# 1799 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1799.

## Events

* Premières of the second and third parts of Friedrich Schiller's dramatic trilogy Wallenstein are performed at the Weimarer Hoftheater under Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
** January 30 – Die Piccolomini.
** April 20 – Wallensteins Tod (Wallenstein's Death) as Wallenstein.
* April 13 – The father of Charles and Mary Lamb dies; Charles becomes his sister's guardian.
* May 8 – The Religious Tract Society is established as an evangelical publisher in Paternoster Row, London; it continues as The Lutterworth Press into the 21st century.
* December 20 – William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy first take up residence at Dove Cottage, Grasmere. William completes the first version of The Prelude during the year.
* unknown dates
** A new edition of Edward Young's Night Thoughts is illustrated by Thomas Stothard.
** The Monthly Magazine and American Review starts publication in the United States, edited by Charles Brockden Brown.

## New books
### Fiction

* Anonymous – Village Orphan
* Charles Brockden Brown
** Arthur Mervyn
** Edgar Huntly
** Ormond
* Thomas Campbell – The Pleasures of Hope
* Elizabeth Gunning – The Gipsey Countess
* Mary Hays – The Victim of Prejudice
* Friedrich Hölderlin – Hyperion, vol. 2
* William Henry Ireland – The Abbess
* Jane West – A Tale of the Times
* Mary Julia Young – The East Indian

### Children

* François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil – Les Cinquante Francs de Jeannette (Jeanette's Fifty Francs)
* Edward Augustus Kendall
** The Crested Wren. A Tale
** The Canary Bird. A moral fiction interspersed with poetry
* Dorothy Kilner (as M. Pelham) – Rational Brutes, or Talking Animals

### Drama

* Thomas John Dibdin
** The Birth Day
** Five Thousand a Year
* William Dunlap – The Italian Father
* Joseph George Holman – The Votary of Wealth
* Elizabeth Inchbald – The Wise Man of the East
* Kamesuke – Picture Book of the Taiko (kabuki)
* Matthew Lewis – The East Indian
* Edward Morris – The Secret
* Frederick Reynolds – Management
* Friedrich von Schiller – Wallensteins Tod
* Richard Brinsley Sheridan – Pizarro
* Oscar Wegelin – The Natural Daughter
* Thomas Sedgwick Whalley – The Castle of Montval

### Non-fiction

* Hannah Adams – A Summary History of New-England
* Hannah More – Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education
* Lady Charlotte Murray – The British Garden
* Philip Yorke – The Royal Tribes of Wales

## Births

* January 31 – Rodolphe Töpffer, Swiss teacher, author, and artist (died 1846)
* February 4
** Almeida Garrett, Portuguese writer (died 1854)
** Thomas Kibble Hervey, Scottish-born poet and critic (died 1859)
* March – Dorothea Tieck, German translator (died 1841)
* March 12 – Mary Howitt, English writer, poet and translator (died 1888)
* March 13 – Maria Dorothea Dunckel, Swedish poet, translator and dramatist (died 1878)
* March 20 – Karl August Nicander, Swedish poet (died 1839)
* April 17 – Eliza Acton, English poet and cookery writer (died 1859)
* May 13 – Catherine Gore, English author (died 1861)
* May 20 – Honoré de Balzac, French novelist (died 1850)
* May 23 – Thomas Hood, English poet (died 1845)
* June 6 – Aleksandr Pushkin, Russian dramatist and poet (died 1837)
* October 9 – Louisa Stuart Costello Irish writer on travel and history (died 1870)
* November 29 – Amos Bronson Alcott, American writer, philosopher, and reformer (died 1888)
* December 30 – John Moultrie, English poet and hymnist (died 1874)
* unknown date – Rallou Karatza, Greek Wallachian translator and theatrical promoter (died 1870)

## Deaths

* February 19 – Jean-Charles de Borda, French engineer and memoirist (born 1733)
* February 24 – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, German satirist (born 1742)
* April 24 – William Seward, English man of letters (born 1747)
* May 18 – Pierre Beaumarchais, French dramatist (born 1732)
* August 30 – Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel, Italian poet and revolutionary (executed, born 1751)
* December 31 – Jean-François Marmontel, French historian, writer (born 1723)