1825 in literature

Events

• February 19 – Franz Grillparzer's König Ottokars Glück und Ende is first performed, at the Burgtheater in Vienna, after Caroline Augusta, Empress of Austria, urges her husband Francis I of Austria to lift the censorship restrictions on it.
• April – Charles Lamb retires from his clerical post with the East India Company in London on superannuation.
• May 6–June 15 – The two youngest Brontë sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, die at home at Haworth Parsonage aged 11 and 9, of consumption they have contracted at Cowan Bridge School.
• May 6 – French bibliophile, translator, lawyer and politician :fr:Antoine-Marie-Henri Boulard|Henri Boulard dies, leaving a library of over half a million books, one of the greatest private book collections in history.

• The first publication of Samuel Pepys' Diary appears, edited by Lord Braybrooke from a transcription by Rev. John Smith.

  New books

Fiction

• John and Michael Banim – Tales of the O'Hara Family
• Lydia Maria Child – The Rebels
• Sarah Green – Parents and Wives
• Wilhelm Hauff – Der Mann im Mond
• Barbara Hofland – Moderation
• Sir Walter Scott
• *The Betrothed
• *The Talisman

  Children

• Maria Hack –English Stories. Third Series, Reformation under the Tudor Princes

  Drama

• Aleksander Griboyedov – Woe from Wit
• James Sheridan Knowles – William Tell
• Harriet Lee – The Three Strangers
• Alexander Pushkin – Boris Godunov

  Poetry

• Anna Laetitia Barbauld – Works
• Felicia Hemans – The Forest Sanctuary
• Esaias Tegnér – Frithiol's Saga

  Non-fiction

• Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin – Physiologie du goût
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Aids to Reflection
• George Gleig – The Subaltern
• William Hazlitt – The Spirit of the Age
• Sarah Kemble Knight – The Journal of Madam Knight
• John Claudius Loudon – The Encyclopaedia of Agriculture
• Thomas Moore – Memoirs of the Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• Harriette Wilson – The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, Written by Herself

  Births

• January 11 – Bayard Taylor, American poet
• February 13 – Julia C. R. Dorr, American author
• February 18 – Mór Jókai, Hungarian novelist and dramatist
• March 3 – Annie Keary, English novelist, poet and children's writer
• March 16 – Lucy Virginia French, American author
• April 3 – William Billington, English poet and publican
• April 20 – Emma Jane Guyton, English novelist and magazine editor
• April 24 – R. M. Ballantyne, Scottish writer of juvenile fiction
• May 21 – Nancy H. Adsit, American art writer, lecturer, educator
• June 7 – R. D. Blackmore, English novelist
• June 14 – Mary Elizabeth Beauchamp, English-born American author and educator
• July 2 – Richard Henry Stoddard, American critic and poet
• July 13 – Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren, American writer, translator, and anti-suffragist
• October 19 – Jeanette Granberg, Swedish playwright and translator
• October 23 – Walter Gregor, Scottish folklorist, linguist and pastor

• Annie French Hector, Irish-born novelist

  Deaths

• March 9 – Anna Laetitia Barbauld, English poet, essayist and children's author
• April 23 – Maler Müller, German poet, dramatist and painter
• June 4 – Morris Birkbeck, American writer and social reformer
• June 11 – Helen Craik, Scottish novelist and poet
• August 10 – Joseph Harris, Welsh poet and journalist
• November 7 – Charlotte Dacre, English poet and Gothic novelist
• November 25 – Desfontaines-Lavallée, French novelist and dramatist
• December 5 – Mary Whateley, English poet

• Huang Peilie, Chinese bibliophile
• Shen Fu, Chinese novelist and chronicler

  Awards

• Chancellor's Gold Medal – Edward Bulwer-Lytton