Hamiltonian graphs from Kirkman to König

It happened in the same year (1856) that T.P. Kirkman and W.R. Hamilton discussed problems of closed circuits in graphs. This paper reports on contributions in the 80 years which followed until the first book on graph theory was written by D. König in 1936. Further mathematicians involved were E. Steinitz (configurations), M. Dehn and E. Heegard (encyclopedia), and A. Sainte-Laguë (zeroth book on graph theory).