1812 in literature
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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1812.
Events
- January 2 â Samuel Taylor Coleridge's lecture on Hamlet is given as part of a series of lectures on drama and Shakespeare; it has influenced Hamlet studies ever since.[1]
- January 15 â Lord Byron takes his seat in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
- March 20 â First two cantos of Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage are published in London by John Murray.[2] This sells out in five days, giving rise to Byron's comment "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."[3]
- MayâJuly â The library of the Duke of Roxburghe (died 1804) is auctioned in London. On June 17 a presumed first edition of Boccaccio's Decameron, printed by Christopher Valdarfer of Venice in 1471, is sold to the Marquis of Blandford for £2,260, the highest price ever given for a book at that time. This is followed by a social meeting of bibliophiles under the chairmanship of 2nd Earl Spencer, the origin of the Roxburghe Club, formed by Thomas Frognall Dibdin.
- June 24âDecember 14 â The French invasion of Russia will form the climax of Tolstoy's 1869 novel War and Peace and feature several other works of literature.
- October 10 â The rebuilt Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London opens.
- December 9â20 â Leigh Hunt is tried and convicted of libel for calling the Prince Regent "a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in debt and disgrace" in The Examiner on March 22.[4]
- December 26 â Novelist Frederick Marryat is promoted to lieutenant after distinguished service at sea in the War of 1812.[5]
New books
Fiction
- Sarah Burney â Traits of Nature[6]
- Maria Edgeworth:[7]
- The Absentee
- Emilie de Coulanges
- Vivian
- Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès â Fantasmagoriana
- The Brothers Grimm â Grimm's Fairy Tales, volume 1 (Kinder- und Hausmärchen)
- Ann Hatton â The Fortress del Vechii[8]
- Frances Margaretta Jacson (misascribed to Mary Brunton) â Things by their Right Names
- Charles Maturin â The Milesian Chief
- Rebecca Rush â Kelroy[9]
- George Soane â The Eve of San Marco
- Louisa Stanhope â The Confessional of Valombre
- Elizabeth Thomas â The Vindictive Spirit
- Jane West â The Loyalists: An Historical Novel
Children and young people
- Barbara Hofland â The History of a Clergyman's Widow and Her Young Family[10]
- Johann David Wyss â The Swiss Family Robinson
Drama
- Joanna Baillie â Orra
- Theodor Körner
- Adam Oehlenschläger â Stærkodder
- August von Kotzebue â Der arme Poet (The Poor Poet)
Poetry
- Anna Laetitia Barbauld â Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
- Lord Byron â Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
- Percy Bysshe Shelley â The Devil's Walk: A Ballad
- James and Horace Smith (anonymously) â Rejected Addresses
- William Tennant â Anster Fair
Non-fiction
- John Galt â Cursory Reflections on Political and Commercial Topics[13]
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel â Die objektive Logik[14]
- Sir Richard Colt Hoare â The Ancient History of South Wiltshire
- Mirza Abu Taleb Khan â Masir Talib fi Bilad Afranji (The Travels of Taleb in the Regions of Europe)
- James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale â The Depreciation of the Paper-currency of Great Britain Proved
- John Nichols â The Literary Anecdotes of the 18th Century, volume 1
- Percy Bysshe Shelley â Declaration of Rights
Births
- February 7 â Charles Dickens, English novelist and editor (died 1870)[15]
- February 15 â Chandos Wren-Hoskyns (Chandos Hoskyns), English agricultural author and landowner (died 1876)
- February 19 â Zygmunt KrasiÅski, Polish poet (died 1859)
- May 7 â Robert Browning, English poet (died 1889)[16]
- May 12 â Edward Lear, English nonsense poet, caricaturist and painter (died 1888)[17]
- June 9 â Camilla Dufour Crosland, English writer and poet (died 1895)
- June 18 â Ivan Goncharov, Russian novelist and critic (died 1891)
- June 27 â Andrei Mocioni, Hungarian/Romanian journalist and literary patron (died 1880)
- July 5 â Antonio GarcÃa Gutiérrez, Spanish dramatist (died 1884)
- August 22 â Geraldine Jewsbury, English novelist and woman of letters (died 1880)
- September 16 â Anna Louisa Geertruida Bosboom-Toussaint, Dutch novelist (died 1886)[18]
- October 29 â Louise Granberg, Swedish playwright (died 1907)[19]
- December 3 â Hendrik Conscience, Flemish novelist (died 1883)
- December 10 â Caroline M. Sawyer, American poet, writer, and editor (died 1894)
- December 23 â Samuel Smiles, Scottish self-help author (died 1904)
- unknown date
- Louis du Couret, French explorer, military officer, and writer (died 1867)[20]
- Mohan Lal Kashmiri, Indian traveller and writer (died 1877)
Deaths
- February 13 â Jacques Marie Boutet, French dramatist and actor (born 1745)
- February 24 â Hugo KoÅÅÄ taj, Polish historian and philosopher (born 1750)
- March 18 â John Horne Tooke, English controversialist and cleric (born 1736)[21]
- March 24 â Johann Jakob Griesbach, German Biblical commentator (born 1745)
- May 12 â Martha Ballard, American diarist (born c. 1734)
- July 14 â Christian Gottlob Heyne, German librarian and classicist (born 1729)
- October 28 â Susanna Duncombe, English poet and painter (born 1725)
- November 11 â Platon Levshin, Russian church historian (born 1737)
- November 16 â John Walter, English founder of The Times, London (born c. 1738)
- December 22 â Pierre Henri Larcher, French classicist and archeologist (born 1726)
- unknown date â Zalkind Hourwitz, Polish essayist (born 1738)[22]
