1793 in literature

Events

• February 7 – The day the poverty-stricken, Venetian-born playwright Carlo Goldoni dies, the National Convention votes to restore his French state pension, which has been suspended due to the French Revolution. It is passed on to his widow.
• June 1 – In the Reign of Terror in Paris, the 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. His first poems, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches are published this year.
• October–November – During the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, the English writer Helen Maria Williams is imprisoned with her family in the Luxembourg Palace and later in the :fr:Couvent des Anglaises|Convent des Anglaises in Paris, where she continues her 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. To this she appends her own prison sonnets.
• November 2 – The 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 founded by Noah Webster.

• James Lackington opens his "Temple of the Muses" bookshop in Finsbury Square, London.
• The Royal Library, Denmark, in Copenhagen, opens 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 saloniste
• April 4 – Casimir Delavigne, French poet and dramatist
• May 4 – Dorothea Primrose Campbell, Scottish poet and novelist
• June 1 – Henry Francis Lyte, English hymnist and cleric
• June 28 – Georg Friedrich Schömann, German classicist
• July 2 – Joseph Isidore Samson, French playwright and actor
• July 12 – John Clare, English "peasant poet"
• August 25 – John Neal, American novelist and critic
• September 25 – Felicia Hemans, English poet
• November 28 – Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, Swedish novelist
• December 15 – Henry Charles Carey, American economist
• December 28 – Karl Friedrich Neumann, German Orientalist

• Sarah Austin, English editor and translator

  Deaths

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

  In literature

• Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities climaxes in the Reign of Terror this year.
• Victor Hugo's novel Ninety-Three is set around the War in the Vendée.