Eighteenth-Century Chronology: 1795

Literature

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre
• William Wordsworth meets William Godwin and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Maria Edgeworth, Letters for Literary Ladies
• Paine, The Age of Reason (Part I)
• Burke, "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity"
• Susanna Rowson, Trials of the Human Heart
• Schelling, On the I as Principle of Philosophy, or on the Absolute in Human Knowledge
• Schiller, Letters on Aesthetic Education and On Naive and Sentimental Poetry
• Charlotte Smith, Montalbert
• Ann Yearsley, The Royal Captives
• William Blake, The Song of Los, The Book of Los, The Book of Ahania illuminated books, and a series of prints including Newton and Nebuchadnezzar
• February-June???: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Bristol lectures, including "On the Slave Trade"
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, The Fall of Robespierre
• Joseph Fawcett, The Art of War
• 16 March: The Philanthropist, a weekly planned by William Wordsworth and William Mathews in May to June 1794, appears after Wordsworth's withdrawal from the project
• May: Mary Wollstonecraft attempts suicide over problems with Gilbert Imlay ???
• November: Mary Wollstonecraft attempts suicide ???
• August: William Wordsworth has a nervous breakdown
• August: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's arguments with Robert Southey lead to the abandonment of the pantisocracy
• September: William Wordsworth meets Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• October: William Wordsworth settles with Dorothy at Racedown
• October: Samuel Taylor Coleridge marries Sara Fricker
• 26 November: Coleridge, Lecture on the Two Bills
• 8 December: Coleridge, Conciones ad Populum (Sermons to the People)

Theatre

• Susanna Rowson, The Volunteers

Art

Music

Science, Technology, & Medicine

• Joseph Bramah invents the hydraulic press

Politics & Law

• Foundation of the Orange Order in Ireland
• Napoleon becomes the commander of France's Arm‚e d'Interieur
• The Famine Year
• Third Partition of Poland
• Commons again defeats abolition
• British slave islands are attacked by French revolutionary forces
• 13 January: France abolishes the price controls on grain (the Maximum)
• January: The Terror begins to break down, as Parisians near starvation
• 8 March: The Girondists are admitted back into the French Convention
• 1 April: France: the uprising of 12 Germinal
• 20-23 May: France: the insurrection of 1-4 Prairial; the arrest of forty-one Montagnards in the Convention
• May-June: "White Terror" in South France against the former Terrorists
• 16 June: Coleridge, lecture on the Slave Trade
• 17 June: Montagnard deputies commit suicide on the way to the guillotine
• 26 June: Mass meeting of London Corresponding Society
• 26 October: Second mass meeting of London Corresponding Society; Directory Government elected in France
• 29 October: George III on the way to parliament; a mob pummels the King's carriage, shouting "Bread! Peace! No Pitt!"
• October: Kyd Wake, a journeyman, is yells "No George, no War" and is sentenced to the pillory, five years imprisonment at hard labor, and one thousand pounds sureties
• 4 November: Royal Proclamation against public meetings
• 6-10 November: Pitt and Grenville introduce "The Gagging Acts" or the "Two Bills": the Seditious Meetings and Treasonable Practices Bills forbid large meetings and political lectures
• 12 November: London Corresponding Society holds monster meeting in a field near Copenhagen House, defying the Royal proclamation of 4 November
• 17 November: Norwich Patriotic and Sheffield Constitutional Society meet
• History of the Two Acts: ninety-four petitions signed by 130,000 people were presented to parliament protesting these acts
• 21 November: William Godwin, Considerations on Lord Grenville's and Mr Pitt's Bills
• 23 November: Fox, predicting the people will revolt, moves for a week's delay in voting on the Two Acts on the grounds that they repealed the Bill of Rights of 1689
• 23 November: London Corresponding Society defends itself in An Explicit Declaration of the Principles and Views of the London Corresponding Society
• 26 November: Coleridge, Lecture on the Two Bills
• 7 December: London Corresponding Society meets at Regent's Park
• 8 December: Coleridge, Conciones ad Populum (Sermons to the People)
• 18 December: The Two Bills are approved by the King and become law
• 20 December: Thomas Erskine calls for the repeal of the Two Bills
• 23 December: Society for Constitutional Information publishes a lengthy analysis of the Two Acts on how to evade them; the London Corresponding Society reorganizes into small divisions so that no more than fifty people will meet together at a time

Philosophy & Theology

Milestones

• Death of James Boswell
• Birth of John Keats
• Death of Josiah Wedgwood, potter

Miscellaneous

• Condorcet, Tableau historique des progrés de l'esprit humain, arguing for the perfectability of mankind
• France adopts the metric system