Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
Events
- January 29 – Greenock Burns Club holds the first Burns dinner, in Alloway, in honour of Scottish poet Robert Burns (died 1796).
- April 15 – William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, walking by Ullswater near their home in the Lake District of England, come across a "long belt" of daffodils, a circumstance which inspires his poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", written in 1804, first published in 1807 and in revised form in 1815. It is titled "The Daffodils" in some anthologies.
- May 3–9 – Having recollected in tranquility while walking on Barton Fell near Ullswater an experience of despondency, William Wordsworth writes "The Leech-Gatherer", the first draft of his poem "Resolution and Independence" (published in 1807).
- Summer – Adam Oehlenschläger writes at a sitting the poem "Guldhornene", introducing Romanticism into Danish poetry.
- July 31 – William Wordsworth, leaving London for Dover and Calais with Dorothy, witnesses the early morning scene which he captures in his Petrarchan sonnet "Composed upon Westminster Bridge". In Calais, he will meet his 9-year-old illegitimate daughter Caroline for the first time.
- October 4 – Wordsworth marries Mary Hutchinson at Brompton, Scarborough.
- Henry Boyd completes the first full English translation of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Poetry published
- Anne Bannerman, Tales of Superstition and Chivalry, Scottish Gothic ballad collection
- Robert Bloomfield, Rural Tales, Ballads and Songs
- Sir Alexander Boswell, Songs, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ', first published October 4, 1802, in the Morning Post (see also Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads, below, in which the poem is again published this year)
- George Dyer, Poems
- William Gifford, The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis
- Joseph Ritson, Ancient English Metrical Romances
- Walter Savage Landor, Poetry by the author of Gebir
- Amelia Opie, Poems
- Tadhg Gaelach àSúilleabháin (died 1795), Timothy O'Sullivan's Pious Miscellany, Irish Gaelic language poet published in Ireland
- Walter Scott, editor, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802âÂÂ03), an anthology of ballads
- William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, new edition of Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems, published under Wordsworth's name but with poems by Coleridge as well; Preface of 1801 expanded and texts of numerous poems amended; includes Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode" (Later, revised editions: 1798, 1801, 1805)
Other
- John Blair Linn, The Powers of Genius, A Poem, in Three Parts, By John Blair Linn ... Second Edition, Corrected and Enlarged, Philadelphia: John Conrad, & Co.; sold by M. and J. Conrad & Co., United States
- Charles Morris, Songs Political and Convivial, United States
Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
- February 11 – Lydia Maria Child (died 1880), American abolitionist, women's rights activist, Indian rights activist, novelist, journalist and poet; author of "Over the River and Through the Woods"
- February 26 – Victor Hugo (died 1885), French novelist, playwright and poet
- March 14 – Rangga Warsita (died 1873), Javanese
- July 28 – Winthrop Mackworth Praed (died 1839) English politician and poet
- August 14 – Letitia Elizabeth Landon, also known as "L.E.L." (died 1838), English poet and novelist
- August 28 – Thomas Aird (died 1876), Scottish
- October 1 – Edward Coote Pinkney (died 1828), American poet, lawyer, sailor, professor, and editor
- October 10 – George Pope Morris (died 1864), American editor, poet, and songwriter
- December 23 – Sara Coleridge (died 1852), English poet and translator; daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- December 31 – Richard Henry Horne (died 1884), English poet, critic and journalist, and public official in Australia
- date not known – Isaac Williams (died 1865) English poet and tractarian, a prominent member of the Oxford Movement
Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
See also
Notes