1826 in literature

• Early months – Aftermath of the Decembrist revolt in the Russian Empire. Michael Lunin, though not involved in the Decembrist conspiracy, is arrested and deported to Siberia, which allows him to begin his work as a philosopher. Adam Mickiewicz, deported from Congress Poland for his involvement with Filaret Association, is moved from Taurida Governorate to Moscow. Here, he publishes his Sonety krymskie (The Crimean Sonnets). Later in the year, he befriends Russian writers, including Yevgeny Baratynsky, Mikhail Pogodin, Alexander Pushkin, and the Lyubomudry. Pushkin, himself returning from political exile, still writes poems discreetly honoring the Decembrists. They include Stansy (Stanzas), as well as odes to Nikolay Mordvinov and Ivan Pushchin. • c. January – Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa, pained by his recent divorce, enters his final creative period with hokku expressing his solitude and, at times, nihilistic thoughts. • January 15 – The French newspaper Le Figaro begins publication in Paris. In this first edition, it is a satirical weekly, reflecting the preoccupation of its two founders, Maurice Alhoy and Étienne Arago. • January 17 – The Ballantyne printing business in Edinburgh crashes, ruining Sir Walter Scott as a principal investor. He undertakes to repay his creditors from his writings, although his publisher Archibald Constable also fails. Distress caused by the events contributes to the illness afflicting Scott's wife, Lady Charlotte; she dies in May. • February 4 – In the Mexican Republic, lithographer Claudio Linati inaugurates El Iris, a "pocket sized" bi-weekly. It is in print until August 2, when its popularization of liberal ideas prompts the intervention of state censors; Linati leaves Mexico later in the year, probably for political reasons. • February 6 • First printing of James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. This is Cooper's first book under contract with Philadelphia publishers Mathew Carey and Isaac Lea, following Charles Wiley's near-bankruptcy and death. It endures as "the most popular novel of the 1820s." • Charles L. Force brings printing to the Colony of Liberia and, ten days later, founds the bi-weekly Liberia Herald. Force dies later this year, but his publication is revived in 1830 by John Brown Russwurm. • February 16 (O. S.: February 4) – Hungarian Serbs gather at Pest to set up Matica srpska, a cultural society dedicated to promoting the works of Serb writers. It sponsors Georgije Magarašević's Serbski Letopis, which remains "one of Europe's oldest, regularly published journals." • March – Aged eight, the future orator and memoirist Frederick Douglass is lent by his master to the Aulds of Fell's Point, Baltimore. He will remain their house servant, and later their regular slave, until 1838, when he escapes via the Underground Railroad. • April – Andrés Bello launches his London magazine Repertorio Americano, in which he publishes the final installment of his Las Silvas Americanas, known as Silva a la agricultura de la zona tórrida (Silva for Agriculture in the Torrid Zone). It is sometimes described as a final masterpiece of Neoclassicism in Latin American literature. • April 16 – Thomas Pringle, a founding figure of South African literature, embarks on his return trip to England. His stay in the Cape Colony leads him to join and publicize for the Anti-Slavery Society. • May 18 – At Buda, Habsburg Hungary, Wallachian intellectual Dinicu Golescu receives imprimatur for his Însemnare a călătoriei mele (Accounts of My Travels). This pioneering travelog covers extensive trips in Central and Western Europe, which Golescu had begun in 1824. The author documents his own "amazed 'discovery' of the West [and] acceptance of his country's admitted inferiority." As a "manifesto for the new culture" Însemnare promotes Wallachia's passage into the Age of Enlightenment. For the same purpose Golescu sponsors a school on his estate. • June – Despite having maintained links with the Decembrists, poet Alexander Griboyedov receives a "certificate of loyalism" from the Russian government. • July 25 (O.S.: July 13) – Five Decembrist leaders, including poet Kondraty Ryleyev, are hanged in Senate Square, Saint Petersburg. Pushkin's papers of the time include a drawing of five silhouettes on a scaffold, with the words: "Me too, I could be...". • August 19 – Louis Christophe François Hachette purchases the Brédif bookshop on rue Pierre-Sarrazin, Paris. This becomes the first asset owned by the Hachette publishing company. • September – The first issue of Lydia Maria Child's The Juvenile Miscellany, a magazine for children, is published in Boston. Becoming "so popular that children used to sit on their doorsteps waiting for the mail carrier to deliver it," it lasts until 1834. • October – Tyrone Power gets his break as a principal Irish character actor at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London. • October 17 – Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh marry in Templand and setup home in Edinburgh. • Late months – First recorded usage of "Quixotism" in Greek (as Δονκιχωτισμός), in a letter from John Caradja to Alexandros Mavrokordatos. • November • Hungarian philologist Sándor Kőrösi Csoma ends his stay at Teta, on the outskirts of Phugtal Monastery in Ladakh. • The London Missionary Society sets up the first printing press in Madagascar (Merina Kingdom). It survives to 1836, being ultimately shut down for political reasons. • December – At Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, Henry Schoolcraft sets up a review called Literary Voyager, or Muzzeniegan. It includes poems and stories by his part-Ojibwe wife, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, who thus becomes one of the first Native American literary professionals. • December 5 (O. S.: November 23) – From his boarding school in Nezhin, Chernigov Governorate, Nikolai Gogol writes home to his mother, describing a "radical new change" in his poetic style. Only two pieces he wrote during this period have survived for posterity. • c. December 25 – Edgar Allan Poe is forced to renounce his studies at the University of Virginia when his foster parent John Allan refuses to pay for his tuition. • unknown dates • Almeida Garrett issues the poetry anthology Parnaso lusitano (Lusitanian Parnassus), which is both a milestone of Romanticism in Lusophone countries and a cause for debates regarding the emergence of a distinct Brazilian literature. The latter issue is also explored by French historian Jean-Ferdinand Denis, who includes an epilogue on "Brazil's literary history" to his Portuguese literature tract. • Robert Morrison, missionary and Bible translator, returns from Malacca to England "with 10,000 Chinese books." • Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, who puts out the Mélanges Asiatiques collection, publishes his translation of a Chinese classic: Iu-Kiao-Li, ou Les Deux Cousines. • Francesco Vella puts out a translation of Francesco Soave's ''Trattato elementare dei doveri dell'uomo (Trattat fuk l'Oblighi tal-Bniedem tal-Patri F. Soave)'', as a textbook for Gozo College Boys' Secondary School. It is one of the first prose works published in the Maltese language. ==New books==