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1818 in literature

List of years in literature (table)
In poetry
1815
1816
1817
1818
1819
1820
1821

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1818.

Events

  • January 1 – Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus first appears anonymously in London.[1] Its originality is praised by Walter Scott.[2]
  • January 8 – Lord Byron, in Venice, sends the final part of Childe Harold to his publisher.[3]
  • January 11 – Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" appears in Leigh Hunt's weekly The Examiner (London; p. 24) under the pen name "Glirastes". Horace Smith's contribution to the same informal sonnet-writing competition, "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below" is published on February 1 under his initials.
  • January – Samuel Taylor Coleridge delivers a series of lectures on poetry, drama and philosophy, beginning with Shakespeare's Hamlet.[4]
  • March 12 – Percy Bysshe Shelley, his wife Mary and her stepsister Claire Clairmont leave England for Italy, intending to take Claire's illegitimate child Alba to her father, Lord Byron.[5]
  • April 11 – John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge take a walk on Hampstead Heath. In a letter to his brother George, Keats writes that they talked of "a thousand things... nightingales, poetry, poetical sensation, metaphysics."[6]
  • May 11 – The Old Vic is founded as the Royal Coburg Theatre in South London by James King, Daniel Dunn and John Thomas Serres.
  • June – Last issue of The Portico: A Repository of Science & Literature is published with John Neal as editor.[7]
  • June–August – Keats with his friend Charles Armitage Brown makes a walking tour of Scotland, Ireland and the English Lake District. On July 11 while in Scotland he visits Burns Cottage, the birthplace of Robert Burns (1759–1796). Before Keats arrives, he writes to a friend "one of the pleasantest means of annulling self is approaching such a shrine as the cottage of Burns — we need not think of his misery — that is all gone — bad luck to it — I shall look upon it all with unmixed pleasure."[8] but his encounter with the cottage's alcoholic custodian returns him to thoughts of misery.[9] On August 2 he climbs to the summit of Ben Nevis, on which he writes a sonnet.[10]
  • July
  • July 18 – Walter Scott's historical novel The Heart of Midlothian appears as Tales of My Landlord, 2nd series, by "Jedediah Cleishbotham", in four volumes. A shipload of copies is sent from John Ballantyne (publisher) in Edinburgh to London.[11]
  • August 28 – The National Library of Iceland is founded as Íslands stiftisbókasafn, at the instigation of a Danish antiquarian, Carl Christian Rafn, and the Icelandic Literary Society.
  • September 19 – Lord Byron writes to Thomas Moore that he has completed the first canto of Don Juan, begun on July 3.[12]
  • November – Fanny Brawne first meets John Keats at the home of Charles Armitage Brown.[13]

New books

Fiction

Children

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards

References

  1. ^ a b "Icons, a portrait of England 1800–1820". Archived from the original on 2007-10-17. Retrieved 2007-09-11.
  2. ^ Scott, Walter (March 1818). "Remarks on Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus; A Novel". Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine: 613–620.
  3. ^ Letter CCCIV.
  4. ^ Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Hamlet". Lectures and Notes on Shakspere and Other English Poets. Shakespeare and his Critics. Archived from the original on 2014-01-13. Retrieved 2014-01-07.
  5. ^ Gittings, Robert; Manton, Jo (1992). Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Oxford University Press. pp. 39–42. ISBN 0-19-818594-4.
  6. ^ Motion, Andrew (1997). Keats. London: Faber. pp. 365–66. ISBN 057117227X.
  7. ^ Sears, Donald A. (1978). John Neal. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. p. 111. ISBN 080-5-7723-08.
  8. ^ Costa, Robert (2009-08-04). "Keats’s House, Restored". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2009-08-12. Archived 2009-08-15.
  9. ^ Colvin, Sidney. John Keats.
  10. ^ "200 years ago Keats climbed Ben Nevis". Keats 200. 2018. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  11. ^ Sutherland, John (2014). How to be Well Read. London: Random House. p. 214. ISBN 978-1-847-94640-9.
  12. ^ Letter CCCXXII.
  13. ^ Walsh, John Evangelist (1999). Darkling, I Listen: The Last Days and Death of John Keats. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312222556.
  14. ^ a b Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 249–250. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
  15. ^ Sears, Donald A. (1978). John Neal. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. p. 145. ISBN 080-5-7723-08.
  16. ^ "Emily Bronte | Biography, Works, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
  17. ^ J. D. Wyss (5 March 2009). The Swiss Family Robinson. Penguin Adult. p. 409. ISBN 978-0-14-132530-9.
  18. ^ Christopher Reeve, "Bonhôte, Elizabeth (1744–1818)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, UK: OUP, 2004) Retrieved 24 September 2015
  19. ^ Royle, Trevor (2012). The Mainstream Companion to Scottish Literature. Random House. p. 92. ISBN 9781780574196.
  20. ^ The Gentleman's Magazine, 88(1): p. 443.
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