1819 in literature explained
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1819.
Events
- January 30 – Romney Literary Society is established in the United States as the Polemic Society of Romney, West Virginia.[1]
- April – John Keats begins his "Great Year" or "Living Year", during which he is at his most productive, having given up work at Guy's Hospital and moved into a new house, Wentworth Place, on Hampstead Heath on the edge of London. On April 3, Charles Wentworth Dilke lets his house, next door to Keats, to Mrs Brawne, whose daughter Fanny would become the love of Keats's life. Between April 21 and the end of May Keats writes La Belle Dame sans Merci and most of his major odes: Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Indolence and Ode on Melancholy. In the summer he writes Lamia; on September 19 he writes his ode To Autumn at Winchester;[2] and on October 19 proposes marriage to Fanny.
- April 1 – In London The New Monthly Magazine publishes John Polidori's Gothic fiction The Vampyre, the first significant piece of prose vampire literature in English, attributing it to Lord Byron (who partly inspired it). It is first published in book form later in the year.
- June 21 – Walter Scott's historical Waverley Novels The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose are published anonymously by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh as the 3rd series of Scott's Tales of My Landlord. They have been partly dictated due to Scott's suffering from biliary colic earlier in the year.[3]
- June 23 – Washington Irving begins publishing The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in seven installments — the first including "Rip Van Winkle" and a later one including "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" — simultaneously in New York and London (where Irving is living at this time).
- August 16 – The Peterloo Massacre takes place in England, inspiring Percy Bysshe Shelley, in Italy, who, like Keats, has one of his most productive years. After hearing the news on September 5 he writes The Masque of Anarchy and sends it to a newspaper (although it is not published until 1832, after his death), also writing the political sonnet England in 1819 (published 1839), Ode to the West Wind (published 1820), The Cenci: A Tragedy, in Five Acts (printed in Italy, but not first performed publicly until 1922) and Julian and Maddalo (published in his Posthumous Poems of 1824) and beginning his prose work A Philosophical View of Reform.
- September 20 – The Carlsbad Decrees are issued throughout the German Confederation, suppressing liberal and nationalist views and censoring the press.
- October – In Britain, Richard Carlile is convicted of blasphemy and sent to prison for publishing The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine.
- December 20 – Walter Scott's popular Waverley Novel Ivanhoe is published anonymously in 3 volumes by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh, dated 1820. A chivalric romance set in 12th-century England, it represents a move away from Scott setting his fiction in Scotland.[3]
- unknown dates
New books
Fiction
Children
Drama
Poetry
Non-fiction
Births
- January 1 – Arthur Hugh Clough, English poet (died 1861)
- January 21 – Edward Capern, English postman poet (died 1894)
- January 22 – Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Italian writer and art critic (died 1897)
- February 22 – James Russell Lowell, American poet (died 1891)
- April 14 – Harriett Ellen Grannis Arey, co-founder and first president, Ohio Woman's State Press Association (died 1901)
- April 23 – Bernard Quaritch, German-born English philologist and bookseller (died 1899)
- May 27 – Julia Ward Howe, American poet and abolitionist (died 1910)
- May 31 – Walt Whitman, American poet (died 1892)[10]
- June 12 – Charles Kingsley, English novelist and cleric (died 1875)
- July 4 – Marie Sophie Schwartz, Swedish novelist (died 1894)
- July 11 – Susan Warner (pseudonym Elizabeth Weatherell), American religious and children's writer (died 1885)
- July 19 – Gottfried Keller, Swiss novelist (died 1890)[11]
- July 24 – Josiah Gilbert Holland, American novelist and poet (died 1881)
- August 1 – Herman Melville, American novelist (died 1891)
- November 22 – George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), English novelist, poet and journalist (died 1880)
- December 26 – E. D. E. N. Southworth, American writer (died 1899)
- December 30 – Theodor Fontane, German novelist (died 1898)[12]
- Unknown dates
Deaths
Awards
Notes and References
- Book: History of Hampshire County, West Virginia From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present . Maxwell . Hu . Hu Maxwell . Swisher . Howard Llewellyn . Howard Llewellyn Swisher . 1897 . A. Brown Boughner, Printer . . 23304577M . 680931891 . 430.
- Book: Keats, John . The Complete Poems . Barnard, John . Harmondsworth . Penguin Education . 1973 . 0-14-080668-7.
- Todd, William B.; Bowden, Ann (1998). Sir Walter Scott: A Bibliographical History 1796–1832. New Castle, Delaware.
- Book: Zinberg, Israel. A History of Jewish Literature: Hasidism and enlightenment (1780-1820). 1976. Press of Case Western Reserve University. Cleveland, Ohio. 978-0-8295-0228-2. 240. 2020-09-26. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413034652/https://books.google.com/books?id=nz0mAQAAMAAJ. live.
- Book: Sears, Donald A. . John Neal . Twayne Publishers . Boston, Massachusetts . 1978 . 080-5-7723-08 . 145.
- Book: Lease, Benjamin . University of Chicago Press . 0-226-46969-7 . That Wild Fellow John Neal and the American Literary Revolution . Chicago, Illinois . 1972 . 205.
- Book: Bloom, Harold. Bloom's Major Poets:Percy Bysshe Shelley. Chelsea House Books. 2001. 0-7910-5930-8. New York. 49–65.
- Book: Cox . Michael . The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature . Oxford University Press . 2004 . 0-19-860634-6 .
- [Egas Moniz|Moniz, A. Egas]
- [James E. Miller|Miller, James E.]
- Web site: Gottfried Keller at 200: An enduring literary legacy. Jochen Kurten. 19 July 2019. DW.com. 3 July 2023.
- Book: Otto Drude. Theodor Fontane. Insel Verlag. 1994. 11.
- Book: Dumas père, Alexandre . Alexandre Dumas, père . Celebrated Crimes . IV . Wildside Classics . 13–76 . Karl Ludwig Sand .
- Web site: The Iphigenia of Timanthes, a poem: the subject of the Newdigate Prize, at Oxford, for 1819, by the author of Genius, a vision. . 2023-04-13 . collections.soane.org . 2021-01-16 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210116025002/http://collections.soane.org/b5694 . live .