Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

1818 in literature

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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


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