1798 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1798.

Events

• February – Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes the conversation poem "Frost at Midnight", commonly seen as the best of the series.
• April – Coleridge writes the conversation poems "Fears in Solitude" ("Written ... During the Alarm of an Invasion", soon published in a pamphlet) and "".
• April 16 – Coleridge's "" appears 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 – Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge is first published anonymously in Bristol by Joseph Cottle (who also remains anonymous), 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 opening with the first publication of Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, whose first London publication is on October 4.
• October 11 – Elizabeth Inchbald's Lovers' Vows (adapted from Kotzebue's Das Kind der Liebe – the child of love) is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London.
• October 12 – The rebuilt Weimarer Hoftheater are inaugurated with the first performance of the first part of Friedrich Schiller's dramatic trilogy Wallenstein: Das Lager (The Camp), directed by Goethe.
• unknown dates
• Ivan Kotliarevsky's mock-heroic poem Eneyida (Енеїда) becomes the first printed work in the modern Ukrainian language.
• The National Library of the Netherlands originates when the Batavian Republic opens the former library of the stadtholder to the public.
• The Académie française publishes the 5th edition of its Dictionnaire.
• Thomas Nelson's publishing company is established in Edinburgh as a second-hand religious bookshop.

New books

Fiction

• Charles Brockden Brown
• Alcuin: a Dialogue
• Wieland: or, The Transformation; an American Tale
• Emily Clark – Ianthé, or the Flower of Caernarvon
• Francis Lathom – The Midnight Bell: a German story, founded on incidents in real life
• Regina Maria Roche – Clermont: a Tale
• Eleanor Sleath – The Orphan of the Rhine: a romance
• Caroline von Wolzogen (anonymously) – Agnes von Lilien (first complete book publication, in 2 vols)
• Hannah Webster Foster – The Boarding School; or, Lessons of a Preceptress to Her Pupils
• Mary Wollstonecraft – Posthumous Works (edited by William Godwin) including '