1817 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1817.

Events

• January–March 18 – Jane Austen begins but abandons the novel Sanditon ("Three Brothers").
• February 12 – Junius Brutus Booth makes his stage debut in a title role in Shakespeare's Richard III at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London.^[1]
• 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.^[1]
• 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 is introduced on stage in London's West End theatre by The English Opera House (extended to the auditorium on September 8). On September 6 it is introduced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (where it is already installed in the auditorium and foyer) and the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (as a demonstration).^[2]
• December 18–20 – William Hone successfully defends himself in a London court on charges arising from his publication of political satires.
• 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).^[3]
• December 31 – Walter Scott's historical novel Rob Roy, written from this Spring, is published anonymously by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh while a shipload is carried from Leith to London for simultaneous publication there by Longman.^[4]
• December – Publication together of Jane Austen's first and last completed novels, respectively Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, by John Murray in London (dated 1818), six months after the author's death at Winchester. Her brother Henry Austen contributes a biographical note which for the first time publicly identifies her as the author of all her (previously anonymous) novels.
• J. & J. Harper publishing house is founded in New York City by James Harper and his brother John.

New books

Fiction

• Jane Austen
  • Northanger Abbey
  • Persuasion
• Selina Davenport – Woman's Privilege
• Maria Edgeworth – Harrington: a tale and Ormond: a tale
• Ann Hatton – Gonzalo de Baldivia
• Thomas Love Peacock – Melincourt.
• Anna Maria Porter – The Knight of St. John
• Walter Scott – Rob Roy
• Catherine Selden – Villa Santelle
• Elizabeth Thomas – Claudine, or Pertinacity

Drama

• Franz Grillparzer – Die Ahnfrau (The Ancestress)
• Richard Lalor Sheil – The Apostate
• Zachary Zealoushead – Plots and Placement

Poetry

• Lord Byron – Manfred: A Dramatic Poem
• Thomas Moore – Lalla-Rookh: An Oriental Romance
• Percy Bysshe Shelley – Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
• Robert Southey – Wat Tyler: A Dramatic Poem
• Charles Wolfe – The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna

Non-fiction

• Franz Xaver von Baader – Über die Extase oder das Verzücktsein der magnetischen Schlafredner
• Manuel Aires de Casal – Corografia Brasílica
• William Cobbett – Paper against Gold, the History and Mystery of the Bank of England
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Biographia Literaria
• Nathan Drake – Shakespeare and his Times, including the Biography of the Poet, Criticisms on his Genius, and Writings; a new Chronology of his Plays; a Disquisition on the Object of his Sonnets; and a History of the Manners, Customs and Amusements, Superstitions, Poetry and Elegant Literature of his Age (2 volumes)
• Eliza Fay (posthumously) – Original Letters from India
• William Hazlitt – Characters of Shakespear's Plays
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences
• David Ricardo – On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation
• Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley – History of a Six Weeks' Tour

Births

• February 21 – José Zorrilla y Moral, Spanish poet and dramatist (died 1893)
• May 21 – Hermann Lotze, German philosopher (died 1881)
• July 12 – Henry David Thoreau, American poet and philosopher (died 1862)
• September 5 – Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Russian poet, dramatist and novelist (died 1875)
• September 14 – Theodor Storm, German novelist and poet (died 1888)
• December 31 – James Thomas Fields, American publisher (died 1881)

Deaths

• March 23 – José Mariano Beristain, Mexican bibliographer (born 1756)
• April 25 – Joseph von Sonnenfels, Austrian novelist (born 1732)
• May 24 – Juan Meléndez Valdés, Spanish poet (born 1754)
• July 14 – Germaine de Staël, French woman of letters (born 1766)
• July 18 – Jane Austen, English novelist (born 1775)
• December 28 – Charles Burney, English classicist (born 1757)
• Unknown dates
  • Caleb Bingham, American textbook author (born 1757)
  • Joakim Stulić, Croatian lexicographer (born 1730)
  • Tarikonda Venkamamba, Telugu woman poet (born 1730)

References