Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

1818 in literature

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1818.

Contents

Events

  • January 1 – Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus is first published, anonymously, in London.
  • January 8 – Lord Byron, in Venice, sends the final part of Childe Harold to his publisher.
  • January 11 – Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" is published in Leigh Hunt's weekly The Examiner (London; p. 24) under the pen name 'Glirastes'; Horace Smith's contribution to the same informal sonnet-writing competition, "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below" is published on February 1 under his initials.
  • January – Samuel Taylor Coleridge delivers a series of lectures on poetry, drama and philosophy, beginning with Shakespeare's Hamlet.
  • March 12 – Percy Bysshe Shelley, his wife Mary and her stepsister Claire Clairmont leave England for Italy, where they intend to take Claire's illegitimate child Alba to her father, Lord Byron.
  • April 11 – John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge go for a walk on Hampstead Heath. In a letter to his brother George, Keats writes that they talked about "a thousand things,... nightingales, poetry, poetical sensation, metaphysics."
  • June–August – Keats and his friend Charles Armitage Brown make a walking tour of Scotland (including a visit to Burns Cottage), Ireland and the English Lake District.
  • July
  • Thomas De Quincey begins a 16-month term as editor of the newly established weekly newspaper The Westmorland Gazette, published at Kendal in the English Lake District.
  • The Stephenson Blake type foundry begins operation in Sheffield, England.
  • July 18 – Walter Scott's historical novel The Heart of Midlothian is published (as Tales of My Landlord, 2nd series, by 'Jedediah Cleishbotham', in 4 volumes); a shipload from the Ballantyne publishing business is sent from Edinburgh to London.
  • September 19 – Lord Byron writes to Thomas Moore, telling him he has completed the first Canto of Don Juan.
  • November – Fanny Brawne meets John Keats for the first time, at the home of Charles Armitage Brown.
  • The National Library of Iceland is established as the Íslands stiftisbókasafn at the instigation of Danish antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn and the Icelandic Literary Society.
  • The Old Vic is founded as the Royal Coburg Theatre in South London by James King, Daniel Dunn and John T. Serres.

    • Fiction

  • Jane Austen (posthumously) – Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (actually issued in December 1817)
  • Patrick Brontë – The Maid of Killarney (anonymous)
  • Selina Davenport – An Angel's Form and a Devil's Heart
  • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier – Marriage
  • Franz Grillparzer – Sappho
  • Ann Hatton – Secrets in Every Mansion
  • Mary Meeke – The Veiled Protectress
  • Thomas Love Peacock – Nightmare Abbey (anonymous)
  • Anna Maria Porter – The Fast of St. Magdalen: A Romance
  • Walter Scott – The Heart of Midlothian
  • Mary Shelley – Frankenstein (anonymous)
  • Mary Martha Sherwood – The History of the Fairchild Family (vol. 1; anonymous)
  • Louisa Stanhope
  • The Bandit's Bride
  • The Nun of Santa Maria di Tindaro
  • Elizabeth Thomas – Woman, or Minor Maxims; a Sketch

    • Children

  • Maria Hack – Winter Evenings

    • Drama

  • Franz Grillparzer – Sappho
  • Silvio Pellico – Francesca da Rimini

    • Poetry

  • Kristijonas Donelaitis – The Seasons
  • John Keats – Endymion
  • Thomas Bowdler – The Family Shakspeare (2nd edition, expanded from 1807 edition)
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • Ozymandias
  • The Revolt of Islam (dated this year but published December 1817)

    • Non-fiction

  • Elizabeth Beverley – Modern Times, a "sermon" prompted by the death of Princess Charlotte of Wales
  • Josef Dobrovsky – History of the Czech Language
  • John Evelyn (d. 1706) – Diary
  • Henry Hallam – The View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages
  • William Hazlitt – Lectures on the English Poets
  • James Mill – The History of British India
  • Charles Mills – History of Mohammedanism
  • Collin de Plancy – Dictionnaire Infernal
  • Arthur Schopenhauer – Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung The World as Will and Representation

    • Births

  • May 25 – Jacob Burckhardt, Swiss historian (died 1897)
  • July 30 – Emily Brontë, English novelist and poet (died 1848)
  • November 9 (October 28 OS) – Ivan Turgenev, Russian novelist and playwright (died 1883)

    • Deaths

  • January 11 – Johann David Wyss, Swiss children's author writing in German (born 1743)
  • March 6 – John Gifford, English political writer (born 1758)
  • May 14 – Matthew Lewis, English novelist and dramatist (born 1775)
  • June 11 – Elizabeth Bonhôte, English novelist, essayist and poet (born 1744)
  • October 22 – Joachim Heinrich Campe, German linguist and publisher (born 1746)
  • November 6 – Malcolm Laing, Scottish historian (born 1762)
  • December 8 – Mary Brunton, Scottish novelist (born 1778)

    • Awards

  • Newdigate Prize – T. H. Ormerod

    • References

    1818 in literature Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA