1810 in literature

Events

• February – The eccentric English amateur actor Robert Coates makes his début in a favourite role: Romeo, at the Theatre Royal, Bath.
• April 10 – Percy Bysshe Shelley matriculates at University College, Oxford. His atheistic Gothic novella Zastrozzi: A Romance, written while still a schoolboy at Eton, is published this year under his initials in London. Its successor, St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance, is published as "By a Gentleman of the University of Oxford" in December in London by J. J. Stockdale. In September, Shelley publishes through Stockdale Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire, co-written with his sister Elizabeth before he came up to Oxford, but withdrawn due to plagiarism of one poem. In November he and a friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, publish the burlesque Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson; Being Poems found amongst the Papers of that Noted Female who attempted the Life of the King in 1786 "Edited by John Fitzvictor" in Oxford.

• Germaine de Staël's study of Germany De l'Allemagne is published in Paris but suppressed by order of Napoleon.
• A collection, The British Novelists, with an introductory essay and prefaces by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, appears in 50 volumes in London from F. C. & J. Rivington.

  New books

Fiction

• Catherine Cuthbertson – The Forest of Montalbano
• Sarah Green – The Festival of St. Jago
• Lady Mary Hamilton – The Duc de Popoli
• Ann Hatton – Cambrian Pictures
• Robert Huish – The Mysteries of Ferney Castle
• Emma Parker – A Soldier's Offspring
• Jane Porter – The Scottish Chiefs
• Jan Potocki – The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
• Regina Marie Roche
• *Convent of St. Ildefonso
• *The Houses of Osma and Almeria
• Percy Bysshe Shelley – Zastrozzi
• Louisa Stanhope
• *Di Montranzo
• *The Novice of Corpus Domini
• Catherine George Ward – The Daughter of St Omar
• Jane West – The Refusal

  Drama

• Joanna Baillie – Family Legend
• James Sheridan Knowles – Leo; or, The Gipsy
• Adam Oehlenschläger – Axel og Valborg
• Heinrich von Kleist – The Prince of Homburg

  Poetry

• George Crabbe – The Borough
• Mary Russell Mitford – Poems
• Walter Scott – The Lady of the Lake
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• *with Elizabeth Shelley – Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire
• *with Thomas Jefferson Hogg – Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson

  Non-fiction

• Lucy Aikin – Epistles on Women, Exemplifying their Character and Condition in Various Ages and Nations, with Miscellaneous Poems
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Zur Farbenlehre
• Mirza Abu Taleb Khan – Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan in Asia, Africa and Europe
• Germaine de Staël – De l'Allemagne
• William Wordsworth – Guide to the Lakes

  Births

• February 10 – Giulietta Pezzi, Italian novelist, journalist, and poet
• May 10 – E. Cobham Brewer, English lexicographer
• May 11 – Caroline Fox, English diarist
• May 23 – Margaret Fuller American feminist writer
• August 6 – William Ticknor, American publisher
• August 31 – František Doucha, Czech writer and translator
• September 22 – John Brown, Scottish physician and essayist
• September 29 – Elizabeth Gaskell, English novelist
• December 11 – Alfred de Musset, French poet

  Deaths

• February 9 – Richard Chandler, English antiquary
• February 22 – Charles Brockden Brown, American novelist
• March 14 – Ludwig Timotheus Spittler, German historian
• April 3 – Twm o'r Nant, Welsh-language dramatist and poet
• May 1 – Christoph Meiners, German philosopher
• May 17 – Robert Tannahill, Scottish poet
• December 15 – Sarah Trimmer, English children's writer and critic