1809 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1809.

Events

Chawton Cottage

• February 24 – The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, is destroyed by fire. On being found drinking wine in the street while watching the conflagration, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the proprietor, is reported as saying: "A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside."^[1] The putative manuscript of The History of Cardenio may have been lost in the blaze.
• March 1 – The literary and political periodical The Quarterly Review is first published by John Murray in London.^[2]
• June 1 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge founds The Friend, a weekly periodical which runs for some 25 issues.^[3]
• July 7 – Jane Austen settles with her sister and mother at Chawton Cottage in Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire, where she resumes writing regularly.
• September 18 – A new Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, London opens to replace the first, burnt down in 1808, with a performance of Macbeth. An increase in ticket prices causes the Old Price Riots, which last for 64 days, until the manager, John Philip Kemble, reverses the price rise.
• The Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia is established as "The New Circus" by the Circus of Pepin and Breschard. It is the oldest continually operating theatre in the English-speaking world and the oldest in the United States.^[4]
• William Combe begins publication of the verse Tour of Dr Syntax in search of the Picturesque in Ackermann's Political Magazine (London), illustrated by Thomas Rowlandson, satirising William Gilpin's views on the picturesque.
• Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia (1993) is set partly in this year.

New books

Births

• January 19 – Edgar Allan Poe, American poet, short story writer and literary critic (died 1849)
• March 6 – David Bates, American poet (died 1870)
• March 31
  • Nikolai Gogol, Russian dramatist, novelist and short story writer (died 1852)
  • Edward Fitzgerald, English poet (died 1883)
• June 3 – Margaret Gatty, English children's writer (died 1873)
• June 13 – Heinrich Hoffmann, German author and children's poet (died 1894)
• August 6 – Alfred Tennyson, English poet (died 1892)
• August 29 – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., American poet (died 1894)
• September 7 – Wilhelmina Gravallius, Swedish novelist (died 1884)
• November 27 – Fanny Kemble, English actress (died 1893)
• Unknown date – George Ayliffe Poole, English writer and cleric (died 1883)

Deaths

• January 3 – Richard Shepherd, English theologian (born c. 1732)
• February – John Andrews, English historical writer and pamphleteer (born 1736)
• March 11 – Hannah Cowley, English dramatist and poet (born 1743)
• March 23 – Thomas Holcroft, English dramatist and miscellanist (born 1745)
• March 25 – Anna Seward, English poet (born 1747)
• June 8 – Thomas Paine, English political theorist (born 1737)
• October 19 – Jean-Henri Gourgaud, French actor (born 1746)
• December 20 – Joseph Johnson, English publisher (born 1738)
• December 21 – Tiberius Cavallo, Italian physicist and natural philosopher (born 1749)
• December 23 – József Fabchich, Hungarian translator of Greek poetry and lexicographer (born 1753)

References