1812 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 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.
• January 15 – Lord Byron takes his seat in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
• March 20 – First two cantos of Lord Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage are published^[1] by John Murray in London. This sells out in five days, giving rise to Byron's comment "I awoke one morning and found myself famous".^[2]
• May–July – Auction in London of the library of the Duke of Roxburghe (d. 1804). 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 this 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 to December 14 – French invasion of Russia, which will form the climax of Tolstoy's 1869 novel War and Peace and feature in 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.^[3]
• December 26 – Frederick Marryat promoted to lieutenant after distinguished service at sea in the War of 1812.

New books

Births

• February 7 – Charles Dickens, English novelist and editor (died 1870)
• 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)
• May 12 – Edward Lear, English humorous poet and caricaturist (died 1888)
• 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)
• October 29 – Louise Granberg, Swedish playwright (died 1907)
• December 23 – Samuel Smiles, Scottish self-help author (died 1904)

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)
• 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)

In literature

The following works are set partly or wholly in this year

• Adam Mickiewicz's epic poem Pan Tadeusz (1834)
• Ivan Turgenev's short story "The Jew" (1847)
• Charlotte Brontë's novel Shirley (1849)
• Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace (1869)
• Georgette Heyer's novel Regency Buck (1935)
• Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia (1993)

References