1830 in literature

• February – Barthold Georg Niebuhr's house burns down, but most of his books are saved.
• February 25 – The première of Victor Hugo's play Hernani in Paris elicits protests from an audience seeing it as an attack on Classicism.[1]
• March 26 – The Book of Mormon is published by Joseph Smith in Palmyra, New York.
• May 22 – Amos Bronson Alcott marries Abby May at King's Chapel, Boston (Massachusetts).[2]
• May 24 – Sarah Josepha Hale's Poems for Our Children, including "Mary's Lamb", with the verse "Mary Had a Little Lamb", is published by Marsh, Capen & Lyon in Boston, Massachusetts.
• July 1 – Edgar Allan Poe matriculates as a cadet at the United States Military Academy, West Point.
• August – François-René de Chateaubriand sacrifices his political career by refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to Louis-Philippe, and retires to write his memoirs.
• Victor Cousin is elected to the Académie française.
• James Mill becomes head of the London office of the British East India Company.
• The English publishers Bradbury and Evans are established as printers by William Bradbury and Frederick Mullet Evans.[3]
• Edward Moxon begins his own publishing business in London.
• Elizabeth Vestris becomes the first female actor-manager in the history of London theatre by leasing the Olympic Theatre in Drury Lane where she presents extravaganzas and burlesques.
• The famous opening line of Edward Bulwer's (anonymous) novel, Paul Clifford, published this year, begins: "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

• January 28 – Martha Foster Crawford, American writer and missionary (died 1909)
• February 28 – James Payn, English novelist (died 1898)
• March 15 – Paul Heyse, German writer and Nobel laureate (died 1914)
• March 18 – Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, French historian (died 1889)
• March 25 – Frederick Greenwood, English novelist and man of letters (died 1909)
• April 6 – Eugène Rambert, Swiss poet and writer (died 1886)
• April 21 – Mary A. Brayton Woodbridge, American editor and reformer (died 1894)
• May 17 – Sarah Gibson Humphreys, American author and suffragist (died 1907)
• May 20 – Hector Malot, French writer (died 1907)
• July 22 – Richard Copley Christie, English scholar (died 1902)
• September 8 – Frédéric Mistral, French poet (died 1914)
• September 2 – Josefina Wettergrund, Swedish writer (died 1903)
• October 15 – Helen Hunt Jackson, American writer and activist (died 1885)
• October 30 – Eliza Brightwen (née Elder), Scottish naturalist (died 1906)
• December 5 – Christina Rossetti, English poet (died 1894)
• December 10 – Emily Dickinson, American poet (died 1886)
• December 17 – Jules de Goncourt, French founder of Prix Goncourt (died 1870)

Uncertain dates

• Frances Freeling Broderip (née Hood), English children's writer (died 1878)
• Mary Anna Needell (Mrs. J. H. Needell), English novelist (died 1922)

• January 17 or 30 – Wilhelm Waiblinger, German Romantic poet (born 1804)
• January 26 – Maria Petronella Woesthoven, Dutch poet (died 1760)
• February 15 – Prince Ioane of Georgia, Georgian encyclopedist (born 1768)
• February 20 – Robert Anderson, Scottish literary editor, biographer and critic (born 1750)
• February 25 – Henrietta Maria Bowdler, English author and expurgator (born 1750)
• March 29 – James Rennell, English historian and oceanographer (born 1742)
• April 16 – József Katona, Hungarian dramatist and poet (born 1791)
• August 6 – David Walker, African American abolitionist (born 1785)
• August 20 – Vasily Pushkin, Russian poet (born 1766)
• September 18 – William Hazlitt, English essayist (born 1778)
• October 8 – Johann Gottfried Ebel, Prussian-born Swiss travel writer (born 1764)
• By November – Mary Diana Dods, Scottish writer known as "David Lyndsay", later "Walter Sholto Douglas" (born 1790)
• November 20 – Gustav von Ewers, German legal historian (born 1781)
• December 8 – Benjamin Constant, Swiss-born French liberal author (born 1767)
• December 31 – Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis, French dramatist and writer on education (born 1746)

• Newdigate Prize – George Kettilby Rickards