1794 in poetry

Events

• June - English poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey first meet, in Oxford while Coleridge is en route for a tour of Wales. In August, they meet again in Bristol. Also beginning this month they collaborate on the "historic drama" The Fall of Robespierre, published in October and Southey's first published poetry; he also writes the radical play Wat Tyler this summer.
• July 25 - French poet André Chénier is executed at age 31 in Paris two days before the fall of Robespierre. A free spirit who spoke his mind, had pronounced sympathies with the aristocracy but adhered to no particular group, Chenier had attacked the Jacobins in the Journal de Paris, then became quiet and lived outside Paris during the Reign of Terror. He had been arrested and held in the Prison Saint-Lazare before his execution.
• Robert Treat Paine founds the Federal Orrery, a semiweekly Federalist journal in Boston, Massachusetts. It features contributions from Joseph Dennie and Sarah Wentworth Morton, and includes poetry, satire and criticism.

Works published

United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• William Blake:
• * Europe, A Prophecy, illuminated book with 17 relief-etched plates; 12 copies known
• * The First Book of Urizen, illuminated book
• * Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the two contrary states of the human soul; Songs of Innocence first published separately 1789), it is thought that Songs of Experience was always published along with Songs of Innocence; the latter work consists of 28 poems, 14 of them paired with poems of the same title in Songs of Innocence; these poems are in Songs of Experience':
• ** Introduction
• ** "Earth's Answer"
• ** "The Clod and the Pebble"
• ** "The Sick Rose"
• ** "The Fly"
• ** "The Angel"
• ** "My Pretty Rose Tree"
• ** "Ah! Sun-Flower"
• ** "The Lilly"
• ** "The Garden of Love"
• ** "The Little Vagabond"
• ** "London"
• ** "A Poison Tree"
• ** "A Little Girl Lost"
• ** "To Tirzah"
• ** "The School Boy"
• ** "The Voice of the Ancient Bard"
• ** "Nurse's Song"
• ** "Infant Joy"
• ** "The Lamb"
• ** "Holy Thursday"
• ** "Holy Thursday"
• ** "The Chimney Sweeper"
• ** "The Little Boy Lost"
• ** "The Little Boy Found"
• ** "The Divine Image"
• ** "The Little Girl Lost"
• ** "The Little Girl Found"
• ** "The Tyger"
• ** "The Human Abstract"
• ** "Infant Sorrow"
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
• * To a Young Ass, published in the Morning Chronicle, December 9
• * Sonnets on Eminent Characters, also known as Sonnets on Eminent Contemporaries, a series of 11 sonnets published in the Morning Chronicle from December 1 of this year to January 29, 1795; these eight were published this year:
• ** To the Hon Mr Erskine ; published December 1
• ** To Burke ; December 9
• ** To Priestley ; December 15
• ** To Kosciusko ; December 16
• ** To Pitt ; December 23
• ** To Bowles ; December 26
• ** To Mrs Siddons ; December 29
• Erasmus Darwin, The Golden Age
• Thomas Gisborne, Walks in a Forrest
• Richard Payne Knight, The Landscape
• Joseph Ritson, Scottish Song, anthology
• Robert Southey and Robert Lovell, Poems by Bion and Moschus
• Edward Williams, ''Poems, Lyric and Pastoral''

United States">American poetry">United States

• William Bradford, A Descriptive and Historical Account of new England in Verse, posthumous, written 1650
• Timothy Dwight, Greenfield Hill: A Poem in Seven Parts, an imitation of John Denham's Cooper's Hill; contrasts wholesome American village life to depraved Europe, and mentions historical events; written after Dwight became a minister in Greenfield, Connecticut; United States
• Philip Freneau, The Village Merchant
• Francis Hopkinson, ''Ode from Ossian's Poems''

Other

• Thomas Russell, "The Negro's Complaint", anti-slavery poem, published November 5; Ireland

Births

• September 9 - John Hamilton Reynolds, English poet, satirist, critic and playwright
• October 22 - Carlos Wilcox, American poet
• November 3 - William Cullen Bryant, American romantic poet, journalist and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post
• Approximate date - Maria Gowen Brooks, American poet

Deaths

• January 8 - Justus Möser, German jurist and social theorist
• March 26 - Eleonore von Grothaus, German poet
• April 5 - Susanna Blamire, English poet and writer of Scottish songs
• June 8 - Gottfried August Bürger, German poet
• July 25 - André Chénier, French poet, executed
• November 22 - Alison Cockburn, née Rutherford, Scottish writer and literary hostess