1811 in literature

Events

• March 25 – The University of Oxford expels the first-year undergraduate Percy Bysshe Shelley after he and Thomas Jefferson Hogg refuse to answer questions on The Necessity of Atheism, a pamphlet they have published anonymously. Earlier this year, Shelley, as "A Gentleman of the University of Oxford", has published in London Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things, containing a 172-line anti-monarchy, anti-war poem in support of Peter Finnerty and dedicated to Harriet Westbrook. Shelly's Gothic fiction St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance, published under the same designation and dated this year was actually issued in December 1810.
• June – Walter Scott buys a farm at Abbotsford, Scotland, and commences building his future residence, Abbotsford House.
• October 30 – Jane Austen publishes her first novel: Sense and Sensibility at her own expense in three volumes, priced at 15 shillings, in Thomas Egerton's Military Library.
• November 4 – Lord Byron meets Thomas Campbell and Thomas Moore at the home of Samuel Rogers, where the company discusses literary topics.
• November 21 – German poet Heinrich von Kleist shoots his terminally ill lover Henriette Vogel and then himself, on the shore of the Kleiner Wannsee near Potsdam.

• Friedrich Koenig, with the assistance of Andreas Friedrich Bauer, produces the first steam printing press, in London.
• The first complete publication of the Bible appears in the Ume Sami language.

  New books

Fiction

• Jane Austen – Sense and Sensibility
• Mary Brunton – Self-Control
• Charlotte Dacre – The Passions
• Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué – Undine
• Johann Peter Hebel – Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes
• Rachel Hunter – The Schoolmistress
• Heinrich von Kleist – Michael Kohlhaas
• Mary Meeke – Stratagems Defeated
• Lady Morgan – The Missionary: An Indian Tale
• Emma Parker – Elfrida, Heiress of Belgrove
• Percy Bysshe Shelley – St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian
• Elizabeth Thomas – Mortimer Hall

  Poetry

• Anna Maria Porter – Ballad Romances, and Other Poems
• Thomas Pringle – The Institute: a Heroic Poem
• Mary Russell Mitford – Christina, the Maid of the South Seas

  Non-fiction

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit
• Barthold G. Niebuhr – Roman History
• John Roberton – On Diseases of the Generative System
• Percy Bysshe Shelley – The Necessity of Atheism

  Births

• January 9 – Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, English humorist
• February 1 – Arthur Henry Hallam, English poet
• February 19 – Jules Sandeau, French dramatist and novelist
• February 27 – Alexandru Hrisoverghi, Moldavian poet and translator
• June 14 – Harriet Beecher Stowe, American novelist and abolitionist
• July 9 – Fanny Fern, American journalist, novelist and children's writer
• July 18 – William Makepeace Thackeray, English novelist and satirist
• August 31 – Théophile Gautier, French poet and novelist
• September 17 – August Blanche, Swedish writer and statesman
• October 19 – Andreas Munch, Norwegian poet

  Deaths

• January 10 – Joseph Chénier, French poet and dramatist
• March 7 – Juraj Fándly, Slovak non-fiction writer, entomologist and priest
• May 7 – Richard Cumberland, English dramatist
• July 28 – Heinrich Joseph von Collin, Austrian dramatist
• September 14 – James Grahame, Scottish poet
• September 30 – Thomas Percy, English ballad collector and bishop
• November 21 – Heinrich von Kleist, German poet
• December 19 – Marjorie Fleming, Scottish child writer