1804 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1804.

Events

• March 17 – The first performance of Friedrich Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell takes place at Weimar under the direction of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
• April 4 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge sets sail on The Speedwell for the Mediterranean. In Malta, he obtains employment as Acting Public Secretary at Attard.
• April 15 – John Keats' father, a stable worker, dies of a fractured skull, after falling from his horse while returning from visiting John at school.
• unknown dates
• James Mill's pamphlet critical of the corn trade, An Essay on the Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exportation of Grain, is published.
• William Wordsworth writes his best-known poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", describing a scene he witnessed two years earlier.
• German Gerhard Bonnier begins a publishing business in Copenhagen (Denmark) by issuing ', origin of the Swedish Bonnier Group.

• Mir Amman – Bagh o Buhar, a Translation into the Hindoostanee Tongue of the Celebrated Persian Tale "Qissui Chuhar Durwesh" "by Meer Ummun"
• Sophie Ristaud Cottin – Malvina
• Rachel Hunter -The Unexpected Legacy
• William Henry Ireland – The Sepulchral Summons
• Mary Meeke
• Amazement
• The Nine Days' Wonder
• Amelia Opie – Adeline Mowbray
• Ōta Nanpo (大田 南畝) and others – ' (Collection of Shokusanjin memorabilia)
• Anna Maria Porter – The Lake of Killarney

Children

• François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil
• Elmonde, ou la Fille de l'hospice (Edmonde, the charity girl)
• Jules, ou le Toit paternel (Jules, or Under his father's roof)
• Maria Edgeworth – Popular Tales
• Eliza Fenwick – Mary and Her Cat
• Ann Taylor and Jane Taylor – Original Poems for Infant Minds by several young persons, Vol. 1

Drama

• Richard Cumberland – The Sailor's Daughter
• Thomas Dibdin
• Guilty or Not Guilty
• The Will for the Deed
• Francis Ludlow Holt – The Land We Live In
• Frederick Reynolds – The Blind Bargain
• Friedrich von Schiller – Wilhelm Tell
• Friedrich Hölderlin – translations of the dramas of Sophocles (published)

Poetry

• William Blake – '
• William Lisle Bowles – The Spirit of Discovery
• Kirsha Danilov – The Ancient Russian Poems