1812 in literature

The year 1812 in literature involved some significant events.

Events

• Series of lectures on drama and Shakespeare - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Washington Irving begins editing Analectic magazine.
• Frederick Marryat is promoted to lieutenant after distinguished service at sea in the War of 1812.
• The rebuilt Theatre Royal, Drury Lane opens on October 10.

New books

Fiction

• Amelia Beauclerc - The Castle of Tariffa
• Bridget Bluemantle - The Vindictive Spirit
• Maria Edgeworth:
  • The Absentee
  • Emilie de Coulanges
  • Vivian
• Grimm's Fairy Tales, volume 1
• Ann Hatton - The Fortress del Vechii
• Anthony Frederick Holstein – The Modern Kate
• Charles Robert Maturin - The Milesian Chief
• Henrietta Rouviere Mosse - Arrivals from India
• Rebecca Rush - Kelroy
• George Soane – The Eve of San Marco
• Louisa Stanhope - The Confessional of Valombre
• Elizabeth Thomas – The Vindictive Spirit
• Jane West - The Loyalists: An Historical Novel
• Johann David Wyss - The Swiss Family Robinson

Non-fiction

• John Galt - Cursory Reflections on Political and Commercial Topics
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - Die objektive Logik
• W. M. Leake - Greece
• James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale - The Depreciation of the Paper-currency of Great Britain Proved
• John Nichols - The Literary Anecdotes of the 18th Century, volume 1
• Percy Bysshe Shelley - Declaration of Rights

New drama

• Joanna Baillie - Orra

Poetry

• Lord Byron - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
• Percy Bysshe Shelley - The Devil's Walk: A Ballad
• Anna Laetitia Barbauld - Eighteen Hundred and Eleven

Births

• February 7 - Charles Dickens, English writer (d. 1870)
• February 19 - Zygmunt Krasiński, Polish poet
• May 7 - Robert Browning, English poet (d. 1889)
• May 12 - Edward Lear English writer (d. 1888)
• June 18 - Ivan Goncharov Russian writer (d. 1891)
• July 5 - Antonio García Gutiérrez, Spanish dramatist (died 1884)
• August 22 – Geraldine Jewsbury, British author (died 1880)
• October 29 - Louise Granberg, Swedish playwright (died 1907)
• December 23 - Samuel Smiles, self-help author (died 1904)

Deaths

• February 24 - Hugo Kołłątaj, historian and philosopher
• March 24 - Johann Jakob Griesbach, Biblical commentator
• July 14 - Christian Gottlob Heyne, librarian and classicist
• November 16 - John Walter, founder of The Times newspaper
• December 22 - Pierre Henri Larcher, classical scholar
• date unknown - Martha Ballard, diarist
• date unknown - Jacques Marie Boutet, dramatist and actor
• date unknown - Zalkind Hourwitz, essayist
• date unknown - Levshin Platon, church historian

Awards