1797 in literature

• June 5 – Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, living at Nether Stowey in the Quantock Hills, Somerset, renews his friendship with William Wordsworth and Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy, who take a house nearby.{{cite web |title=Samuel Taylor Coleridge |publisher=Britain UnLimited|url=http://www.britainunlimited.com/Biogs/Coleridge.htm |accessdate=2012-10-08}}
• July 15 – George Colman's comedy The Heir at Law opens in London. It introduces the character of Dr. Pangloss to the stage and the phrase "Queen Anne's dead" to the language.
• August – The British Home Office sends an agent to Nether Stowey to investigate Coleridge and Wordsworth who are suspected of being French spies.{{cite web |url=http://www.timetravel-britain.com/06/Oct/wordsworth.shtml |title=Wordsworth's Lakes |first=Keith |last=Kellett |accessdate=2008-02-25}}
• October – Coleridge composes the poem Kubla Khan in an opium-induced dream, writing down only a fragment of it on waking.
• November 1 – Jane Austen's father writes to London bookseller Thomas Cadell to ask if he is interested in seeing the manuscript of Jane's recently completed novel First Impressions (later re-titled Pride and Prejudice); Cadell declines.
• November – Wordsworth suggests to Coleridge the theme of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner on a walk in the Quantocks.{{cite book |last=Holmes |first=Richard |authorlink=Richard Holmes (biographer) |year=1989 |title=Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772–1804 |location=New York |publisher=Pantheon Books |isbn=978-067-08-0444-3 |page=[https://archive.org/details/coleridgeearlyvi00holm/page/171 171] |url=https://archive.org/details/coleridgeearlyvi00holm/page/171}}
• December 24 – Walter Scott marries Charlotte Carpenter at St Mary's Church, Carlisle. The couple immediately move to a new home at 50 George Street, Edinburgh.[http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/biography/marriage.html Edinburgh Archive – Family.]
• Hatchards bookshop is founded in London's Piccadilly by John Hatchard; it continues to trade on the same site into the 21st century.

• "Mrs Carver" (perhaps Anthony Carlisle) – The Horrors of Oakendale Abbey
• Hannah Webster Foster (anonymously) – The Coquette, or the History of Eliza Wharton
• Friedrich Hölderlin – Hyperion, volume 1
• Frances Margaretta Jacson (anonymously) – Disobedience
• Jan Potocki – The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
• Ann Radcliffe – The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents
• Marquis de Sade – L'Histoire de Juliette
• Royall Tyler – The Algerine Captive

• Charlotte Palmer – A Newly-Invented Copybook

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Osorio
• George Colman – The Heir at Law
• Richard Cumberland
• False Impressions
• The Last of the Family
• Thomas John Dibdin – Sadak and Kalasrade
• Elizabeth Inchbald – Wives as They Were and Maids as They Are
• Robert Jephson – Julia
• Matthew Lewis – The Minister: A Tragedy, in five acts
• Thomas Morton – A Cure for the Heart Ache
• Frederick Reynolds
• Cheap Living
• The Will

{{main|1797 in poetry}}

• Thomas Bewick – History of British Birds vol. 1
• François-René de Chateaubriand – Essai sur les révolutions
• The Columbian Orator
• Johann Gottlieb Fichte – Foundations of Natural Right
• Lorenzo Mascheroni – Geometria del Compasso
• Thomas Paine – Agrarian Justice
• Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling – Die Weltseele (Soul of the World)

• January 10 - Maria da Felicidade do Couto Browne, early Portuguese woman poet (died 1861)
• January 28 – Félix Tanco, Colombian-born Cuban poet, and novelist (died 1871)
• March 3 – Emily Eden, English poet and novelist (died 1869)
• March 13 – Charles de Rémusat, French politician and writer (died 1875)
• March 27 – Alfred de Vigny, French poet (died 1863){{cite book|author=John Flower|title=Historical Dictionary of French Literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kd6tAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA523|date=17 January 2013|publisher=Scarecrow Press|isbn=978-0-8108-7945-4|pages=523}}
• April 12 – Ernst August Hagen, Prussian art writer and novelist (died 1880){{cite web|url= https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/ADB:Hagen,_August|title=Hagen, Ernst August H., geboren am ...| author=Josef Bernhard Nordhoff| work=Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie| publisher=Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften| volume=55| date=1910| pages=770–771|accessdate=9 December 2016}}
• June 14 – Jules Lefèvre-Deumier, French author and poet (died 1857)
• July 12 – Adele Schopenhauer, German novelist and paper-cut artist (died 1849){{cite web |url=http://www.scherenschnitt.org/schopenhauer/ |title=Adele Schopenhauer |last=Weber |first=Christa |date=November 21, 2009 |website=Deutscher Scherenschnittverein e.V. [German papercut art] |access-date=June 7, 2014 }}
• August 30 – Mary Shelley, English novelist (died 1851){{cite web |title=Mary Shelley – author of Frankenstein |url=https://www.bl.uk/people/mary-shelley |website=The British Library |accessdate=25 March 2019}}
• September 2 – William Stephenson, English Geordie printer, publisher, auctioneer, poet and songwriter (died 1838)
• September 16 – Anthony Panizzi, Italian-born English scholar and librarian (died 1879)
• September 28 – Sophie von Knorring (Sophie Margareta Zelow), Swedish novelist (died 1848)
• October 31 – Jacob Bailey Moore, American journalist and historical writer (died 1853)
• November 17 – Saint-Amand, French playwright (died 1885)
• December 13 – Heinrich Heine, German poet (died 1856){{cite book|author=Jeffrey L. Sammons|title=Heinrich Heine: A Modern Biography|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3Nv_AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11|date=14 July 2014|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-1-4008-5678-7|pages=11}}
• December 31 – North Ludlow Beamish, Irish military writer and antiquary (died 1872)
• Unknown date – Charlotte Barton, Australian children's author (died 1867)
• Approximate date – Thomas Cautley Newby, English publisher (died 1882)

• March 2 – Horace Walpole, novelist and antiquarian (born 1717){{cite book|author=Horace Walpole|title=Memoirs of Horace Walpole and his contemporaries; including numerous original letters, chiefly from Strawberry Hill. [By Robert Folkestone Williams.] Edited by Eliot Warburton|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TX5VSo9rx0wC&pg=PA574|year=1851|publisher=H. Colburn|pages=574}}
• April 7 – William Mason, English poet and editor (born 1724)
• May 27 – François-Noël Babeuf, French journalist and political agitator (executed, born 1760)
• July 9 – Edmund Burke, Irish-born philosopher (born 1729)
• September 10 – Mary Wollstonecraft, English philosopher (born 1759){{cite web |title=Mary Wollstonecraft {{!}} Biography, Works, & Facts |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Wollstonecraft |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |accessdate=25 March 2019 |language=en}}
• October 4 – Johann Christian Georg Bodenschatz, German Protestant theologian (born 1717)
• December – Mathurin-Léonard Duphot, French poet (shot dead, born 1769)
• Unknown date – Yuan Mei (袁枚), Chinese poet, diarist and gastronome (born 1716)

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