1817 in literature

• January 27 – March 18 – Jane Austen begins, but abandons her novel Sanditon ("Three Brothers").[1]
• February 12 – Junius Brutus Booth makes his stage debut in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London.[2]
• February 20 – Junius Brutus Booth as Iago plays opposite Edmund Kean in the title role of Othello at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London.[2]
• April 1 – Blackwood's Magazine is launched as the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. In October the publisher, William Blackwood, relaunches it as Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
• August 6 – Gas lighting on stage is introduced in London's English Opera House (extended to the auditorium on September 8). On September 6 it is introduced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where it has already been installed in the auditorium and foyer, and the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, as a demonstration.[3]
• December 18 – 20 – William Hone successfully defends himself in a London court on charges arising from his publication of political satires.
• December 28 – English painter Benjamin Haydon introduces John Keats to William Wordsworth and Charles Lamb at a dinner in London to celebrate progress on his painting Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, in which all feature.[4]
• December 31 – Walter Scott's historical novel Rob Roy, written from this spring, is published anonymously by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh, while a shipload of copies is carried from Leith to London for simultaneous publication there by Longman.[5]
• December – Jane Austen's first and last completed novels, respectively Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are published together by John Murray in London (dated 1818), six months after the author's death at Winchester. Her brother Henry Austen contributes a biographical note, which first publicly identifies her as the author of her previously anonymous novels. She had earned £684 in her lifetime from her writing.
• J. & J. Harper publishing house is founded in New York City by James Harper and his brother John.

• February 21 – José Zorrilla y Moral, Spanish poet and dramatist (died 1893)
• March 19 – Jozef Miloslav Hurban, Slovak writer, radical and minister (died 1886)
• May 21 – Hermann Lotze, German philosopher (died 1881)
• July 12 – Henry David Thoreau, American poet and philosopher (died 1862)
• September 5 – Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Russian poet, dramatist and novelist (died 1875)
• September 14 – Theodor Storm, German novelist and poet (died 1888)
• December 31 – James Thomas Fields, American publisher (died 1881)

• March 23 – José Mariano Beristain, Mexican bibliographer (born 1756)[7]
• April 25 – Joseph von Sonnenfels, Austrian novelist (born 1732)[8]
• May 24 – Juan Meléndez Valdés, Spanish poet (born 1754)
• July 14 – Germaine de Staël, French woman of letters (born 1766)[9]
• July 18 – Jane Austen, English novelist (born 1775)[10]
• December 28 – Charles Burney, English classicist (born 1757)

Uncertain dates

• Caleb Bingham, American textbook author (born 1757)
• Joakim Stulić, Croatian lexicographer (born 1730)
• Tarikonda Venkamamba, Telugu woman poet (born 1730)