1814 in literature
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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1814.
Events
- January 14 (January 2 O.S.) â The Imperial Public Library in Saint Petersburg opens to the public.[1][2]
- January 26 â Actor Edmund Kean makes his London début in the leading rôle of Shylock at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.[3]
- February 1 â Lord Byron's semi-autobiographical tale in verse The Corsair is published by John Murray in London and sells 10,000 copies on this day[4] and over 25,000 in the first month, going through seven editions. His Lara sells 6,000 copies on publication in the summer.[5] Walter Scott is to say of Byron's poetry: "He beat me out of the field in description of the stronger passions and in deep-seated knowledge of the human heart."
- July 7 â Walter Scott's Waverley, his first work of fiction and a major early historical novel in English, is published anonymously by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh, a week after Scott finishes it. It sells out in two days.[6]
- July 28âSeptember 13 â English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley abandons his pregnant wife and runs away to France and Switzerland with the 16-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, accompanied by her stepsister Jane Clairmont, also 16.[7]
- August 24 â Burning of Washington (War of 1812): The British burn the original Library of Congress, at this time housed in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.
- September 12â15 â Battle of Baltimore (War of 1812): American lawyer Francis Scott Key, witnessing the bombardment of Baltimore, Maryland, from a British ship, writes "Defence of Fort McHenry". His brother-in-law arranges to have the poem published in a broadside with a recommended tune on September 17; on September 20 both the Baltimore Patriot and The American print it. The song quickly becomes popular â seventeen newspapers from Georgia to New Hampshire reprint it. In 1931, it is adopted as "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem of the United States.[8]
- September 21 After arrangements have been made for the United States Library of Congress, destroyed in August's Burning of Washington, to be re-stocked by purchase of the personal library of ex-President Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson writes to Samuel H. Smith, saying that there is "no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer".[9]
- November 29 â In London, The Times newspaper is printed using a revolutionary steam press for the first time.[10] It runs at a rate of 1100 copies per hour.
- Late â The first edition of the second volume of the Brothers Grimm's Grimms' Fairy Tales appears, dated 1815.
- unknown dates
- The earliest known printed Arabic language version of One Thousand and One Nights begins publication in Calcutta by the British East India Company.
- Alfred de Vigny enrols as an officer in the Maison du Roi, the King's guard of Louis XVIII of France.[11]
New books
Fiction
- Jane Austen (anonymously) â Mansfield Park[12]
- Fanny Burney â The Wanderer: or, Female Difficulties (last novel)
- Mary Brunton â Discipline
- Adelbert von Chamisso â Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (Peter Schlemihl's Miraculous Story)
- Selina Davenport â The Hypocrite
- Maria Edgeworth â Patronage
- Pierce Egan â The Mistress of Royalty
- Jane Harvey
- Auberry Stanhope
- Ethelia: a Tale
- Ann Hatton â Conviction
- Laetitia Matilda Hawkins â Rossane; or A Father's Labour Lost
- William Henry Hitchener â The Towers of Ravenswold
- Christian Isobel Johnstone â The Saxon and the Gaël
- Mary Meeke â Conscience
- Lady Morgan â O'Donnell
- Anna Maria Porter â The Recluse of Norway
- Regina Maria Roche â Trecothick Bower
- Walter Scott â Waverley
- Louisa Stanhope â Madelina: A Tale Founded on Facts
- Takizawa Bakin (Kyokutei Bakin, æ²äº 馬ç´) â NansÅ Satomi Hakkenden (å總éè¦å «ç¬å³, The Eight Dog Chronicles, publication begins)
- Elizabeth Thomas â The Prison-House
- Jane West â Alicia de Lacy
Children
- Maria Elizabeth Budden â Always Happy!!: Or, Anecdotes of Felix and his Sister Serena. A Tale
- Barbara Hofland â Emily and Her Friends
- Mary Martha Sherwood â The History of Little Henry and his Bearer
Drama
- Leigh Hunt â The Descent of Liberty
- René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt â The Dog of Montarges
- James Kenney â Debtor and Creditor
- Robert Francis Jameson â Love and Gout
- Richard Lalor Sheil â Adelaide
- Henry Siddons â Policy
Poetry
- Lord Byron
- The Corsair
- Lara
- Henry Cary â translation of Dante's Divine Comedy (complete in blank verse)
- Adam Oehlenschlager â Helge
- William Wordsworth â The Excursion
Non-fiction
- Elizabeth Craven â Letters from the Right Honorable Lady Craven to his Serene Highness the Margrave of Anspach during her travels through France, Germany and Russia in 1785 and 1786
- Thomas Hartwell Horne â Introduction to the Study of Bibliography
- Legh Richmond â The Dairyman's Daughter (religious tract about Elizabeth Wallbridge)
- Percy Bysshe Shelley â A Refutation of Deism
- Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert â Die Symbolik der Traüme (The Symbolism of Dreams)
Births
- January 15 â Pierre-Jules Hetzel (P. J. Stahl), French publisher and young people's writer (died 1886)
- January 17 â Mrs. Henry Wood (Ellen Price), English novelist (died 1887)
- February 18 â Samuel Fenton Cary, American author and prohibitionist (died 1900)
- March 9 (February 25 O.S.) â Taras Shevchenko, Ukrainian poet (died 1861)
- March 13 â Edward Backhouse Eastwick, Anglo-Indian orientalist and translator (died 1883)[13]
- June 8 â Charles Reade, English novelist and dramatist (died 1884)[14]
- July 23 â George W. M. Reynolds, English popular novelist (died 1879)
- August 14 â Charlotte Fowler Wells, phrenologist and publisher (died 1901)
- August 28 â Sheridan le Fanu, Irish Gothic writer (died 1873)
- September 17 â Ferenc Pulszky, Hungarian writer and politician (died 1897)
- October 3 â Mikhail Lermontov, Russian poet (died 1841)
- November 6 â William Wells Brown, African-American writer (died 1884)
- December 27 â Jules Simon, French philosopher (died 1896)
Deaths
- January 4 â Johann Georg Jacobi, German poet (born 1740)
- January 21 â Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, French novelist and travel writer (born 1737)
- January 27 â Johann Gottlieb Fichte, German philosopher (born 1762)[15]
- February 24 â Julien Louis Geoffroy, French literary critic (born 1743)
- February 27 â Margaret Bingham, English poet and painter (born 1740)
- April 12 â Charles Burney, English music historian and musician (born 1726)
- July 25 â Charles Dibdin, English novelist, playwright and actor (born 1745)
- September 5 â Gottfried Gabriel Bredow, German historian (born 1773)
- October 4 â Samuel Jackson Pratt, English poet, playwright and novelist (born 1749)[16]
- November 10 â Abbé Aubert, French dramatist, poet and journalist (born 1731)
- December 2 â Marquis de Sade, French philosopher, writer and politician (born 1740)[17]
Awards
- Newdigate Prize â John Leycester Adolphus[18]