1817 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1817.

Events

January 27 – March 18 – Jane Austen begins, but abandons her novel Sanditon.
February 12 – Junius Brutus Booth makes his stage debut in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London.
February 20 – Junius Brutus Booth as Iago plays opposite Edmund Kean in the title role of Othello at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London.
March – Percy and Mary Shelley with Claire Clairmont and the latter's new daughter by Lord Byron, Allegra, having moved from Bath, begin a year's residence in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England, where Mary completes Frankenstein and gives birth to her third child, and Percy writes The Revolt of Islam.
April 1 – Blackwood's Magazine is launched as the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. In October the publisher, William Blackwood, relaunches it as Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
August 6 – Gas lighting on stage is introduced in London's English Opera House. On September 6 it is introduced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where it has already been installed in the auditorium and foyer, and the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, as a demonstration.
December 18 – 20 – William Hone successfully defends himself in a London court on charges arising from his publication of political satires.
December 20 – Jane Austen's first and last completed novels, respectively Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are published together by John Murray in London, six months after the author's death at Winchester. Her brother Henry Austen contributes a biographical note, which first publicly identifies her as the author of her previously anonymous novels. She had earned £684 in her lifetime from her writing.
December 28 – English painter Benjamin Haydon introduces John Keats to William Wordsworth and Charles Lamb at a dinner in London to celebrate progress on his painting Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, in which all feature.
December 31 – Walter Scott's historical novel Rob Roy, written from this spring, is published anonymously by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh, while a shipload of copies is carried from Leith to London for simultaneous publication there by Longman.
unknown – J. & J. Harper publishing house is founded in New York City by James Harper and his brother John.

New books

Births

February 21 – José Zorrilla y Moral, Spanish poet and dramatist
March 19 – Jozef Miloslav Hurban, Slovak writer, radical and minister
May 7 – Euphemia Vale Blake, British-born American author and critic
May 21 – Hermann Lotze, German philosopher
July 12 – Henry David Thoreau, American poet and philosopher
September 5 – Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Russian poet, dramatist and novelist
September 14 – Theodor Storm, German novelist and poet
December 31 – James T. Fields, American publisher

Deaths

March 23 – José Mariano Beristain, Mexican bibliographer
April 6 – Caleb Bingham, American textbook author
April 25 – Joseph von Sonnenfels, Austrian novelist
May 24 – Juan Meléndez Valdés, Spanish poet
July 14 – Germaine de Staël, French woman of letters
July 18 – Jane Austen, English novelist
August 21 – Tarikonda Venkamamba, Telugu woman poet
December 28 – Charles Burney, English classicist
unknown date – Joakim Stulić, Croatian lexicographer

1817 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths