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1819 in poetry

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Events

  • The period from September 1818 to September of this year is often referred to among scholars of John Keats as "the Great Year", or "the Living Year", because during this period he is most productive, writing his most critically acclaimed works. Several major events have been noted as factors in this increased productivity: namely, the death of his brother Tom (December 1818), the critical reviews of Endymion (1818), and his meeting Fanny Brawne (November 1818), to whom he proposes marriage on October 19. He has been inspired by a series of recent lectures by Hazlitt on English poets and poetic identity and has also met Wordsworth. Having given up work at Guy's Hospital and taken up residence at a new house, Wentworth Place, on Hampstead Heath on the edge of London, between April 21 and the end of May he writes the ballad La Belle Dame sans Merci and most of his major odes: Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Indolence and Ode on Melancholy. In the summer he writes Lamia and on September 19 he writes his ode To Autumn at Winchester.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, in Italy, also has one of his most productive years. He writes The Masque of Anarchy in reaction to the Peterloo Massacre of August 16 (news of which reaches him on September 5) and sends it to a newspaper (although it is not published until 1832, after his death, with a preface by Leigh Hunt), also writing the political sonnet England in 1819 (published 1839), Ode to the West Wind (published 1820), The Cenci: A Tragedy, in Five Acts (a verse drama, printed in Italy) and Julian and Maddalo (published in his Posthumous Poems of 1824).
  • Konstantin Batyushkov ends his time as a secretary to the Russian diplomatic mission at Naples and writes some of his last poems before his mental breakdown, notably "You awake, oh Bayya, from the tomb..." («Ты пробуждаешься, о Байя, из гробницы...»).
  • William Wordsworth begins another major revision of The Prelude. This version is completed in 1820. His first version, in two parts, was done in 1798 and 1799. A second major revision occurred in 1805 and 1806. The book is not published in any form until shortly after his death in 1850.

Works published in English

United States

  • The American Ladies Pocket Book: 1819, including poetry by St. George Tucker, Philadelphia: A. Small, anthology
  • Joseph Rodman Drake and Fitz-Greene Halleck, writing anonymously, "The Croaker Papers", a series of 35 poems in the New York Evening Post and National Advertiser, with 14 by Drake and eight written in collaboration between the two poets; light, satirical criticisms, often of local politicians; Edgar Allan Poe later criticized them, calling them ephemeral and careless
  • Fitz-Greene Halleck, Fanny, a long poem, much praised for its social commentary; about a poor merchant and his daughter rising into high society; written in the style of Beppo by Lord Byron; two years later, Halleck added 50 stanzas to the popular poem
  • John Neal:
  • Otho: A Tragedy, in Five Acts, Boston: West, Richardson and Lord
  • The Battle of Niagara: Second Edition, Enlarged, with Other Poems
  • Thomas Paine, Miscellaneous Poems
  • James Kirke Paulding, The Lay of the Scottish Fiddle: a Tale of Havre de Grace, Supposed to be written By Walter Scott, Esq. New York; Philadelphia: Published by Inskeep & Bradford, and Bradford & Inskeep
  • John Howard Payne, Brutus; or, The Fall of Tarquin. An Historical Tragedy in Five Acts, London: T. Rodwell
  • Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, The State Triumvirate, seven satires originally published in the New York American newspaper which he co-founded; the extremely popular work, praised by critics, attacked New York Governor DeWitt Clinton and his administration
  • Richard Henry Wilde, The Lament of the Captive, an epic on the Seminole War, includes the much-praised lyric "My Life Is Like the Summer Rose", which was reprinted nationwide, unattributed and without the author's consent

Other in English

Works published in other languages

France

Other languages

Births

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Deaths

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See also

Notes