Age 14. Begins his first literary experiments — the juvenilia collected as Első kísérletek — while enrolling at the University of Pest to study law and philosophy. Hungary is in the opening years of the Reform Era; Széchenyi's Casino and his program for modernization define the political atmosphere Madách absorbs.

Juvenilia First Attempts (Juvenilia) 1837

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1.   Correspondence 1837

Age 16. Writes Commodus, a full four-act historical drama set in imperial Rome — his first major work and already marked by the dialectic between idealism and historical collapse that will define Az ember tragédiája twenty years later. Also begins the drama sketches that survive as Drámatöredékek.

Drama Commodus 1839 Drama Drama Fragments (Five Pieces) 1839

Age 17. Composes the lyric cycles that will become his Collected Poems, some two hundred in all, spanning the full arc of his life. The poems of 1840–42 are Romantic in diction — Kölcsey and Vörösmarty are the clear models — personal and sometimes sentimental in a register he will never revisit after the Tragédia.

poem Collected Poems (319 Poems, 1837–1864) 1840

Age 18. Writes Nápolyi Endre, a dynastic tragedy set at the Angevin court of Naples — the murder of Andrew of Hungary, husband of the queen of Naples, by a conspiracy driven by his wife Johanna. The drama shows Madách's early command of historical scene-construction and political intrigue.

Drama Andrew of Naples 1841

Age 19. Writes Férfi és nő (Man and Woman), the philosophical drama centered on Herakles and the nature of the sexes; the tale collection Elbeszélések; and begins the essays (Tanulmányok és cikkek). Returns from Pest to Nógrád to manage the family estate at Sztregova — the retreat from city life that will define his later years.

Prose Tales (Five Stories) 1842 Drama Man and Woman 1842 Essays Studies and Articles 1842

Age 20. Writes Csak tréfa (Only a Joke) and Csák végnapjai (The Last Days of Csák), a historical drama on the fall of Máté Csák, the great thirteenth-century magnate who ruled half of Hungary in defiance of the crown. Hungary's Reform Era is at its peak: Kossuth's Pesti Hírlap, the Diet debates over serfdom and noble privilege.

Drama Only a Joke 1843 Drama The Last Days of Csák 1843

Age 32. Writes Mária királynő (Queen Mary), on the last Angevin ruler of Hungary, and the fragment II. Lajos, on the young king who died at the catastrophic Battle of Mohács in 1526. The Bach System — Austrian bureaucratic 'civilization' imposed on Hungary after 1849 — reaches its most oppressive phase; Madách's political satire A civilizátor will anatomize it four years later.

Drama Louis II (Fragment) 1855 Drama Queen Mary 1855

Age 36. Writes A civilizátor, an Aristophanic comedy satirizing the Bach System's apparatus of Austrian bureaucracy and German-language administration imposed on Hungary. Also begins, in solitude at Sztregova, the drafting of Az ember tragédiája.

Drama The Civilizer 1859

Age 38. Completes Az ember tragédiája and Mózes (Moses) — both composed in the same extraordinary period of isolated work at Sztregova. Submits the Tragédia manuscript to Arany János, who recognizes its greatness, works through it carefully, and submits it for publication with the Kisfaludy Society. Madách is elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and to the Hungarian Parliament as a member for Nógrád.

Drama Moses 1861 Drama The Tragedy of Man 1861

Age 40. Writes Tündérálom (Dream of Fairies), an unfinished fragment. József császár — 'Emperor Joseph', a drama on the Habsburg emperor Joseph II's attempt to modernize Hungary — is submitted to the Karácsonyi prize competition and wins second prize; attributed to Madách, though the attribution is contested by later scholarship.

Drama Emperor Joseph (Apocryphal) 1863 Drama Dream of Fairies (Fragment) 1863

Age 41. Writes A nőről, a nő hivatásáról (On Women and Their Vocation), his extended essay on the position of women in Hungarian society and their civic and domestic roles. Dies October 5 at Sztregova, age forty-one, of a heart condition worsened by the rigors of parliamentary service. He leaves behind nineteen completed works and a reputation, secured by the Tragédia alone, as the great philosophical dramatist of Hungarian literature.

Essays On Women and Their Vocation 1864