• “The smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting 'Scrooge McDuck' comics.”—Salon.com
  • A time-hopping, continent-spanning salmagundi of genres.”
    —ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
  • “These books have to be word-of-mouth books because they're too weird to describe to anybody.”
    —Jackie Cantor, Diana's first editor

Nice New Resources


TIMELINE

Barbara Schnell, who maintains the German version of this website (to go there, just click on the German flag at the top of the Home page), has compiled an elegant and helpful timeline of historical and fictional events from the books, and has helpfully provided an English version as well!

To visit the English version of the Outlander timeline by Barbara Schnell, go to:

https://dgabaldon.de/timeline_eng/

In addition, she has a link to a constantly-updated list of interesting interviews and reviews, which you can find here.

Danke, Barbara!


Change History:

This blog entry from Diana was originally published on April 17, 2012.

On Saturday, November 27, 2021 at 12:10 p.m. (CST) an updated link to the current version of Barbara’s Outlander timeline was added by Diana’s Webmistress.

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50 Responses »

  1. What a fantastic work! Thank you so much Barbara and Diana.
    Diana, will you include it in your second Outlandish companion? I’ve really appreciated the first one!!Demanding fans….. we’re like small children are we not? :)

  2. Love it! It’s great. Like the extra history too.

  3. Sorry to be off topic.
    Audible is currently running their 5th Annual Tournament of Audio Books.
    Diana’s Fiery Cross has made it to the finals, but is now running second to an author who is mounting a huge internet fan-based challenge. It would be lovely if we could reciprocate and get behind our favourite author, and show Diana our support.
    The other book currently has 58% of the votes, Diana has 42%.
    https://www.audible.com/tournament
    Just click on the orange ‘view matchup’ button and tick the box for Diana’s Fiery Cross.
    Cheers
    Antipodean Janet

  4. Many thank yous to Barbara and Diana! I printed out a copy, to tuck into MY OWN copy of Outlander. (As opposed to the several other paperbacks I keep handy to loan out!) This is a terrific reference, and will be of great use. But why the many asterisks? I note they relate to characters’ births … but is there a missing footnote? Thanks again! What a lot of work!

  5. Diana I am again in awe of your ability to write all this without having had this as a resource to start with! Amazing. (& thank you, we love the story)

  6. OK. I found the timeline but can’t find the link for the english translation. Can anyone help me find it?

    • Dear Lisa–

      Are you seeing it in German? If you click on the words “English version” in the blogpost, it should take you directly to the English translation.

      –Diana

  7. Slight error in 1777. Alexander Bell did not keep Jamie’s press for twenty years. He only kept it for ten since Jamie & Claire went to the colonies.

  8. I just replaced the asterisks and fixed the “twenty year error” — sorry to everybody who has already printed this out. The new version should be online within the next few minutes.

  9. Wow, this is just fantastic! I’ve always wished to have something like this to hand when reading the books. I especially love the way the 2 timelines are next to each other so you can see the parallels between the 2 relevant centuries, and the citations that identify which book was the source of the information. A wonderful resource, Barbara; thank you for sharing it in English!

  10. Wow! I am impressed. Nice job and thanks for sharing!

  11. May 1: Gillian Edgars / Geillis Duncan travels to the past . . . . . intended. In the same night, her co-conspirer Kenneth follows her, but he ends up in 1743 – a few hours before Claire.

    I have read the series many, many times over and find (or remember) something new everytime but… I don’t recall ever finding reference to this co-conspirer of Gillian following her.
    Could anyone shine some light on where this info came in? BTW this gives my a lovely excuse to reread again. (as if I needed one :P)

    Carol

  12. Hi All,
    I’ve been working on an Outlander/Gabaldon web site for awhile now, never felt it was good enough for prime time. But I’ve now decided that it will never be “finished” and there will always be something I can tweak, so I’m holding my breath and sending out the URL anyway. I’ve done my own version of a timeline, and I’ve also tried to compile a Fraser-MacKenzie extended family tree.
    http://web.me.com/mawaltz/Tursachan/Home.html
    Let me know what you think.
    Mary Anne

  13. Dear Barbara and Diana,
    I’ve been coming again and again to this INCREDIBLE timeline, starting to open all those links to historical characters and events. It is really fantastic! Thank you very much for this great work! It’s a priceless complement for the all the series! I’m not one who looks for the small details and coherence in all the series; what I do appreciate is being able to read more about those characters and events happening at the same time as the story, since it’s not the kind of history I studied in my youth. So thanks, once more time!

  14. Thank you, thank you, thank you for putting this together. I had done a similar timeline on paper because I was struggling to keep the dates straight.

    I do have one suggestion. The time “gap” between past and present is not exactly 200 years and it can be difficult to follow the jumps between past and present when 1778 lines up next to 1978 on the two timelines. For me, it made more sense to align 1778 with 1980 because they are actually “concurrent”.

    ~Megan

  15. When doing the technical infrastructure stuff that helped Barbara to create the timeline, I also had this thought, but we decided that regarding the reach of the time-jumps is varying according to the person’s actual state of mind, it’s more clear to provide just a straight 200 year lineup.

    I also suggested to add arrows to explicitly show the jumps, but we decided that this would not be of much additional help and would decrease readability.

    -Michael

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