Events
- February – Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes the conversation poem "Frost at Midnight", commonly seen as the best of the series.
- April – Coleridge writes the conversation poems "Fears in Solitude" ("Written ... During the Alarm of an Invasion", soon published in a pamphlet) and "The Nightingale".
- April 16 – Coleridge's "The Recantation: An Ode" appears in The Morning Post, describing his disillusionment with the French Revolution.
- April 30 – Richard Cumberland's comedy The Eccentric Lover is first performed at the Covent Garden Theatre in London.
- September 18 – Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge is first published anonymously in Bristol by Joseph Cottle (who also remains anonymous), marking the beginning of English literary Romanticism.[1] Most of the poems are by Wordsworth, including Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour, 13 July 1798, but also opening with the first publication of Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, whose first London publication is on October 4.
- October 11 – Elizabeth Inchbald's Lovers' Vows (adapted from Kotzebue's Das Kind der Liebe – the child of love) is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London.
- October 12 – The rebuilt Weimarer Hoftheater are inaugurated with the first performance of the first part of Friedrich Schiller's dramatic trilogy Wallenstein: Das Lager (The Camp), directed by Goethe.
- unknown dates
- Ivan Kotliarevsky's mock-heroic poem Eneyida (Енеїда) becomes the first printed work in the modern Ukrainian language.[2]
- The National Library of the Netherlands originates when the Batavian Republic opens the former library of the stadtholder to the public.[3]
- The Académie française publishes the 5th edition of its Dictionnaire.[4]
- Thomas Nelson's publishing company is established in Edinburgh as a second-hand religious bookshop.[5]