istoryworld
Events relating to literature
William Blake publishes Songs of Innocence, a volume of his poems with every page etched and illustrated by himself
In his Principles Jeremy Bentham defines 'utility' as that which enhances pleasure and reduces pain
The autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, a slave captured as a child in Africa, becomes a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic
US painter and author William Dunlap has great success with his comedy The Father; or, American Shandyism
Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, a blistering attack on recent events across the Channel
Scottish poet Robert Burns publishes Tam o' Shanter, in which a drunken farmer has an alarming encounter with witches
Thomas Paine publishes the first part of The Rights of Man, his reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France
English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes a passionately feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Thomas Paine moves hurriedly to France, to escape a charge of treason in England for opinions expressed in his Rights of Man
Goethe and Schiller become friends, and together create the movement known as Weimar classicism
In his Science of Knowledge Johann Gottlieb Fichte contrasts the I, or Ego, and its opposing non-I, or non-Ego
William Blake's volume Songs of Innocence and Experience includes his poem 'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'
Thomas Paine publishes his completed Age of Reason, an attack on conventional Christianity
US author Joel Barlow publishes his mock-heroic poem The Hasty Pudding, inspired by a dish eaten in 1793 in France
Samuel Taylor Coleridge says that while writing Kubla Khan he is interrupted by 'a person on business from Porlock'
US author Charles Brockden Brown publishes Wieland, the first of four novels setting Gothic romance in an American context
English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly publish Lyrical Ballads, a milestone in the Romantic movement
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' is published in Lyrical Ballads
The Library of Congress, the US national library in all but name, is founded in Washington
William Blake includes his poem 'Jerusalem' in the Preface to his book Milton
Walter Scott publishes The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the long romantic poem that first brings him fame
In Phenomenology of Spirit Friedrich Hegel interprets history as the advance of the human mind, often through thesis, antithesis and synthesis
Washington Irving uses the fictional Dutch scholar Diedrich Knickerbocker as the supposed author of his comic History of New York
Walter Scott's poem Lady of the Lake brings tourists in unprecedented numbers to Scotland's Loch Katrine
Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from Oxford university for circulating a pamphlet with the title The Necessity of Atheism
