1804 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1804.

Events

 * March 17 – The first performance of Friedrich Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell takes place at Weimar under the direction of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
 * April 15 – John Keats' father, a stable worker, dies of a fractured skull, after falling from his horse while returning from visiting John at school.
 * May – Samuel Taylor Coleridge travels to Attard in Malta, where he obtains employment as Acting Public Secretary.
 * unknown dates
 * James Mill's pamphlet critical of the corn trade, An Essay on the Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exportation of Grain, is published.
 * William Wordsworth writes his best-known poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", describing a scene he witnessed two years earlier.
 * German Gerhard Bonnier begins a publishing business in Copenhagen (Denmark) by issuing Underfulde og sandfærdige kriminalhistorier, origin of the Swedish Bonnier Group.

Fiction

 * Mir Amman – Bagh o Buhar, a Translation into the Hindoostanee Tongue of the Celebrated Persian Tale "Qissui Chuhar Durwesh" "by Meer Ummun"
 * Sophie Ristaud Cottin – Malvina
 * Rachel Hunter -The Unexpected Legacy
 * William Henry Ireland – The Sepulchral Summons
 * Mary Meeke
 * Amazement
 * The Nine Days' Wonder
 * Amelia Opie – Adeline Mowbray
 * Ōta Nanpo (大田 南畝) and others – Shokusanjin ennyo meisekishu (Collection of Shokusanjin memorabilia)
 * Anna Maria Porter – The Lake of Killarney

Children

 * François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil
 * Elmonde, ou la Fille de l'hospice (Edmonde, the charity girl)
 * Jules, ou le Toit paternel (Jules, or Under his father's roof)
 * Maria Edgeworth – Popular Tales
 * Eliza Fenwick – Mary and Her Cat
 * Ann Taylor and Jane Taylor – Original Poems for Infant Minds by several young persons, Vol. 1

Drama

 * Richard Cumberland – The Sailor's Daughter
 * Thomas Dibdin
 * Guilty or Not Guilty
 * The Will for the Deed
 * Francis Ludlow Holt – The Land We Live In
 * Frederick Reynolds – The Blind Bargain
 * Friedrich von Schiller – Wilhelm Tell
 * Friedrich Hölderlin – translations of the dramas of Sophocles (published)

Poetry

 * William Blake – Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion
 * William Lisle Bowles – The Spirit of Discovery
 * Kirsha Danilov – The Ancient Russian Poems

Non-fiction

 * Thomas Brown – Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect
 * John Wilson Croker – Familiar Epistles to J. F. Jones, Esquire, on the State of the Irish Stage
 * Jakob Friedrich Fries – System der Philosophie als evidente Wissenschaft
 * Jacques Labillardière – Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen
 * James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale – Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth

Births

 * July 1 – George Sand (Lucile Aurore Dupin), French novelist and memoirist (died 1876)
 * July 4 – Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist (died 1864)
 * August 8 – Countess Dash, French writer (died 1872)
 * September 8 – Eduard Mörike, German poet (died 1875)
 * November 6 – Benjamin Hall Kennedy, English classicist (died 1880)
 * December 10 – Eugène Sue, French novelist (died 1857)
 * December 21 – Benjamin Disraeli, English novelist and prime minister (died 1881)

Deaths

 * January 4 – Charlotte Lennox, English novelist and playwright (born c. 1730)
 * January 11 – James Tytler, Scottish American editor of Encyclopædia Britannica (born 1745)
 * February 6 – Joseph Priestley, English natural philosopher and theologian (born 1733)
 * February 12 – Immanuel Kant, German philosopher (born 1724)
 * February 19 – Philip Yorke, Welsh antiquary and genealogist (born 1743)
 * April 3 – Jędrzej Kitowicz, Polish historian and diarist (born c. 1727)
 * April 27 – Jonathan Boucher, English philologist (born 1738)
 * May 3 – Celestyn Czaplic, Polish poet and politician (born 1723)
 * July 16 – Jean-Louis de Lolme, Swiss political theorist (born 1741)
 * August 9 – Robert Potter, English translator, poet and cleric (born 1721)
 * August 13 – Anica Bošković, Ragusan writer (born 1714)
 * October 30 – Samuel Ayscough, English librarian and indexer (born 1745)
 * November 5 – Betje Wolff, Dutch novelist (born 1738)
 * November 23 – Richard Graves, English poet and novelist (born 1715)
 * December 9 – Wilhelm Abraham Teller, German theologian (born 1734)
 * December – John Boydell, English Shakespeare illustrator and engraver (born 1720)