1823 in literature

• February 7 – The Bannatyne Club is inaugurated by Sir Walter Scott and others as a text publication society to print by subscription rare texts on the history, literature and traditions of Scotland.
• October – Thomas De Quincey's classic essay "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth" appears in this month's issue of The London Magazine.
• May 23 – Russian writer Alexander Pushkin begins work on his verse novel Eugene Onegin.[1]
• December – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, suffering from opium addiction, moves to No. 3, The Grove, Highgate, a house owned by Dr James Gillman.[2]
• December 23 – Clement Clarke Moore's poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas is published anonymously in the Troy, New York, Sentinel, and introduces the eponym "Santa Claus".

Unknown dates

• • Discovery of the 1603 First Quarto edition of William Shakespeare's Hamlet (a so-called "bad quarto"), by Sir Henry Bunbury, causes scholarly excitement.[3]
  • London actor Edmund Kean reinstates in performance the original, tragic ending of Shakespeare's play King Lear, not generally used since 1681, although it is not well received.[4]
  • The London publisher C. Baldwyn brings out the first English translation of Grimms' Fairy Tales as German Popular Stories. Translated from the Kinder und Haus Märchen collected by MM. Grimm from Oral Tradition. The anonymous translations were made by two lawyers, Edgar Taylor and David Jardine, and the illustrations by George Cruikshank, who is beginning to focus on this medium.[5]

• January 1 – Sándor Petőfi, Hungarian poet and revolutionary (died 1849)
• February 28 – Ernest Renan, French philosopher and writer (died 1892)
• March 20 – Ned Buntline (E. Z. C. Judson), American writer and publisher 1886)
• April 6 – Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney, American poet, author, editor, and educator (died 1908)[7]
• April 12 – Alexander Ostrovsky, Russian dramatist (died 1886)
• August 2 – Edward Augustus Freeman, English historian and politician (died 1892)
• August 13 – Goldwin Smith, English historian and journalist (died 1910)
• September 23 – Sara Jane Lippincott, American author, poet, correspondent, lecturer, and newspaper founder (died 1904)[8]
• September 27 – Augusta Harvey Worthen, American author and educator (died 1910)[9]
• October 6 – George Henry Boker, American poet, playwright and diplomat (died 1890)
• December 28 – Augusta Theodosia Drane, English religious writer and biographer (died 1894)

• February 7 – Ann Radcliffe, English novelist (born 1764)
• February 21 – Charles Wolfe, Irish poet (born 1791)
• April 10 – Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Austrian philosopher (born 1757)
• May 16 – Ōta Nanpo, Japanese comic poet and painter (born 1749)
• June 19 – William Combe, English writer, poet and adventurer (born 1742)
• August 19 – Robert Bloomfield, English "ploughboy poet" (born 1766)
• August 20 – Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus, German encyclopedia publisher and editor (born 1772)
• September 11 – David Ricardo, English political economist (born 1772)
• November 9 – Vasily Kapnist, Russian poet and dramatist (born 1758)

• Chancellor's Gold Medal – Winthrop Mackworth Praed
• Newdigate Prize – T. S. Salmon[10]