1795 in literature

Events

• February–June – Samuel Taylor Coleridge offers a series of lectures on politics and religion in Bristol, as does his friend Robert Southey.
• May 27 – Empress Catherine the Great establishes the Imperial Public Library in Saint Petersburg, predecessor of the National Library of Russia. The core of the collection consists of books looted the year before from the Załuski Library in Warsaw.
• August 21–September 26 – William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy stay at 7 Great George Street, Bristol, when they meet Coleridge, Southey and the latter poets' publisher, Joseph Cottle.
• October 4 – Coleridge marries Sara Fricker at St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. On November 14, Southey marries Sara's sister Edith in the same church.
• December – Charles Lamb begins a six-week spell in a mental asylum at Hoxton.
• William Henry Ireland first displays his Shakespearean forgeries to the public. They will inspire a major controversy when published on 24 December.

• The first known Bengali language play is staged, the comedy Kalpanik sangbadal ba sajbadal, at the Bengali Theatre.
• Archibald Constable starts in business for himself as a dealer in rare books in Edinburgh. This is the origin of the British publishing business that enters the 21st century as Constable & Robinson.
• The only known manuscript of The Tale of Igor's Campaign is discovered in Russia.

  New books

Fiction

• Jane Austen – Lady Susan
• Richard Cumberland – Henry
• William Gifford – The Maeviad
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
• Frances Margaretta Jacson – Plain Sense
• Marquis de Sade
• *Aline and Valcour
• *Philosophy in the Bedroom
• Thomas Spence – Spensonia

  Children

• Dorothy Kilner – The Village School
• Priscilla Wakefield – Juvenile Anecdotes, Founded on Facts

  Drama

• Frances Burney – Edwy and Elgiva
• Richard Cumberland – First Love
• Marquis de Sade – Philosophy in the Bedroom

  Poetry

• William Blake – Prophetic books:
• *The Book of Ahania
• *The Song of Los
• Ann Batten Cristall – Poetical Sketches
• William Drennan – Erin
• Joseph Ritson – Robin Hood: A Collection of all the Ancient Poems

  Non-fiction

• Marquis de Condorcet – Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind
• Hannah More – The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain
• Philip Yorke – Tracts of Powys

  Births

• January 15 – Alexander Griboyedov, Russian diplomat and playwright
• April 17 – Emily Taylor, English author, poet and hymnist
• May 26 – Thomas Talfourd, English lawyer and legal writer
• June 13 – Thomas Arnold, English educator and historian
• August 30 – Amable Tastu, French women of letters and poet
• September 7 – John William Polidori, English physician and fantasy writer
• September 29 – Kondraty Ryleyev, Russian poet and revolutionary
• October 14 – Robert Vaughan, English historian and religious writer
• October 31 – John Keats, English Romantic poet
• December 4 – Thomas Carlyle, Scottish satirist, essayist and historian

  Deaths

• February 11 – Carl Michael Bellman, Swedish poet
• February 22 – Alexander Gerard, Scottish philosopher
• April 20 – Johan Henric Kellgren, Swedish poet and critic
• May 19 – James Boswell, Scottish biographer of Samuel Johnson
• September 30 – Susannah Dobson, English translator from French
• October 8 – Andrew Kippis, English biographer
• October 10 – Francesco Antonio Zaccaria, Italian theologian and historian
• December 18 – Moritz Hohenbaum van der Meer, Swiss Benedictine historian