1805 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1805.

Events

• January 18–September 6 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge serves as Acting Public Secretary in Malta.^[1]
• Early – Jacob Grimm is invited to Paris as an assistant to Friedrich Carl von Savigny.
• October 12 – The new Theatre Royal, Bath, opens in England, replacing the Old Orchard Street Theatre.^[2]
• Unknown date – Henry Thomas Colebrooke makes the first translation into English of the Sanskrit Aitareya Upanishad.

New books

Fiction

• Eugenia de Acton – The Nuns of the Desert
• Sophie Ristaud Cottin – Mathilde (translated as The Saracen; or Matilda and Malek Adhel: A Crusade Romance)
• Charlotte Dacre – Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer
• Robert Charles Dallas – The Morlands
• Maria Edgeworth – The Modern Griselda
• Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville – Le Dernier Homme
• Elizabeth Helme:
  • The Chronicles of Christabelle de Mowbray
  • The Pilgrims of the Cross
• William Henry Ireland – Gondez the Monk
• Matthew Gregory Lewis – The Bravo of Venice
• Mary Meeke – The Wonder of the Village
• Anna Maria Porter
  • A Sailor's Friendship
  • A Soldier's Love
• Jan Potocki – The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse, first ten "days")
• Catherine Selden – Villa Nova

Children

• Ann Taylor and Jane Taylor – Original Poems for Infant Minds by several young persons, vol. 2
• Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano (edited and composed) – Des Knaben Wunderhorn, vol. 1

Drama

• Marianne Chambers – The School for Friends
• George Colman the Younger –Who Wants a Guinea?
• Alexandre-Vincent Pineux Duval – Le Menuisier de Livonie
• Robert William Elliston – The Venetian Outlaw
• Elizabeth Inchbald – To Marry or Not to Marry
• Matthew Lewis – Rugantino
• Thomas Morton – The School of Reform
• Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger – Hakon Jarl
• Henry James Pye – A Prior Claim
• Frederick Reynolds – The Delinquent
• John Tobin – The Honey Moon

Poetry

• Ivan Pnin – God
• Walter Scott – The Lay of the Last Minstrel
• Martin Archer Shee – Rhymes on Art
• Robert Southey – Madoc

Non-fiction

• Hosea Ballou – A Treatise on Atonement
• James Belcher – "Treatice [sic.] on Boxing by Mr. J. Belcher" (article in George Barrington, New London Year)
• Henry Thomas Colebrooke
  • Essay on the Vedas
  • A Grammar of the Sanskrit Language
• Denis Diderot (posthumously) – Rameau's Nephew (in a German translation by Goethe)
• William Henry Ireland – The Confessions of William Henry Ireland
• Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool – Treatise on the Coins of the Realm
• Ellis Cornelia Knight – Description of Latium or La Campagna di Roma
• Richard Payne Knight – An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste
• Jane Marcet (anonymously) – Conversations on Chemistry^[3]
• Mercy Otis Warren – History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution

Births

• February 4 – William Harrison Ainsworth, English historical novelist (died 1882)
• April 2 – Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer (died 1875)
• July 29 – Alexis de Tocqueville, French writer (died 1859)
• August 29 – F. D. Maurice, English theologian and novelist (died 1872)
• September 19 – John Stevens Cabot Abbott, American historian (died 1877)
• December 23 – Joseph Smith, American founder and prophet of the Latter Day Saint movement (killed 1844)

Schiller on his deathbed – drawing by Ferdinand Jagemann

Deaths

• February 24 – Ralph Broome, English pamphleteer (born 1742)
• March 29 – Jean Elliot, Scottish poet (born 1727)
• May 9 – Friedrich Schiller, German playwright (born 1759)
• May 25 – William Paley, English philosopher (born 1743)
  • Anna Maria Rückerschöld, Swedish author (born 1725)
• June 18 – Arthur Murphy (Charles Ranger), Irish writer (born 1727)
• July 27 – Brian Merriman (Brian Mac Giolla Meidhre), Irish-language poet (born c. 1749)
• August 3 – Christopher Anstey, English poet (born 1724)
• Early September – Mary Deverell, English religious writer, essayist and poet (born 1731)
• September 3 – Johann Martin Abele, German publisher (born 1753)
• December 21 – Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage, Portuguese poet (born 1765)^[4]
• unknown dates
  • Ji Yun (纪昀), Chinese poet and scholar (born 1724)^[5]
  • Anna Hammar-Rosén, Swedish publisher (born 1735)