1804 in literature

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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.^[1]
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.^[2]
May – Samuel Taylor Coleridge travels to Attard in Malta, where he obtains employment as Acting Public Secretary.^[3]
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.^[4]
- William Wordsworth writes his best-known poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", describing a scene he witnessed two years earlier.^[5]^[6]
German Gerhard Bonnier begins a publishing business in Copenhagen (Denmark) by issuing Underfulde og sandfærdige kriminalhistorier, origin of the Swedish Bonnier Group.^[7]

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

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

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

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)

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)^[8]
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)