1798 in literature

1st London edition of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads

Wordsworth in 1798

Coleridge in the 1790s

• February – Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes the conversation poem "Frost at Midnight", commonly seen as the best of the series.
• April – Coleridge writes the conversation poems "Fears in Solitude" ("Written ... During the Alarm of an Invasion", soon published in a pamphlet) and "The Nightingale".
• April 16 – Coleridge's "The Recantation: An Ode" appears in The Morning Post, describing his disillusionment with the French Revolution.
• April 30 – Richard Cumberland's comedy The Eccentric Lover is first performed at the Covent Garden Theatre in London.
• September 18 – Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge is first published anonymously in Bristol by Joseph Cottle (who also remains anonymous), marking the beginning of English literary Romanticism.[1] Most of the poems are by Wordsworth, including Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour, 13 July 1798, but also opening with the first publication of Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, whose first London publication is on October 4.
• October 11 – Elizabeth Inchbald's Lovers' Vows (adapted from Kotzebue's Das Kind der Liebe – the child of love) is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London.
• October 12 – The rebuilt Weimarer Hoftheater are inaugurated with the first performance of the first part of Friedrich Schiller's dramatic trilogy Wallenstein: Das Lager (The Camp), directed by Goethe.

Uncertain dates

• Ivan Kotliarevsky's mock-heroic poem Eneyida (Енеїда) is published as the first printed work in the modern Ukrainian language.
• The National Library of the Netherlands originates when the Batavian Republic opens the former library of the stadtholder to the public.[2]
• The Académie française publishes the 5th edition of its Dictionnaire.
• Thomas Nelson (publisher) originates in Edinburgh as a second-hand religious bookshop.

• January 5 – David Macbeth Moir, Scottish poet and humorist (died 1851)
• January 29 – Henry Neele, English poet and scholar (died 1828)
• February 12 – Catherine Gore, English novelist and dramatist (died 1861)
• February 17 – Auguste Comte, French philosopher (died 1857)
• March 30 – Luise Hensel, German religious author and poet (died 1876)
• June 29 – Count Giacomo Leopardi, Italian poet, essayist and philologist (died 1837)

• April 12 – Madeleine de Puisieux, French philosopher and feminist writer (born 1720)
• June 4 – Giacomo Casanova, Italian librarian and memoirist (born 1725)
• June 20 – Jeremy Belknap, American historian of New Hampshire (born 1744)
• December 16 – Thomas Pennant, Welsh naturalist and travel writer (born 1726)