1793 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1793.

Events

• February 7 – The day after the death in Paris in poverty of Venetian-born playwright Carlo Goldoni, the National Convention votes to restore his French state pension which has been suspended as a result of the French Revolution; it is given to his widow.
• June 1 – Reign of Terror (French Revolution): Girondist Madame Roland is arrested for treason. She writes Appel à l'impartiale postérité in prison before being guillotined on November 8.
• Summer – William Wordsworth tours western England and Wales (passing by Tintern Abbey). His first poems, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches are published this year.^[1]
• October–November – Reign of Terror (French Revolution): English writer Helen Maria Williams is imprisoned with her family in the Luxembourg Palace and later in the Convent des Anglaises in Paris where she continues her work on translations of French-language works into English, including what will prove to be a popular version of Bernardin St. Pierre's novel Paul et Virginie (1788), to which she appends her own prison sonnets.
• November 2 – Reign of Terror (French Revolution): French dramatist Olympe de Gouges is sentenced to death by a revolutionary tribunal. Both she and her prosecutors quote the manuscript of her unfinished play La France Sauvée in evidence.
• December 9 – New York City's first daily newspaper, the American Minerva, is established by Noah Webster.^[2]
• James Lackington opens his "Temple of the Muses" bookstore in Finsbury Square, London.^[3]
• The Royal Library, Denmark, is opened to the public.

New books

Fiction

• Eliza Parsons – The Castle of Wolfenbach
• Charlotte Turner Smith
  • The Old Manor House
  • The Emigrants
• Jane West as 'Prudentia Homespun' – The Advantages of Education, or The History of Maria Williams
• Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke – Abällino, der grosse Bandit

Drama

• Étienne Aignan – La mort de Louis XVI
• Jean-Louis Laya – Ami des lois

Poetry

• William Blake – Songs of Experience
• Alvarenga Peixoto – Canto Genetlíaco

Non-fiction

• William Frend – Peace and Union Recommended to the Associated Bodies of Republicans and Anti-Republicans

Births

• February 2 – Mary Elizabeth Mohl, née Clarke, English-born literary salonist (died 1883)
• April 4 – Casimir Delavigne, French poet and dramatist (died 1843)
• June 1 – Henry Francis Lyte, English hymnist and cleric (died 1847)
• June 28 – Georg Friedrich Schömann, German classicist (died 1879)
• July 12 – John Clare, English poet (died 1864)
• September 25 – Felicia Hemans, English poet (died 1835)
• December 15 – Henry Charles Carey, American economist (died 1879)
• December 28 – Karl Friedrich Neumann, German Orientalist (died 1870)
• Unknown date – Sarah Austin, English editor and translator (died 1867)

Deaths

• January 4 – Bengt Lidner, Swedish poet (born 1757)
• February 6 – Carlo Goldoni, Italian dramatist and librettist (born 1707)
• April 2 – Colin Macfarquhar, Scottish bookseller and printer, co-founder of Encyclopædia Britannica (born c. 1745)
• April 29 – John Michell, English philosopher and cleric (born 1724)
• May 20 – Charles Bonnet, Swiss naturalist and philosopher (born 1720)
• June 26
  • Gilbert White, English naturalist, diarist and cleric (born 1720)
  • Karl Philipp Moritz (C. P. Moritz), German essayist and travel writer (born 1756)
• July 4 – Antoine-Marin Lemierre, French dramatist and poet (born 1733)
• November 3 – Olympe de Gouges, French dramatist and political activist (guillotined, born 1748)
• November 17 – Louis Pierre Manuel, French essayist and politician (guillotined, born 1751)
• December 22 – William Watkiss Lloyd, English polymath (born 1813)

References