1798 in literature

Events

• The Académie française publishes a new edition of its dictionary.

New books

• Charles Brockden Brown
  • Alcuin: a Dialogue
  • Wieland: or, The Transformation; an American Tale
• Emily Clark - Ianthé, or the Flower of Caernarvon
• William Godwin - Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
• Regina Maria Roche - Clermont: a Tale
• Mary Wollstonecraft - Posthumous Works (edited by William Godwin); includes Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman)

New drama

• Richard Cumberland - The Eccentric Lover
• Friedrich von Schiller - Wallensteins Lager

New poetry

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth - Lyrical Ballads (published anonymously)

Non-fiction

• Hannah Webster Foster - The Boarding School; or, Lessons of a Preceptress to Her Pupils
• Thomas Malthus - An Essay on the Principle of Population

Births

• January 5 - David Macbeth Moir, poet and humorist
• February 17 - Auguste Comte
• March 30 - Luise Hensel
• June 29 - Count Giacomo Leopardi, Italian poet

Deaths

• June 4 - Giacomo Casanova, librarian
• June 20 - Jeremy Belknap, historian of New Hampshire
• December 16 - Thomas Pennant, traveller