1799 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1799.

Events

• Premières of the second and third parts of Friedrich Schiller's dramatic trilogy Wallenstein are performed at the Weimarer Hoftheater under Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
• January 30 – Die Piccolomini.
• April 20 – Wallensteins Tod (Wallenstein's Death) as Wallenstein.
• April 13 – The father of Charles and Mary Lamb dies; Charles becomes his sister's guardian.
• May 8 – The Religious Tract Society is established as an evangelical publisher in Paternoster Row, London; it continues as The Lutterworth Press into the 21st century.
• December 20 – William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy first take up residence at Dove Cottage, Grasmere. William completes the first version of The Prelude during the year.
• unknown dates
• A new edition of Edward Young's Night Thoughts is illustrated by Thomas Stothard.
• The Monthly Magazine and American Review starts publication in the United States, edited by Charles Brockden Brown.

New books

Fiction

• Anonymous – Village Orphan
• Charles Brockden Brown
• Arthur Mervyn
• Edgar Huntly
• Ormond
• Thomas Campbell – The Pleasures of Hope
• Elizabeth Gunning – The Gipsey Countess
• Mary Hays – The Victim of Prejudice
• Friedrich Hölderlin – Hyperion, vol. 2
• William Henry Ireland – The Abbess
• Jane West – A Tale of the Times
• Mary Julia Young – The East Indian

Children

• François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil – Les Cinquante Francs de Jeannette (Jeanette's Fifty Francs)
• Edward Augustus Kendall
• The Crested Wren. A Tale
• The Canary Bird. A moral fiction interspersed with poetry
• Dorothy Kilner (as M. Pelham) – Rational Brutes, or Talking Animals

Drama

• Thomas John Dibdin
• The Birth Day
• Five Thousand a Year
• William Dunlap – The Italian Father
• Joseph George Holman – The Votary of Wealth
• Elizabeth Inchbald – The Wise Man of the East
• Kamesuke – Picture Book of the Taiko (kabuki)
• Matthew Lewis – The East Indian
• Edward Morris – The Secret
• Frederick Reynolds – Management
• Friedrich von Schiller – Wallensteins Tod
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan – Pizarro
• Oscar Wegelin – The Natural Daughter
• Thomas Sedgwick Whalley – The Castle of Montval

Poetry

Non-fiction

• Hannah Adams – A Summary History of New-England
• Hannah More – Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education
• Lady Charlotte Murray – The British Garden
• Philip Yorke – The Royal Tribes of Wales

Births

• January 31 – Rodolphe Töpffer, Swiss teacher, author, and artist (died 1846)
• February 4
• Almeida Garrett, Portuguese writer (died 1854)
• Thomas Kibble Hervey, Scottish-born poet and critic (died 1859)
• March – Dorothea Tieck, German translator (died 1841)
• March 12 – Mary Howitt, English writer, poet and translator (died 1888)
• March 13 – Maria Dorothea Dunckel, Swedish poet, translator and dramatist (died 1878)
• March 20 – Karl August Nicander, Swedish poet (died 1839)
• April 17 – Eliza Acton, English poet and cookery writer (died 1859)
• May 13 – Catherine Gore, English author (died 1861)
• May 20 – Honoré de Balzac, French novelist (died 1850)
• May 23 – Thomas Hood, English poet (died 1845)
• June 6 – Aleksandr Pushkin, Russian dramatist and poet (died 1837)
• October 9 – Louisa Stuart Costello Irish writer on travel and history (died 1870)
• November 29 – Amos Bronson Alcott, American writer, philosopher, and reformer (died 1888)
• December 30 – John Moultrie, English poet and hymnist (died 1874)
• unknown date – Rallou Karatza, Greek Wallachian translator and theatrical promoter (died 1870)

Deaths

• February 19 – Jean-Charles de Borda, French engineer and memoirist (born 1733)
• February 24 – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, German satirist (born 1742)
• April 24 – William Seward, English man of letters (born 1747)
• May 18 – Pierre Beaumarchais, French dramatist (born 1732)
• August 30 – Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel, Italian poet and revolutionary (executed, born 1751)
• December 31 – Jean-François Marmontel, French historian, writer (born 1723)

References