1827 in literature

• January – Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin begins his Irish-language diary, later published as Cín Lae Amhlaoibh.[1]
• February – Thomas De Quincey's essay On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts is published in Blackwood's Magazine.
• February 23 – Sir Walter Scott's authorship of the Waverley Novels is first publicly acknowledged at an Edinburgh Theatrical Fund dinner.[2]
• April 16 – Nathaniel Willis Senior begins publishing a new magazine for children, The Youth's Companion, in Boston, Massachusetts, weekly from June 6. One of the most enduring of its type, the magazine continues until 1929.
• September 4 – Great Fire of Turku concerns the largest city in Finland at that time. It destroyed Finnish archives, including practically all material from Finland's Middle Ages. The library of the Royal Academy of Turku was also destroyed.
• October 14 – Ludwig Tieck's Potsdam production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is the first to feature the incidental music composed by Felix Mendelssohn.

Uncertain dates

• Samuel Griswold Goodrich publishes the first of the "Peter Parley" juvenile books in the United States, which will continue until 1860.
• Thomas Skinner Sturr's anonymous Richmond, or stories in the life of a Bow Street officer, the earliest collection of detective stories, is published in London by Henry Colburn.
• The Swedish theatre director Johan Peter Strömberg opens what will become the Christiania Theatre in Norway.
• John James Audubon begins publication of a 10-volume The Birds of America in the United Kingdom.

• February 17 – Rose Terry Cooke, American author and poet (died 1892)
• February 22 – Bhudev Mukhopadhyay, Bengali writer and philosopher (died 1894)
• March 4 – Henrietta Keddie (Sarah Tytler), Scottish novelist and children's writer (died 1914)[3]
• March 25 – Edward Bradley, English novelist and cleric (died 1889)
• April 10 – Mary Helen Peck Crane, American activist and writer (died 1891)
• April 10 – Lew Wallace, American soldier, politician and novelist (died 1905)
• April 16 – Octave Crémazie, pioneering French Canadian poet (died 1879)
• June 12 – Johanna Spyri, Swiss children's author (died 1901)
• September 13 – Catherine Winkworth, English translator and hymnist (died 1878)
• September 18 – John Townsend Trowbridge, American author (died 1916)

Uncertain date

• Margaret Eleanor Parker, English-born Scottish travel writer, social activist and social reformer (died 1896)

• February 18 – Joseph Heinrich Aloysius Gügler, Swiss philosopher and theologian (born 1782)
• May 28 – William James, English naval historian (born 1780)
• July 3 – David Davis (Castellhywel), Welsh minister and poet (born 1745)
• July 22 – Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob, German economist (born 1759)
• July 27 – Fredrique Eleonore Baptiste, Swedish-Finnish playwright
• August 12 – William Blake, English poet and artist (born 1757)
• September 15 – Robert Pollok, Scottish poet (born c. 1798)
• October 10 – Ugo Foscolo, Greek-born Italian dramatist and poet (born 1778)
• November – Alethea Lewis, English novelist (born 1749)
• November 18 – Wilhelm Hauff, German poet and novelist (born 1802)
• December 15 – Helen Maria Williams, English novelist, poet and translator from French (born 1759)
• December 26 – Feliks Jarońskij, Polish philosopher (born 1777)

• Newdigate Prize – Robert Stephen Hawker

• May 12 – Establishment of the Pickwick Club, according to Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers (1836).