1812 in literature

Template:Short description Template:Year nav topic5 This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1812.

Events

• January 2 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge's lecture on Hamlet is given as part of a series of lectures on drama and Shakespeare; it has influenced Hamlet studies ever since.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• January 15 – Lord Byron takes his seat in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
• March 20 – First two cantos of Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage are published in London by John Murray.<ref name=CBH>Template:Cite book</ref> This sells out in five days, giving rise to Byron's comment "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
• May–July – The library of the Duke of Roxburghe (died 1804) is auctioned in London. On June 17 a presumed first edition of Boccaccio's Decameron, printed by Christopher Valdarfer of Venice in 1471, is sold to the Marquis of Blandford for £2,260, the highest price ever given for a book at that time. This is followed by a social meeting of bibliophiles under the chairmanship of 2nd Earl Spencer, the origin of the Roxburghe Club, formed by Thomas Frognall Dibdin.
• June 24–December 14 – The French invasion of Russia will form the climax of Tolstoy's 1869 novel War and Peace and feature several other works of literature.
• October 10 – The rebuilt Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London opens.
• December 9–20 – Leigh Hunt is tried and convicted of libel for calling the Prince Regent "a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in debt and disgrace" in The Examiner on March 22.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• December 26 – Novelist Frederick Marryat is promoted to lieutenant after distinguished service at sea in the War of 1812.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

New books

Fiction

• Sarah Burney – Traits of Nature<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Maria Edgeworth:<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • The Absentee
  • Emilie de Coulanges
  • Vivian
• Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès – Fantasmagoriana
• The Brothers Grimm – Grimm's Fairy Tales, volume 1 (Kinder- und Hausmärchen)
• Ann Hatton – The Fortress del Vechii<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Frances Margaretta Jacson (misascribed to Mary Brunton) – Things by their Right Names
• Charles Maturin – The Milesian Chief
• Rebecca Rush – Kelroy<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• 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

Children and young people

• Barbara Hofland – The History of a Clergyman's Widow and Her Young Family<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Johann David Wyss – The Swiss Family Robinson

Drama

• Joanna Baillie – Orra
• Theodor Körner
  • Die Braut (The Bride)
  • Der grüne Domino (The Green Domino)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • Der Nachtwächter (The Night Watchman)
  • Zriny<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Adam Oehlenschläger – Stærkodder
• August von Kotzebue – Der arme Poet (The Poor Poet)

Poetry

• Anna Laetitia Barbauld – Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
• Lord Byron – Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
• Percy Bysshe Shelley – The Devil's Walk: A Ballad
• James and Horace Smith (anonymously) – Rejected Addresses
• William Tennant – Anster Fair

Non-fiction

• John Galt – Cursory Reflections on Political and Commercial Topics<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Die objektive Logik<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Sir Richard Colt Hoare – The Ancient History of South Wiltshire
• Mirza Abu Taleb Khan – Masir Talib fi Bilad Afranji (The Travels of Taleb in the Regions of Europe)
• 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

Births

• February 7 – Charles Dickens, English novelist and editor (died 1870)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• February 15 – Chandos Wren-Hoskyns (Chandos Hoskyns), English agricultural author and landowner (died 1876)
• February 19 – Zygmunt Krasiński, Polish poet (died 1859)
• May 7 – Robert Browning, English poet (died 1889)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• May 12 – Edward Lear, English nonsense poet, caricaturist and painter (died 1888)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• June 9 – Camilla Dufour Crosland, English writer and poet (died 1895)
• June 18 – Ivan Goncharov, Russian novelist and critic (died 1891)
• June 27 – Andrei Mocioni, Hungarian/Romanian journalist and literary patron (died 1880)
• July 5 – Antonio García Gutiérrez, Spanish dramatist (died 1884)
• August 22 – Geraldine Jewsbury, English novelist and woman of letters (died 1880)
• September 16 – Anna Louisa Geertruida Bosboom-Toussaint, Dutch novelist (died 1886)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• October 29 – Louise Granberg, Swedish playwright (died 1907)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• December 3 – Hendrik Conscience, Flemish novelist (died 1883)
• December 10 – Caroline M. Sawyer, American poet, writer, and editor (died 1894)
• December 23 – Samuel Smiles, Scottish self-help author (died 1904)
• unknown date
  • Louis du Couret, French explorer, military officer, and writer (died 1867)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • Mohan Lal Kashmiri, Indian traveller and writer (died 1877)

Deaths

• February 13 – Jacques Marie Boutet, French dramatist and actor (born 1745)
• February 24 – Hugo Kołłątaj, Polish historian and philosopher (born 1750)
• March 18 – John Horne Tooke, English controversialist and cleric (born 1736)<ref>{{#if: |

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• March 24 – Johann Jakob Griesbach, German Biblical commentator (born 1745)
• May 12 – Martha Ballard, American diarist (born c. 1734)
• July 14 – Christian Gottlob Heyne, German librarian and classicist (born 1729)
• October 28 – Susanna Duncombe, English poet and painter (born 1725)
• November 11 – Platon Levshin, Russian church historian (born 1737)
• November 16 – John Walter, English founder of The Times, London (born c. 1738)
• December 22 – Pierre Henri Larcher, French classicist and archeologist (born 1726)
• unknown date – Zalkind Hourwitz, Polish essayist (born 1738)<ref name="ScholzHeidel2000">Template:Cite book</ref>