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.

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)