Eighteenth-Century Chronology: 1794

This page in the Eighteenth-Century Chronology is maintained by Jack Lynch. Please send suggestions and corrections to jlynch@andromeda.rutgers.edu.

Literature

William Blake, Europe: A Prophecy, The First Book of Urizen, and Songs of Innocence and of Experience
September: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, The Fall of Robespierre
28 May: William Godwin, Caleb Williams
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho
Charlotte Smith, The Wanderings of Warwick, The Emigrants, The Banished Man
June: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey plan the Pantisocracy

Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia
John Dalton of England discovers color blindness
Edward Stone proposes the bark of the willow -- salicylic acid -- as a medicine; it later becomes the basic ingredient of aspirin
L'Ecole de Sante, a medical school, opens in Paris, France

Edmund Burke retires from Parliament
Mary Wollstonecraft, An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
Treason Trials in Britain
Commons passes a foreign abolition bill, tabled by Lords
France raids Sierra Leone
Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania
America establishes its Navy
January: Skirving and Margarot found guilty of sedition
March-April: The Hebertists and Dantonists are arrested and executed in France
14 April: London Corresponding Society protests the sentences against Muir and Palmer
12 May: Hardy and Adams, secretaries of the London Corresponding Society, are arrested
7 May: Habeas Corpus is suspended
10 June: French law eliminates defense lawyers and witnesses
June: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey plan the Pantisocracy
The Great Terror, begun in 1793, continues; the dead reach 1,400
27 July: France: "The Ninth of Thermidor": Robespierre is arrested and soon executed, ending the Reign of Terror in France
September: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, The Fall of Robespierre
6 October: Lord Justice Eyre changes the accusation against the reformers from sedition to the more serious High Treason
28 October: Thomas Erskine defends the reformers in the treason trials
November: After Thomas Hardy, Horne Tooke, Thelwall, and Holcroft are acquitted of treason

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