1807 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1807.

Events

• January – Heinrich von Kleist sets out for Dresden, but is arrested by the French as a spy and kept a prisoner for six months at Châlons-sur-Marne.^[1]
• January 24 – Washington Irving launches the satirical magazine Salmagundi in New York City.
• June 24 – The Tout-Paris assist in the first production of the Panorama de Momus, a vaudeville by Marc-Antoine Désaugiers.
• July 13 – Heinrich von Kleist is released from prison in France.
• Benjamin Tabart in London publishes the first printed version of The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk.
• The first edition of The Family Shakspeare, an expurgated edition of Shakespeare's plays under the nominal editorship of Thomas Bowdler but probably mostly compiled by his sister Henrietta Maria Bowdler, appears in London.
• The first facsimile edition of the Shakespeare First Folio, edited by Francis Douce, is published in London by Edward and Joseph Wright.
• Charles Wiley founds a print shop in Manhattan which eventually grows into the John Wiley & Sons book publishing group.

New books

Births

• February 27 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet (died 1882)
• June 30 – Friedrich Theodor Vischer, German author (died 1887)
• August 31 – Thomas Miller, English poet (died 1874)
• September 2 – Fredrika Runeberg, Finnish writer (d. 1879)
• September 9 – Richard Chenevix Trench, British poet (died 1886)
• October 23 – Baroness Tautphoeus (Jemima Montgomery), English-born novelist (died 1893)
• October 30 – Christopher Wordsworth, English Biblical editor and commentator, (died 1885)
• November 16 – Jónas Hallgrímsson, Icelandic author (died 1845)
• Unknown date
• Sophie Bolander, Swedish novelist (died 1869)

Deaths

• January 5 – Isaac Reed, English Shakespearean editor (born 1742)
• February 18 – Sophie von La Roche, German novelist (born 1730)
• June 14 – Louis Bruyas, French dramatist and actor (born 1738)
• July 24 – John Christopher Kunze, American theologian (born 1744)
• August 1 – John Walker, English lexicographer (born 1732)
• December 3 – Clara Reeve, English novelist and literary historian (born 1729)
• December 19 – Friedrich Melchior, baron von Grimm, German-born French memoirist and literary correspondent (born 1723)
• December 21 – John Newton, English hymnist (born 1725)

References