1798 in literature

This is a list of literature-related events in 1798.

Events

• February - Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes the conversation poem "Frost at Midnight".
• April - Coleridge writes the conversation poems "Fears in Solitude" ("Written ... During the Alarm of an Invasion" and published soon afterwards in a pamphlet) and "The Nightingale".
• April 16 - Coleridge's "The Recantation: An Ode" is published in The Morning Post describing his disillusionment with the French Revolution.
• April 30 - Richard Cumberland's comedy The Eccentric Lover is first performed at the Covent Garden Theatre in London.
• September 18 - First publication of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's anonymous Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems^[1] in Bristol, marking the beginning of English literary Romanticism. Most of the poems are by Wordsworth, including Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour, 13 July 1798, but also including the first publication of Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere. First London publication is on October 4.
• October 11 - Elizabeth Inchbald's Lovers' Vows (adapted from von Kotzebue's Das Kind der Liebe) is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London.
• October 12 - The rebuilt Weimarer Hoftheater is inaugurated by the premiere of the first part of Friedrich Schiller's dramatic trilogy Wallenstein, Das Lager ("The Camp"), directed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
• The National Library of the Netherlands originates when the Batavian Republic opens the former library of the stadtholder to the public.^[2]
• The Académie française publishes the 5th edition of its Dictionnaire.
• Thomas Nelson (publisher) originates in Edinburgh as a second-hand religious bookshop.

New books

• Charles Brockden Brown
  • Alcuin: a Dialogue
  • Wieland: or, The Transformation; an American Tale
• Emily Clark - Ianthé, or the Flower of Caernarvon
• Hannah Webster Foster - The Boarding School; or, Lessons of a Preceptress to Her Pupils
• Regina Maria Roche - Clermont: a Tale^[3]
• Mary Wollstonecraft - Posthumous Works (edited by William Godwin) including Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

New drama

• Richard Cumberland - The Eccentric Lover
• Elizabeth Inchbald - Lovers' Vows
• Friedrich von Schiller - Wallensteins Lager

New poetry

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth - Lyrical Ballads
• Richard Polwhele (anonymously) - The Unsex'd Females

Non-fiction

• William Godwin - Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
• Thomas Malthus (anonymously) - An Essay on the Principle of Population^[1]
• Richmal Mangnall (anonymously) - Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for the Use of Young People

Births

• January 5 - David Macbeth Moir, poet and humorist (died 1851)
• February 17 - Auguste Comte, French philosopher (died 1857)
• March 30 - Luise Hensel, German religious author and poet (died 1876)
• June 29 - Count Giacomo Leopardi, Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist (died 1837)

Deaths

• June 4 - Giacomo Casanova, librarian and memoirist (born 1725)
• June 20 - Jeremy Belknap, historian of New Hampshire (born 1744)
• December 16 - Thomas Pennant, naturalist and travel writer (born 1726)
• date unknown - Madeleine de Puisieux, French philosopher and feminist writer (born 1720)

References