Eighteenth-Century Chronology: 1793

Literature

• Charlotte Smith, The Old Manor House
• Mary Wollstonecraft, "Letter on the Present Character of the French Nation" (published posthumously)
• William Blake, America a Prophecy, Visions of the Daughers of Albion, and For Children: The Gates of Paradise.
• William Blake, Prospectus "To the Public"
• William Blake advertises The Songs of Experience as a separate book from Innocence
• Thomas Spence, One Pennyworth of Pig's Meat
• William Wordsworth, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches
• February: William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice
• February-March: William Wordsworth writes his Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff (published posthumously)
• July: William Wordsworth tours Wales and western England (Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge, Tintern Abbey, Goodrich Castle); writes Salisbury Plain and "Adventures on Salisbury Plain"
• September: Robert Burns, "Scots wha hae?"

Theatre

Art

Music

Science, Technology, & Medicine

• Yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia
• Eli Whitney of America invents the cotton gin

Politics & Law

• Second Partition of Poland
• February: William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice
• The French Republic declares war on England, Holland, and Spain.
• October: Marie Antoinette executed.
• November: France legislates against belief in God.
• Commons narrowly rejects general abolition of the British foreign slave trade, while the House of Lords contiues hearings.
• Britain begins campaign to capture the French slave islands, occupying Tobago and Cape Nicolas-Mole on St. Domingue
• 21 January: Execution of Louis XVI
• 27 January-7 February: Formal mourning of the British Court for Louis's death
• 1 February: France declares war on Great Britain and the Dutch Republic
• 11 February: England declares war on France
• 14 February: William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice
• 26 February: Arthur Young, The Example of France, A Warning to Britain
• February: William Frend, Peace and Union
• 10 March: France establishes the Revolutionary Tribunal
• 11 March: Revolt of La Vendée (really the beginning of Civil War in France): an uprising of French royalists vs. the Republican government
• 30 April: The second general convention of Scottish reformers in Edinburgh
• 6 May: Grey's motion on reform: petitions from radical societies are presented to parliament. The petitions are dismissed as disrespectful and tabled; the motion is defeated 282 to 41.
• May: William Frend is tried by a University Court and banished from Cambridge
• 31 May-2 June: Insurrection leading to arrest of the Girondins in the 1793 National Convention
• 15 June: The Association of the Friends of the Liberty of the Press has its last meeting (too heterogenous a group to hold together)
• Thomas Paine imprisoned in France
• 17 July: France: Charlotte Corday executed, beginning the Terror
• 27 July: Robespierre elected to the Committee of Public Safety
• 10 August: Festival of Republican Reunion; Montagnards and sans-culottes celebrate their victory over the king in 1792 and over the Girondins
• August-September: Scottish radicals Muir and Palmer are sentenced to 7-14 years transportation to Botany Bay by Chief Justice in Edinburgh, Lord Braxfield
• 5 September: uprising in Paris; institution of "Terror" as "the order of the day" in the National Convention
• 17 September: France: "The Law of Suspects"; Hebertists push through a law mandating incarceration of suspected traitors to the new regime
• 5 October: France adopts the revolutionary calendar
• 16 October: Execution of Marie Antoinette
• 19 November: A convention of Scottish and British reformers meets in Edinburgh: one of the five delegates from England, Charles Sinclair, later moved that the meeting be called "The British Convention of the Delegates of the People, associated to obtain Universal Suffrage and Annual Parliaments." Among the English reformers were Maurice Margarot and Joseph Gerrald of the London Corresponding Society; William Skirving headed up delegates from the Scottish societies
• 5-6 December: Margarot and Gerrald are arrested; later Skirving and Sinclair; the British Convention is dissolved by magistrates

Philosophy & Theology

• Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone

Milestones

• 21 January: Death of Louis XVI
• Death of Marat, murdered by Charlotte Corday

Miscellaneous