1791 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Events

William Bartram's Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws contains enthusiastic descriptions of scenery that influence writers including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who calls the book one of "high merit", and William Wordsworth.
Scottish poet Robert Burns gives up farming for a full-time post as an exciseman in Dumfries, writes "Ae Fond Kiss", "The Banks O' Doon" and "Sweet Afton", and publishes his last major poem, the narrative "Tam o' Shanter".
Samuel Taylor Coleridge composes "On Quitting School", marking his transfer from Christ's Hospital school to Jesus College, Cambridge, although it will not be published until 1834, after his death.

John Aikin, Poems
William Blake, published anonymously, "The French Revolution"
Robert Burns, "Tam o' Shanter", published
William Cowper, The Iliad and the Odyssey
Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, consisting of two poems about scientific matters and their implications: "The Loves of the Plants", which became popular when it was originally published separately in 1789, and "The Economy of Vegetation", which celebrates technological innovation, scientific discovery and offers scientific theories. The poems, thought to be associated with the politics of the French Revolution and sexual licentiousness, were controversial
William Gifford, published anonymously, The Baviad
Francis Grose, The Antiquities of Scotland, Volume 2 ; including "Tam o' Shanter" by Robert Burns
George Huddesford, editor and author, published anonymously, Salmagundi: A miscellaneous combination of original poetry, largely written by Huddesford
Richard Polwhele, Poems
Christopher Smart, The Poems of the late Christopher Smart, edited by Francis Newbey, assisted by Smart's nephew, Christopher Hunter

Richard Alsop, Theodore Dwight, Elihu Hubbard Smith, Lemuel Hopkins and Mason Cogswell, The Echo, Federalist verse satire ridiculing Thomas Jefferson and other anti-Federalists; published first in the American Mercury
Benjamin Youngs Prime, Columbia's Glory, depicting the Revolutionary War, the only work by the author to be published under his own name
Jenny Fenno, Occasional Compositions in Prose and Verse, United States
Thomas Morris, Miscellanies in Prose and Verse
Benjamin Youngs Prime, ''Columbia's Glory, or British Pride Humbled''

Death years link to the corresponding " in poetry" article:

January 15 - Franz Grillparzer, Austrian dramatic poet
February 10 - Ōtagaki Rengetsu, Japanese Buddhist nun, poet, potter, painter and calligrapher
June 9 - John Howard Payne, American actor, playwright, author and American consul in Tunis ; most remembered as creator of "Home! Sweet Home!"
September 1 - Lydia Sigourney, the "Sweet Singer of Hartford", American poet
September 7 - Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, Italian poet famous for his sonnets in Romanesco, the dialect of Rome
October 3 - Sima Milutinović Sarajlija, Bosnian-Serbian poet, hajduk, translator, historian, philologist, diplomat and adventurer
December 14:
* Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Danish poet, playwright and literary critic and historian
* Charles Wolfe, Irish poet and Anglican clergyman
date not known - Paramananda, Indian, Kashmiri-language poet

Birth years link to the corresponding " in poetry" article:

January 11 - William Williams Pantycelyn, Welsh poet, prose and hymn writer
March 15 - William Woty, English writer of light verse and law clerk
June 12 - Francis Grose, English antiquary, draughtsman and lexicographer
June 27 - Johann Heinrich Merck, German critic, essayist, editor, writer and poet; from suicide
June 28 - John Wesley, English cleric and Christian theologian, founder of Methodism, psalmist and hymnist
July 7 - Thomas Blacklock, blind Scottish poet
September 17 - Tomás de Iriarte y Oropesa, Spanish neoclassical poet
September 18 - Elias Caspar Reichard, German teacher and writer
October 10 - Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, German poet, organist, composer and journalist
December 31 - John Ellis, English scrivener and poet
date not known - John Frederick Bryant, English pipe-maker and poet