1807 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1807.
Events
- January – Heinrich von Kleist sets out for Dresden, but is arrested by the French as a spy and kept a prisoner for six months at Châlons-sur-Marne.
- January 24 – Washington Irving launches the satirical magazine Salmagundi in New York City.
- June 24 – The Tout-Paris assist in the first production of the Panorama de Momus, a vaudeville by Marc-Antoine Désaugiers.
- July 13 – Heinrich von Kleist is released from prison in France.
- unknown dates
- *The first edition of The Family Shakspeare, an expurgated edition of Shakespeare's plays under the nominal editorship of Thomas Bowdler, but probably compiled mostly by his sister Henrietta Maria Bowdler, appears in London.
- *The first facsimile edition of the Shakespeare First Folio, edited by Francis Douce, is published in London by Edward and Joseph Wright.
- *Benjamin Tabart in London publishes the first printed version of The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk.
- *Charles Wiley founds a print shop in Manhattan, which eventually grows into the John Wiley & Sons book publishing group.
New books
Fiction
- Harriet Butler – Count Eugenio
- Charlotte Dacre – The Libertine
- Elizabeth Gunning – The Orphans of Snowdon
- Rachel Hunter – Family Annals
- William Henry Ireland – The Catholic
- Charles and Mary Lamb – Tales from Shakespeare
- Matthew Gregory Lewis – The Wood Daemon
- P. D. Manville – Lucinda
- Charles Maturin – The Fatal Revenge
- Mary Meeke – Julien
- Mary Pilkington – Ellen: Heiress of the Castle
- Anna Maria Porter – The Hungarian Brothers
- Regina Marie Roche – The Discarded Son
- Anne Louise Germaine de Stael – Corinne, or Italy
- Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson – ''The Castle Spectre''
Drama
- Thomas John Dibdin –
- * Errors Excepted
- *Harlequin in his Element
- *Mother Goose
- Giovanni Giraud – Gelosie per equivoco
- William Godwin – Faulkener
- Sophia Lee – The Assignation
- Matthew Lewis – Adelgitha
- Thomas Morton – Town and Country
- John Tobin – ''The Curfew''
Poetry
- James Hogg – The Mountain Bard
- William Wordsworth – ''Poems in Two Volumes''
Non-fiction
- Antoine Alexandre Barbier – Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes
- Jacob Boehme – Quarante Questions sur l'âme
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – The Phenomenology of Spirit
- Gottlieb Hufeland – New Foundations of Political Economy
- Alexander von Humboldt – Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du nouveau continent 1799–1804
- Thomas Paine – The Age of Reason
- Sydney Smith – Letters on the Subject of the Catholics
- Germaine de Staël – ''Corinne, ou l'Italie''
Births
- January 28 – Sophie Bolander, Swedish novelist
- February 27 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet
- May 14 – Charlotta Djurström, Swedish actress and theatre manager
- June 30 – Friedrich Theodor Vischer, German author
- August 8 – Emilie Flygare-Carlén, Swedish author
- August 31 – Thomas Miller, English "ploughman poet" and novelist
- September 2 – Fredrika Runeberg, Finnish novelist and journalist
- September 9 – Richard Chenevix Trench, Anglo-Irish Anglican archbishop and poet
- October 8 – Harriet Taylor, English philosophical writer
- October 23 – Jemima von Tautphoeus, née Montgomery, Anglo-Irish-born novelist
- October 30 – Christopher Wordsworth, English Anglican bishop and Biblical scholar
- November 16 – Jónas Hallgrímsson, Icelandic poet
- December 17 – John Greenleaf Whittier, American Quaker poet and abolitionist, abolitionist
Deaths
- January 5 – Isaac Reed, English Shakespearean editor
- February 18 – Sophie von La Roche, German novelist
- June 14 – Louis Bruyas, French dramatist and actor
- July 24 – John Christopher Kunze, American theologian
- August 1 – John Walker, English lexicographer
- December 3 – Clara Reeve, English novelist and literary historian
- December 19 – Friedrich Melchior, baron von Grimm, German-born French memoirist and literary correspondent
- December 21 – John Newton, English hymnist