1773 in poetry

Events

• May 4 - Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill composes the keen Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire over the body of her husband Art Ó Laoghaire.
• Cláudio Manuel da Costa writes his epic poem Vila Rica, relating the history of the homonymous Brazilian city, modern-day Ouro Preto; it is not published until 1839.
• Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock publishes the last five cantos of his epic poem Der Messias in Hamburg.
• William Cowper, living at Olney, Buckinghamshire, experiences mental disturbances, believing himself condemned to damnation.

Works published

• Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Poems
• Thomas Day, The Dying Negro, Occasioned by the incident, as described in the advertisement published with the poem, about "A black who, a few days before, had run away from his master, and got himself christened, with intent to marry a white woman, his fellow-servant, being taken and sent on board a ship in the Thames, took an opportunity of shooting himself through the head"; a very popular poem, one of the earliest anti-slavery works of literature in Britain, with co-author John Bicknell
• Johannes Ewald, Rungsteds Lyksaligheder
• Robert Fergusson:
• * Auld Reikie
• * Poems
• Richard Graves, The Love of Order, published anonymously
• Edward Jerningham, Faldoni and Teresa
• George Keate, The Monument in Arcadia
• James Macpherson, translator, The Iliad, from the original Ancient Greek of Homer's Iliad
• William Mason, An Heroic Epistle o Sir William Chambers
• Samuel Mather, "The Sacred Minister", English, Colonial America
• Hannah More, A Search after Happiness, "by a young lady"
• Thomas Scott (of Ipswich), Lyric Poems, Devotional and Moral, the book includes most of the author's poems
• Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, the first book of poetry by an American slave, including "On Being Brought from Africa to America". The book was published in Aldgate, London because publishers in Boston, Massachusetts, had refused to publish the text. Wheatley and her master's son, Nathanial Wheatley, went to London, where Selina, Countess of Huntingdon and the Earl of Dartmouth helped with the publication.
• John Wolcot, ''Persian Love Elegies''

Births

• May 31 - Ludwig Tieck, German poet, translator, editor, novelist and critic
• August 21 - Jens Christian Djurhuus, Faroese poet
• December 9 - Robert Treat Paine Jr., American poet and editor
• Joseph Harris (Gomer), Welsh Baptist minister, poet, writer and editor

Deaths

• March 5 - Philip Francis, Irish-born English translator of the works of Horace, poet, playwright and clergyman
• March 24 - Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield English statesman and man of letters
• August 3 - Stanisław Konarski, Polish pedagogue, educational reformer, political writer, poet, dramatist, Piarist friar and precursor of the Polish Enlightenment
• August 24 - George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton, English statesman, patron of the arts and poet
• September 18 - John Cunningham, Irish-born poet, dramatist and actor, working in Newcastle upon Tyne
• November 7 - Andrew Brice, English printer and writer
• November 16 - John Hawkesworth, English editor and poet