include Tobias Hill, Stephen Kellman, Rosalind Harvey, Emily Mackie, Courttia Newland and Joseph White.

1999 – The Fellowship programme begins, providing earning opportunities for writers by placing them into educational institutions to help students with their academic writing.

2014 – Our Bridge programme launches, providing workshops to school pupils. RLF Consultant Fellows start to offer bespoke professional development training for undergraduates and postgraduates in educational institutions.

2017 – The RLF begins its outreach work, starting with community reading groups and social sector initiatives with the NHS, trade unions and trauma centres across the UK.

2021 – WritersMosaic, a new division of the RLF, launches online to showcase UK writers of the global majority, and as part of the RLF’s mission to establish an independent, inclusive, permanent, and evolving presence in the UK’s literary landscape.

2023 – A new grant award is created in honour of RLF beneficiary and British dramatist Robert Holman, to support professional playwrights who come from or are based in the North of England.

1970s to Present Day – The RLF continues to help professional writers through its grants programme, many of which have changed the literary landscape through their unique and exceptional voices. Recipients include Anna Burns, Margaret Busby, Elizabeth Jennings, Mustapha Matura, Monique Roffey, Ali Smith, Matthew Todd and Angus Wilson.