1821 in poetry

Events

• The Saturday Evening Post founded in Philadelphia
• Lord Byron writes Sardanapalus, The Two Foscari and Cain
• Percy Bysshe Shelley's Queen Mab: a philosophical poem is distributed by an unauthorized publisher in London leading to prosecution by the Society for the Prevention of Vice.
• English aristocrat George Howard, at this time studying at the University of Oxford, obtains both the chancellor's and the Newdigate prizes there for a Latin poem, Paestum, and an English one.
• At about this date Sunthorn Phu is imprisoned and begins his epic poem Phra Aphai Mani.

Works published in English

United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• Edwin Atherstone, The Last Days of Herculaneum
• Joanna Baillie, Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters
• John Banim, The Celt's Paradise
• Thomas Lovell Beddoes, The Improvisatore, in Three Fyttes, with Other Poems
• Lord Byron:
• * Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice; The Prophecy of Dante, Marino Faliero performed April 25
• * Don Juan, cantos 3–5, published anonymously, see also Don Juan 1819, 1823, 1824
• * Sardanapalus; The Two Foscari; Cain, verse drama
• * The Vision of Judgment
• * Heaven and Earth
• * The Prophecy of Dante
• John Clare, The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems
• William Gifford, The Satires of Aulus Persius Flaccus, in Latin and English
• Felicia Dorothea Hemans, Dartmoor
• William Hone, The Political Showman — At Home!, illustrated by George Cruikshank; those lampooned include Wellington, Lord Liverpool, George IV, Lord Castlereagh and John Stoddart, editor of The Times
• Leigh Hunt, The Months
• Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Fate of Adelaide, and Other Poems
• Robert Millhouse, Vicissitude, a poem in four books and other pieces
• Thomas Moore, Irish Melodies, the first authorized edition of the author's lyrics; 10 editions by 1832
• Hannah More, Bible Rhymes
• John Henry Newman and John William Bowden, St. Bartholomew's Eve, published anonymously
• John William Polidori, The Fall of the Angels, published anonymously
• Bryan Waller Procter, writing under the pen name "Barry Cornwall", Mirandola: A tragedy, verse drama
• J. H. Reynolds, The Garden of Florence
• Percy Bysshe Shelley:
• * Epipsychidion, published anonymously
• * Adonais: An elegy on the death of John Keats
• * A Defence of Poetry
• Horatio Smith, Amarynthus, the Nympholept, published anonymously
• Robert Southey, A Vision of Judgement, in which Southey criticizes Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, labeling them members of what Southey calls the "Satanic School" of poetry; Byron later decides he likes the name, and responds with his own work, ''A Vision of Judgment''

United States">American poetry">United States

• Paul Allen, Noah, about the Bible story, but also discusses slavery and America's place in God's providence; revised by John Neal
• William Cullen Bryant, Poems, eight poems, including "The Ages", a poem in Spenserian stanzas on the history of mankind and expressing a positive outlook on the future, delivered at the Harvard commencement; also the last significant revision of "Thanatopsis"; the book, issued by Richard Henry Dana, Edward Channing and Willard Phillips, is a critical success which promotes Bryant's reputation, but it does not sell well
• James Gates Percival, Poems, including the first part of "Prometheus"

Works published in other languages

• Alexander Pushkin denies it but is widely thought to be the author this April of The Gabrieliad, Russian, a sexually explicit, blasphemous work
• Heinrich Heine, Gedichte, German, his first published collection
• Wilhelm Müller, German
• *Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten, begins publication
• *Lieder der Griechen, begins publication

Births

• February 4 - Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, American sonneteer
• March 10 - Màiri Mhòr nan Òran, Scottish Gaelic
• March 17 - Adelia Cleopatra Graves, American poet, educator, author
• March 19 - Richard Francis Burton, English geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer, Egyptologist and diplomat
• March 24 - Jeanette Threlfall, English hymnwriter and author of religious poems
• March 25 - Isabella Banks, née Varley, English
• April 9 - Charles Baudelaire, French
• May 29 - Frederick Locker-Lampson, English
• July 8 - Maria White Lowell, American poet and abolitionist
• September 24 - Cyprian Norwid, Polish
• October 15 - Alfred Meissner, Austrian
• November 28 - Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, Russian
• December 1 - Jane C. Bonar, Scottish hymnwriter
• December 27 - Joseph Déjacque, French anarchist and poet

Deaths

• January 7 – Anne Hunter, Scots poet and songwriter who wrote the lyrics to many of Haydn’s songs
• January 14 – Jens Zetlitz, Norwegian poet and pastor
• February 23 – John Keats, English, in Rome from tuberculosis, buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His last request is followed, and so he is buried under a tombstone without his name appearing on it but instead the words "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
• March 17 – Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes, French
• April 15 – Johann Christoph Schwab, German
• May 11 – George Howe, the first Australian editor, poet and early printer
• July 11 – Lucy Terry, first known African American poet, author of "Bars Fight, August 28, 1746", a ballad first printed in 1855
• Undated – Sukey Vickery, American novelist and poet