1805 in literature

Events

• January–September – Samuel Taylor Coleridge serves as Acting Public Secretary in Malta.
• Early – Jacob Grimm is invited to Paris as an assistant to Friedrich Karl von Savigny.

• The new Theatre Royal, Bath, opens in England, replacing the Old Orchard Street Theatre.
• 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
• 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
• 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 – Des Knaben Wunderhorn, vol. 1

  Drama

• Alexandre-Vincent Pineux Duval – Le Menuisier de Livonie
• Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger – Hakon Jarl

  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 on Boxing by Mr. J. Belcher"
• Henry Thomas Colebrooke
• *Essay on the Vedas
• *A Grammar of the Sanskrit Language
• Denis Diderot – Rameau's Nephew
• 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 – 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
• April 2 – Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer
• July 29 – Alexis de Tocqueville, French writer
• August 29 – F. D. Maurice, English theologian and novelist
• September 19 – John Stevens Cabot Abbott, American historian
• December 23 – Joseph Smith, American founder and prophet of the Latter Day Saint movement

Deaths

• February 24 – Ralph Broome, English pamphleteer
• March 29 – Jean Elliot, Scottish poet
• May 9 – Friedrich Schiller, German playwright
• May 25 – William Paley, English philosopher
• * Anna Maria Rückerschöld, Swedish author
• June 18 – Arthur Murphy, Irish writer
• July 27 – Brian Merriman, Irish-language poet
• August 3 – Christopher Anstey, English poet
• Early September – Mary Deverell, English religious writer, essayist and poet
• September 3 – Johann Martin Abele, German publisher

• Ji Yun, Chinese poet and scholar
• Anna Hammar-Rosén, Swedish publisher

  In literature

• Benito Pérez Galdós' novel Trafalgar is set at this time.
• Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, entitled The Year 1805 in an earlier version, opens in this year.