Timeline

John Wyndham does not define the actual years for the story. He mentions satellites in chapter 2 which suggests a date quite far from 1951 when it was written (the first actual satellite was Sputnik, launched on 4 October, 1957). The main character, Bill Masen, is nearly thirty at the time and was introduced to triffids as a child when they were quite new. But the appearance of triffids in chapter 2 refers to the USSR and jet aeroplanes so the main story could not have been set in the 1950s (as Bill would have been growing up in the 1930s and jet aircraft were not around then). If the section on the first appearance of the triffids is set around 1950, then we can use these guides:

• Bill's house in southern London was one of the first to have a triffid
• He is probably ten years old or less at the time as he had to be lifted up to see inside the triffid
• He was born then in the 1940s, probably near the beginning or the latter half as his father would have likely been absent from home for much of the years of the Second World War.

If he was born in 1940, then the main story begins around the end of the 1970s. The first date mentioned is Wednesday 8 May and the nearest years with that combination of day of the week and date are 1974 and 1985 so I set the beginning of the story as the earlier date which fits in reasonably well. Naturally, as Wyndham was writing in 1951, this brings in anomolies such as Bill expecting to hear the sound of horses in the streets in chapter 1 but this is to be expected with any story based in the future.

Early manuscripts of The Day of the Triffids in the Wyndham Archive (University of Liverpool) have deleted year and day dates that are not entirely consistent but it seems that the novel was first set in 1965 and that that date was later advanced to 1976.
(Thanks to David Ketterer)

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