1804 in literature

• March 17 – The first performance of Friedrich Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell takes place at Weimar under the direction of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.{{cite web |url=https://www.tellspiele.ch/de/Tellspiele/Friedrich-Schiller |title=Friedrich Schillers Wilhelm Tell |language=de |website=Tellspiele Interlaken |access-date=27 August 2018}}
• April 4 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge sets sail on The Speedwell for the Mediterranean. In Malta, he obtains employment as Acting Public Secretary at Attard.{{cite book|first1=Barry|last1=Hough|first2=Howard|last2=Davis|first3=Lydia|last3=Davis|title=Coleridge's Laws: A Study of Coleridge in Malta|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hnR7GXkZz3oC&pg=PA28|year=2010|publisher=Open Book Publishers|isbn=978-1-906924-12-6|pages=28–}}
• April 15 – John Keats' father, a stable worker, dies of a fractured skull, after falling from his horse while returning from visiting John at school.{{cite web |url=https://hcmc.uvic.ca/keats/1804-04-15.html |title=Mapping Keats's Progress |website=hcmc.uvic.ca |access-date=27 August 2018 |archive-date=2018-08-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180827142254/https://hcmc.uvic.ca/keats/1804-04-15.html |url-status=dead }}
• unknown dates
• James Mill's pamphlet critical of the corn trade, An Essay on the Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exportation of Grain, is published.An essay of the impolicy of a bounty on the exportation of grain, 1804.
• William Wordsworth writes his best-known poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", describing a scene he witnessed two years earlier.{{cite book|author1=Thomas Carper|author2=Derek Attridge|title=Meter and Meaning: An Introduction to Rhythm in Poetry|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8bdKJ7Mko-gC&pg=PA46|year=2003|publisher=Psychology Press|isbn=978-0-415-31174-8|pages=46}}{{cite web |url=http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/icons-timeline/1800-1820|title=Icons, a portrait of England 1800-1820 |accessdate=2007-09-10 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20071017042835/http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/icons-timeline/1800-1820 |archivedate=17 October 2007}}
• German Gerhard Bonnier begins a publishing business in Copenhagen (Denmark) by issuing {{lang|da|Underfulde og sandfærdige kriminalhistorier}}, origin of the Swedish Bonnier Group.{{cite book |title=Creating Nordic Capitalism: The Development of a Competitive Periphery |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QJlMDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA78|date=16 September 2017 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-1-137-07137-8 |pages=78–}}

• Mir Amman – Bagh o Buhar, a Translation into the Hindoostanee Tongue of the Celebrated Persian Tale "Qissui Chuhar Durwesh" "by Meer Ummun"
• Sophie Ristaud Cottin – Malvina
• Rachel Hunter -The Unexpected Legacy
• William Henry Ireland – The Sepulchral Summons
• Mary Meeke
• Amazement
• The Nine Days' Wonder
• Amelia Opie – Adeline Mowbray
• Ōta Nanpo (大田 南畝) and others – {{Transliteration|ja|Shokusanjin ennyo meisekishu}} (Collection of Shokusanjin memorabilia)
• Anna Maria Porter – The Lake of Killarney

• François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil
• Elmonde, ou la Fille de l'hospice (Edmonde, the charity girl)
• Jules, ou le Toit paternel (Jules, or Under his father's roof)
• Maria Edgeworth – Popular Tales
• Eliza Fenwick – Mary and Her Cat
• Ann Taylor and Jane Taylor – Original Poems for Infant Minds by several young persons, Vol. 1

• Richard Cumberland – The Sailor's Daughter
• Thomas Dibdin
• Guilty or Not Guilty
• The Will for the Deed
• Francis Ludlow Holt – The Land We Live In
• Frederick Reynolds – The Blind Bargain
• Friedrich von Schiller – Wilhelm Tell
• Friedrich Hölderlin – translations of the dramas of Sophocles (published)

• William Blake – Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion
• William Lisle Bowles – The Spirit of Discovery
• Kirsha Danilov – The Ancient Russian Poems

• Thomas Brown – Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect
• John Wilson Croker – Familiar Epistles to J. F. Jones, Esquire, on the State of the Irish Stage
• Jakob Friedrich Fries – System der Philosophie als evidente Wissenschaft
• Jacques Labillardière – Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen
• James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale – Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth

• July 1 – George Sand (Lucile Aurore Dupin), French novelist and memoirist (died 1876)
• July 4 – Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist (died 1864)
• August 8 – Countess Dash, French writer (died 1872)
• September 8 – Eduard Mörike, German poet (died 1875)
• November 6 – Benjamin Hall Kennedy, English classicist (died 1880)
• December 10 – Eugène Sue, French novelist (died 1857)
• December 21 – Benjamin Disraeli, English novelist and prime minister (died 1881)

• January 4 – Charlotte Lennox, English novelist and playwright (born c. 1730)
• January 11 – James Tytler, Scottish American editor of Encyclopædia Britannica (born 1745)
• February 6 – Joseph Priestley, English natural philosopher and theologian (born 1733)
• February 12 – Immanuel Kant, German philosopher (born 1724)
• February 19 – Philip Yorke, Welsh antiquary and genealogist (born 1743)
• April 3 – Jędrzej Kitowicz, Polish historian and diarist (born c. 1727)
• April 27 – Jonathan Boucher, English philologist (born 1738)
• May 3 – Celestyn Czaplic, Polish poet and politician (born 1723)
• July 16 – Jean-Louis de Lolme, Swiss political theorist (born 1741)
• August 9 – Robert Potter, English translator, poet and cleric (born 1721)
• August 13 – Anica Bošković, Ragusan writer (born 1714)
• October 30 – Samuel Ayscough, English librarian and indexer (born 1745){{cite book|author=Frederick George Netherclift|title=The Hand-book to Autographs: Being a Ready Guide to the Handwriting of Distinguished Men and Women of Every Nation|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j29BAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1|year=1862|publisher=J. R. Smith|pages=1}}
• November 5 – Betje Wolff, Dutch novelist (born 1738)
• November 23 – Richard Graves, English poet and novelist (born 1715)
• December 9 – Wilhelm Abraham Teller, German theologian (born 1734)
• December – John Boydell, English Shakespeare illustrator and engraver (born 1720)

{{reflist|30em}}

{{Authority control}}

{{Year in literature article categories}}