1814 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1814.

Events

• January 14 (January 2 O.S.) – The Imperial Public Library in Saint Petersburg opens to the public.
• January 26 – Actor Edmund Kean makes his London début in the leading rôle of Shylock at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
• February 1 – 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^[1] and over 25,000 in the first month, going through seven editions. His Lara sells 6,000 copies on publication in the summer.^[2] 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 – 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.^[3]
• July 28–September 13 – 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.^[4]
• August 24 – 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 12–15 – 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 – 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.^[5]
• 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".^[6]
• November 29 – In London, The Times newspaper is printed using a revolutionary steam press for the first time.^[7] It runs at a rate of 1100 copies per hour.
• Late – 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.^[8]

New books

Fiction

• Jane Austen (anonymously) – Mansfield Park^[9]
• Fanny Burney – The Wanderer: or, Female Difficulties (last novel)
• Mary Brunton – Discipline
• Adelbert von Chamisso – Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (Peter Schlemihl's Miraculous Story)
• Selina Davenport – The Hypocrite
• Maria Edgeworth – Patronage
• Pierce Egan – The Mistress of Royalty
• Jane Harvey
  • Auberry Stanhope
  • Ethelia: a Tale
• Ann Hatton – Conviction
• Laetitia Matilda Hawkins – Rossane; or A Father's Labour Lost
• William Henry Hitchener – The Towers of Ravenswold
• Christian Isobel Johnstone – The Saxon and the Gaël
• Mary Meeke – Conscience
• Lady Morgan – O'Donnell
• Anna Maria Porter – The Recluse of Norway
• Regina Maria Roche – Trecothick Bower
• Walter Scott – Waverley
• Louisa Stanhope – Madelina: A Tale Founded on Facts
• Takizawa Bakin (Kyokutei Bakin, 曲亭 馬琴) – Nansō Satomi Hakkenden (南總里見八犬傳, The Eight Dog Chronicles, publication begins)
• Elizabeth Thomas – The Prison-House
• Jane West – Alicia de Lacy

Children

• Maria Elizabeth Budden – Always Happy!!: Or, Anecdotes of Felix and his Sister Serena. A Tale
• Barbara Hofland – Emily and Her Friends
• Mary Martha Sherwood – The History of Little Henry and his Bearer

Drama

• Leigh Hunt – The Descent of Liberty
• René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt – The Dog of Montarges
• James Kenney – Debtor and Creditor
• Robert Francis Jameson – Love and Gout
• Richard Lalor Sheil – Adelaide
• Henry Siddons – Policy

Poetry

• Lord Byron
  • The Corsair
  • Lara
• Henry Cary – translation of Dante's Divine Comedy (complete in blank verse)
• Adam Oehlenschlager – Helge
• William Wordsworth – The Excursion

Non-fiction

• Elizabeth Craven – 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 – Introduction to the Study of Bibliography
• Legh Richmond – The Dairyman's Daughter (religious tract about Elizabeth Wallbridge)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley – A Refutation of Deism
• Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert – Die Symbolik der Traüme (The Symbolism of Dreams)

Births

• January 15 – Pierre-Jules Hetzel (P. J. Stahl), French publisher and young people's writer (died 1886)
• January 17 – Mrs. Henry Wood (Ellen Price), English novelist (died 1887)
• February 18 – Samuel Fenton Cary, American author and prohibitionist (died 1900)
• March 9 (February 25 O.S.) – Taras Shevchenko, Ukrainian poet (died 1861)
• March 13 – Edward Backhouse Eastwick, Anglo-Indian orientalist and translator (died 1883)^[10]
• June 8 – Charles Reade, English novelist and dramatist (died 1884)
• July 23 – George W. M. Reynolds, English popular novelist (died 1879)
• August 14 – Charlotte Fowler Wells, phrenologist and publisher (died 1901)
• August 28 – Sheridan le Fanu, Irish Gothic writer (died 1873)
• September 17 – Ferenc Pulszky, Hungarian writer and politician (died 1897)
• October 3 – Mikhail Lermontov, Russian poet (died 1841)
• November 6 – William Wells Brown, African-American writer (died 1884)
• December 27 – Jules Simon, French philosopher (died 1896)

Deaths

• January 4 – Johann Georg Jacobi, German poet (born 1740)
• January 21 – Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, French novelist and travel writer (born 1737)
• January 27 – Johann Gottlieb Fichte, German philosopher (born 1762)
• February 24 – Julien Louis Geoffroy, French literary critic (born 1743)
• February 27 – Margaret Bingham, English poet and painter (born 1740)
• April 12 – Charles Burney, English music historian and musician (born 1726)
• July 25 – Charles Dibdin, English novelist, playwright and actor (born 1745)
• September 5 – Gottfried Gabriel Bredow, German historian (born 1773)
• October 4 – Samuel Jackson Pratt, English poet, playwright and novelist (born 1749)^[11]
• November 10 – Abbé Aubert, French dramatist, poet and journalist (born 1731)
• December 2 – Marquis de Sade, French philosopher, writer and politician (born 1740)

Awards

• Newdigate Prize – John Leycester Adolphus^[12]

References