new dawn

plural new dawns

1. idiomaticA new beginning; a fresh start; an important, promising turning point.

   In the fourth [volume], we view the decline of botany in the barbarous ages. In the fifth we find it riſing with the new dawn of literature; [...]

   1767 August, “The Vegetable System: Or A Series of Experiments and Observations, Tending to Explain the Internal Structure, and the Life of Plants; […] By John Hill, M.D. Folio. 11 Vols. 1l. 11s. 6d. each. Baldwin. [book review]”, in The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal: […], volume XXXVII, London: […] R[alph] Griffiths; and sold by T[homas] Becket and P. A. De Hondt, […], →OCLC, page 129

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   I have consulted my pride, whether, after a rival's possession, I ought to ruin all my peace for a woman that another has been more blest in, though no man ever loved as I did: but love, victorious love! o'erthrows all that, and tells me, it is his nature never to remember; he still looks forward from the present hour, expecting still new dawns, new rising happiness; never looks back, never regards what is past, and left behind him, but buries and forgets it quite in the hot fierce pursuit of joy before him: [...]

   a. 1686, Thomas Otway, “[Letters.] To Madam —— [Elizabeth Barry].”, in The Works of Thomas Otway. […], volume III, London: […] [Buchanan M‘Millan] for T. Turner, […], (successor to John Mackinlay), published 1813, →OCLC, page 317

   The reformation, however, produced in Iceland a new dawn of learning; and a few rays of that light which had blazed over Europe from the discovery of printing shed a gleam on this remote island; [...]

   1811, William Jackson Hooker, “Introduction”, in Journal of a Tour in Iceland in the Summer of 1809, London: […] Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe, […]; and W[illiam] Miller, […]; by J. Keymer, […], →OCLC, page xlix

   We might as well be in the middle ages, whereas our sky is flushed with the rosy hue of a new dawn—the dawn of justice—justice not only to man but to woman—justice not to some men and some women, but to all men and all women! [From the Chicago Times.]

   1888 June 8, Charles H. Ham, quotee, “Notes”, in The Teacher: A Monthly Educational Magazine, volume I, number 7, New York, N.Y.: The Teacher, published September 1888, →OCLC, page 110, column 1

   Richard Beynon, who toured Australia in 1954, and whose play The Shifting Heart won the 1956 Sydney Journalists Club playwriting competition, hoped that a new dawn of Australian theatrical writing had arisen.

   1999, Stephen Alomes, “Grander Stages: New Seasons for Australian Playwrights and Actors”, in When London Calls: The Expatriation of Australian Creative Artists to Britain, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 119

   For all that this was an era in which the London sculpture world seemed to lose any sense of cohesive direction, the spirit of invention had its occasional triumphs that gave succour to those of nationalist opinion who expected this to be a new dawn.

   2007, Matthew Craske, “Post-Reform: The Fruition of Nationalist Strategems”, in The Silent Rhetoric of the Body: A History of Monumental Sculpture and Commemorative Art in England, 1720–1770, New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press [for the] Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, →ISBN, page 176

   Synonyms: dawn of a new day