1800 in literature

Events

• January - Maria Edgeworth's first extended work of fiction, Castle Rackrent, is published anonymously in London, variously regarded as the first historical novel, the first regional novel in English, the first Anglo-Irish novel, the first Big House novel, the first saga novel and the first with an unreliable narrator.
• January 10 - The Serampore Mission and Press is established in Serampore India by Baptist missionaries Joshua Marshman and William Ward. The press will grow into the largest in Asia, printing books in nearly every Indian language.
• March - English "ploughboy poet" Robert Bloomfield's The Farmer's Boy is published with engravings by Thomas Bewick, selling over 25,000 copies in the next two years, with 15 editions by 1827 and a number of translations.
• April 24 - The United States establishes the Library of Congress.
• June 14 - Friedrich Schiller's historical drama Mary Stuart has its première in Weimar.
• October 3 - William and Dorothy Wordsworth, walking near Grasmere in the English Lake District, encounter a leech gatherer who inspires his poem "Resolution and Independence", first written 18 months later.

• William Blake begins three years' residence in a cottage at Felpham in Sussex to illustrate the works of William Hayley; here he begins work on his poem .

  New books

Fiction

• Helen Craik – The Hermit's Cell
• Maria Edgeworth – Castle Rackrent
• Anne Ford – The School for Fashion
• Stéphanie Félicité, Comtesse de Genlis – The Rival Mothers
• William Henry Ireland
• *Gondez the Monk
• *Rimualdo
• Francis Lathom – Mystery
• William Linley – Forbidden Apartments
• Mary Meeke – Anecdotes of the Altamont Family
• Eliza Parsons – The Miser and his Family
• Regina Maria Roche
• *The Nocturnal Visit
• *The Vicar of Lansdowne
• Catherine Selden – Serena
• Horatio Smith – A Family Story

  Children

• François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil
• *Les Petits orphelins du hameau
• *Paul, ou la Ferme abandonnée
• Edward Augustus Kendall
• *The Swallow: a fiction interspersed with poetry
• *The Stories of Senex; or little histories of little people

  Drama

• Friedrich Schiller – Maria Stuart

  Non-fiction

• Jacob Boehme – L'Aurore naissante
• Alexander Geddes – Critical Remarks on the Hebrew Scriptures
• Elizabeth Hamilton – Memoirs of Modern Philosophers
• Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren – Geschichte des europäischen Staatensystems
• Immanuel Kant – Logik
• Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling – System of Transcendental Idealism
• Parson Weems – A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington

  Births

• January 6 – Anna Maria Hall, Irish novelist
• January 16 – Robert Bell, Irish-born man of letters
• March 25 – Alexis Paulin Paris, French editor of medieval manuscripts
• April 17 – Catherine Sinclair, Scottish novelist and children's writer
• May 5 – Louis Christophe François Hachette, French publisher
• October 18 – Sir Henry Taylor, English dramatist and poet
• October 25
• *Maria Jane Jewsbury, English writer, poet and reviewer
• *Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, English-born poet and historian
• November 27 – Fanny Kemble, English actress and writer
• Thomas Henry Lister, English novelist and Registrar General
• Wanda Malecka, Polish translator, poet and novelist

  Deaths

• January 22 – George Steevens, English Shakespearean commentator
• February 22 – Joseph Warton, English academic and literary critic
• March 14 – Daines Barrington, English lawyer, antiquary and naturalist
• March 29 – Marc René, marquis de Montalembert, French military engineer and writer
• April 25 – William Cowper, English poet