1809 in literature

The year 1809 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

 * Samuel Taylor Coleridge founds The Friend  (periodical, through 1810).
 * On February 24, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is destroyed by fire.
 * On September 18, the new Royal Opera House in Covent Garden opens, rebuilt after the fire of the previous year.

New books

 * Thomas Campbell - Gertrude of Wyoming
 * François-René de Chateaubriand - The Martyrs
 * Catherine Cuthbertson - Romance of the Pyrenees
 * Maria Edgeworth - Ennui and Manoeuvering
 * Sophia Frances - Angelo Guicciardini
 * Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Elective Affinities
 * Stéphanie Félicité, Comtesse de Genlis - Alphonso
 * Anne Grant - Memoirs of an American Lady
 * Sarah Green - Tales of the Manor
 * J. P. Hunt - The Iron Mask
 * Washington Irving - A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker
 * Ivan Kriloff - Fables
 * Catherine Manners - The Lords of Erith
 * Mary Meeke - Laughton Priory
 * Hannah More - Coelebs in Search of a Wife
 * Mary Pilkington - The Mysterious Orphan
 * Anna Maria Porter - Don Sebastian
 * Richard Sicklemore - Osrick
 * Louisa Stanhope - The Age We Live In
 * Elizabeth Thomas - Monte Video
 * Sarah Wilkinson - The Mysterious Novice
 * Henrietta Maria Young - The Novitiate de Roussillon

New drama

 * Heinrich von Kleist - Die Hermannschlacht

Non-fiction

 * Lord Byron - English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
 * John Roberton - A Treatise on Medical Police, and on Diet, Regimen, &c

Births

 * January 19 - Edgar Allan Poe, writer    (d. 1849)
 * March 6 - David Bates, American poet (d. 1870)
 * March 31 - Nikolai Gogol, writer  (d. 1852)
 * March 31 - Edward Fitzgerald, translator of Omar Khayyám (d. 1883)
 * June 13 - Heinrich Hoffmann, German writer, author of Struwwelpeter (d. 1894)
 * August 6 - Alfred Tennyson, poet  (d. 1892)
 * August 29 - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet   (d. 1894)

Deaths

 * March 11 - Hannah Cowley, dramatist and poet
 * March 25 - Anna Seward, the "Swan of Lichfield"
 * June 8 - Thomas Paine, writer