1819 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1819.

Events

January 30 – Romney Literary Society is established in the United States as the Polemic Society of Romney, West Virginia.
April – John Keats begins his "Great Year" or "Living Year", during which he is at his most productive, having given up work at Guy's Hospital and moved into a new house, Wentworth Place, on Hampstead Heath on the edge of London. On April 3, Charles Wentworth Dilke lets his house, next door to Keats, to Mrs Brawne, whose daughter Fanny would become the love of Keats's life. Between April 21 and the end of May Keats writes La Belle Dame sans Merci and most of his major odes: Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Indolence and Ode on Melancholy. In the summer he writes Lamia; on September 19 he writes his ode To Autumn at Winchester; and on October 19 proposes marriage to Fanny.
April 1 – In London The New Monthly Magazine publishes John Polidori's Gothic fiction The Vampyre, the first significant piece of prose vampire literature in English, attributing it to Lord Byron. It is first published in book form later in the year.
June 21 – Walter Scott's historical Waverley Novels The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose are published anonymously by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh as the 3rd series of Scott's Tales of My Landlord. They have been partly dictated due to Scott's suffering from biliary colic earlier in the year.
June 23 – Washington Irving begins publishing The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in seven installments — the first including "Rip Van Winkle" and a later one including "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" — simultaneously in New York and London.
August 16 – The Peterloo Massacre takes place in England, inspiring Percy Bysshe Shelley, in Italy, who, like Keats, has one of his most productive years. After hearing the news on September 5 he writes The Masque of Anarchy and sends it to a newspaper, also writing the political sonnet England in 1819, Ode to the West Wind, The Cenci: A Tragedy, in Five Acts and Julian and Maddalo and beginning his prose work A Philosophical View of Reform.
September 20 – The Carlsbad Decrees are issued throughout the German Confederation, suppressing liberal and nationalist views and censoring the press.
October – In Britain, Richard Carlile is convicted of blasphemy and sent to prison for publishing The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine.
December 20 – Walter Scott's popular Waverley Novel Ivanhoe is published anonymously in 3 volumes by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh, dated 1820. A chivalric romance set in 12th-century England, it represents a move away from Scott setting his fiction in Scotland.
unknown dates
*Joseph Perl's epistolary novel Megalleh Temirim, written under the name "Obadiah ben Pethahiah" and published in Vienna, becomes the first novel to be published in the Hebrew language.
*The publisher Collins is founded as a printer of religious literature in Glasgow by William Collins.
*W. & R. Chambers, established by bookseller brothers William Chambers and Robert Chambers in Edinburgh, begin publishing with a posthumous collection of The Songs of Robert Burns.

New books

Non-fiction

Abbé Faria – Da Causa do Sono Lúcido no Estudo da Natureza do Homem
Jakob Grimm – German Grammar
Georg Hermes – Philosophical Introduction to Christian Theology
Louisa Gurney Hoare – Hints for the Improvement of Early Education and Nursery Discipline
Richard Colt Hoare – A Classical Tour through Italy and Sicily
John Lingard – The History of England, From the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of Henry VIII
Arthur Schopenhauer – The World as Will and Representation
Percy Bysshe Shelley – ''A Philosophical View of Reform''

Births

January 1 – Arthur Hugh Clough, English poet
January 21 – Edward Capern, English postman poet
January 22 – Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Italian writer and art critic
February 22 – James Russell Lowell, American poet
April 14 – Harriett Ellen Grannis Arey, co-founder and first president, Ohio Woman's State Press Association
April 23 – Bernard Quaritch, German-born English philologist and bookseller
May 27 – Julia Ward Howe, American poet and abolitionist
May 31 – Walt Whitman, American poet
June 12 – Charles Kingsley, English novelist and cleric
July 4 – Marie Sophie Schwartz, Swedish novelist
July 11 – Susan Warner, American religious and children's writer
July 19 – Gottfried Keller, Swiss novelist
July 24 – Josiah Gilbert Holland, American novelist and poet
August 1 – Herman Melville, American novelist
November 22 – George Eliot, English novelist, poet and journalist
December 26 – E. D. E. N. Southworth, American writer
December 30 – Theodor Fontane, German novelist
Unknown dates
*Butrus al-Bustani, Lebanese writer
*Harriet Anne Scott, Scottish novelist

Deaths

January 8 – Valentin Vodnik, Carniolan Slovene poet, writer and priest
January 12
*André Morellet, French economist and philosopher
*Benedikte Naubert, German historical novelist
February 12 – Juan Ramis, Spanish historian
March 23
*August von Kotzebue, German dramatist
*Jean-Antoine-Marie Monperlier, French poet and dramatist
April 17 – William Holland, English diarist
October 30 – John Bowles, English political writer and lawyer
November 2 – Théodore-Pierre Bertin, French writer and pioneer of shorthand
November 23 – Quintin Craufurd, Scottish historian
Unknown dates
*Abu Rumi, Ethiopian translator of the Bible into Amharic
*Wang Yun, Chinese poet and playwright

Awards

Chancellor's Gold Medal for Poetry – Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Newdigate Prize – H. J. Urquhart

1819 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards