Calendar of Literary Facts
1819
- The U.S. purchases Florida from Spain
- Eugene Scribe publishes La somnambule (The Somnabulist)
- Lord Byron publishes Don Juan
- Washington Irving publishes The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
- Simón Bolívar becomes President of Colombia
- A British presence is established in Singapore
- New British labor laws prohibit the employing children under the age of nine
- Herman Melville is born (August 1)
- Mary Ann Evans (“George Eliot”) is born (November 22)
- Walt Whitman is born (May 31)
