# 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.
* 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.
* 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
* 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)

## 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)
* unknown dates
** Ji Yun (纪昀), Chinese poet and scholar (born 1724)
** Anna Hammar-Rosén, Swedish publisher (born 1735)