1830 in literature

The year 1830 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• February - Barthold Georg Niebuhr's house burns down - but most of his books are saved.
• February 25 - The première of Victor Hugo's play Hernani in Paris is marked by protests from an audience who recognise it as an attack on Classicism.^[1]
• March 26 - The Book of Mormon is published by Joseph Smith in Palmyra, New York.
• May 22 - Amos Bronson Alcott marries Abby May at King's Chapel, Boston (Massachusetts).^[2]
• July 1 - Edgar Allan Poe matriculates as a cadet at the United States Military Academy, West Point.
• August - François-René de Chateaubriand sacrifices his political career by refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to Louis-Philippe, and retires to write his memoirs.
• Victor Cousin is elected to the Académie française.
• James Mill becomes head of the London office of the British East India Company.
• The English publishers Bradbury and Evans are established as printers by William Bradbury and Frederick Mullet Evans.^[3]
• Edward Moxon begins his own publishing business in London.
• Elizabeth Vestris becomes the first female actor-manager in the history of London theatre by leasing the Olympic Theatre in Drury Lane where she presents extravaganzas and burlesques.

New books

• Nathaniel Ames - A Mariner's Sketches
• Honoré de Balzac
  • La Maison du chat-qui-pelote
  • La Vendetta
  • Le Bal de Sceaux
  • Gobseck
• Edward Bulwer - Paul Clifford
• James Fenimore Cooper - The Water-Witch
• Oliver Wendell Holmes - Old Ironsides
• Frederick Marryat - The King's Own
• Thomas Love Peacock - Crotchet Castle
• Anna Maria Porter - The Barony
• Catharine Maria Sedgwick - A Tale of Our Times
• Mary Shelley - The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck
• Joseph Smith, Jr. - The Book of Mormon
• Louisa Stanhope - The Corsair's Bride
• Stendhal - The Red and the Black (French: Le Rouge et le Noir)

"It was a dark and stormy night"

The famous opening line of Edward Bulwer's (anonymous) novel, Paul Clifford, published this year, begins:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

The author is today honored with the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

New drama

• Henrik Hertz - Amor's Strokes of Genius (Amors Genistreger)
• Jovan Sterija Popović - Laža i Paralaža
• Aleksandr Pushkin
  • Mozart and Salieri (Моцарт и Сальери, Mozart i Salieri)
  • The Stone Guest (Каменный гость, Kamenny gost)
• Sir Walter Scott
  • Auchindrane
  • The Doom of Devorgoil

Poetry

• Alphonse de Lamartine - Harmonies poétiques et religieuses
• Richard Lower - Tom Cladpole's Jurney to Lunnon, told by himself, and written in pure Sussex doggerel by his Uncle Tim
• Alfred de Musset - Comtes d'Espagne et d'Italie
• Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve - Les Consolations
• Alfred Tennyson - Poems, Chiefly Lyrical

Non-fiction

• Jeremy Bentham - Constitutional Code for All Nations
• William Cobbett - Rural Rides
• Humphry Davy (posthumous) - Consolations in Travel; or, The Last Days of a Philosopher
• Denis Diderot (posthumous) - La Promenade du sceptique
• Jacob Grimm - Hymnorum veteris ecclesiae XXVI. inter pretatio theodisca
• Charles Lyell - Principles of Geology, vol. 1^[4]
• Thomas Moore - Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life

Births

• February 28 – James Payn, English novelist (died 1898)
• March 15 – Paul Heyse, German writer and Nobel laureate (died 1914)
• March 18 – Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, French historian (died 1889)
• April 6 – Eugène Rambert, Swiss poet and writer (died 1886)
• May 20 – Hector Malot, French writer (died 1907)
• July 22 – Richard Copley Christie, English scholar (died 1902)
• September 8 – Frédéric Mistral, French poet (died 1914)
• December 5 – Christina Rossetti, English poet (died 1894)
• December 10 – Emily Dickinson, American poet died 1886)
• December 17 – Jules de Goncourt, French founder of Prix Goncourt (died 1870)
• Unknown date – Mary Anna Needell (Mrs. J. H. Needell), English novelist (died 1922)

Deaths

• January – Wilhelm Waiblinger, German Romantic poet (born 1804)
• February 15 – Prince Ioane of Georgia, Georgian encyclopedist (born 1768)
• February 20 – Robert Anderson, Scottish literary editor, biographer and critic (born 1750)
• February 25 – Henrietta Maria Bowdler, English author and expurgator (born 1750)
• March 29 – James Rennell, English historian and oceanographer (born 1742)
• April 16 – József Katona, Hungarian dramatist and poet (born 1791)
• June 28 – David Walker, Africa-American abolitionist (born 1785)
• August 20 – Vasily Pushkin, Russian poet (born 1766)
• September 18 – William Hazlitt, English essayist (born 1778)
• October 8 – Johann Gottfried Ebel, Prussian-born Swiss travel writer (born 1764)
• November 20 – Gustav von Ewers, German legal historian (born 1781)
• December 8 – Benjamin Constant, Swiss-born French liberal author (born 1767)
• December 31 – Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis, French dramatist and writer on education (born 1746)

Awards

• Newdigate Prize - George Kettilby Rickards

References