1850 in poetry

Events

• May - Alfred Tennyson's poem In Memoriam A.H.H., written to commemorate the death of his friend and fellow poet Arthur Hallam in 1833, is published by Edward Moxon in London; on June 1 the writer's anonymity is broken by The Publishers' Circular
• June 13 - Alfred Tennyson marries his childhood friend Emily Sellwood at Shiplake
• July - William Wordsworth's The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind: An Autobiographical Poem, on which he has worked since 1798, is first published about 3 months after his death by Edward Moxon in London in 14 books, with the title supplied by the poet's widow, Mary; originally intended to form the introduction to The Recluse, for which The Excursion formed the second part; though The Prelude failed to arouse great interest at this time, it is later generally recognised as his masterpiece
• November - A new edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poems is published by Chapman & Hall in London, including her Sonnets from the Portuguese of which the most famous will be no. 43
• November 19 - Alfred Tennyson succeeds Wordsworth as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom after Samuel Rogers turns down the post, saying he is too old for it and Tennyson is assured that birthday odes will not be required of him
• Golden Age of Russian Poetry, begun in about 1800 ends at about this time
• Young Germany a loose group of German writers from about 1830, stops flourishing at about this time

Works published in English

United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• William Allingham, Poems
• Philip James Bailey, The Angel World, and Other Poems
• Thomas Lovell Beddoes, published anonymously, Death's Jest-Book; or, The Fool's Tragedy
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poems including Sonnets from the Portuguese
• Robert Browning, Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
• Sydney Dobell, writing under the pen name "Sydney Yendys", The Roman
• Elin Evans, writing under the pen name "Elen Egryn", Telyn Egryn
• Dora Greenwell, Stories That Might Be True, with Other Poems
• Leigh Hunt, The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt in three volumes
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel in The Gem
• John Ruskin, Poems
• Robert Southey, Southey's Common-place Book: Third/Fourth Series, poems and prose, edited by John Wood Warner
• Alfred Tennyson:
• * In Memoriam A.H.H.
• * "Ring Out, Wild Bells"
• William Wordsworth, posthumously, ''The Prelude''

United States">American poetry">United States

• Washington Allston, Lectures on Art and Poems,
• George Copway, The Ojibway Conquest
• Richard Henry Dana Sr., Poems and Prose Writings, in two volumes, Volume 1 contains poems, both new and previously published in 1827, New York: Baker and Scribner
• Sylvester Judd, Philo, An Evangeliad
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Seaside and the Fireside
• Edgar Allan Poe, The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe: With a Memoir by Rufus Wilmot Griswold and Notices of His Life and Genius by N. P. Willis and J. R. Lowell, published in four volumes from this year to 1854 including "The Poetic Principle", an essay; criticism
• John Godfrey Saxe, Humorous and Satirical Poems
• William Gilmore Simms, The City of the Silent
• John Greenleaf Whittier:
• * Poems, Boston: Benjamin B. Mussey & Co.
• * ''Songs of Labor and Other Poems''

Works published in other languages

• James Huston, editor, Le répertoire national, anthology of French Canadian poetry in four volumes, published from 1848 to this year; including poetry by Joseph Mermet, Isidore Bédard, François-Xavier Garneau, Napoléon Aubin, François-Magloire Derome and Pierre Chauveau
• Brian Mac Giolla Meidhre, Cúirt An Mheán Oíche, Irish
• Andreas Munch, Nye Digte, Norwegian
• Betty Paoli, Neve Gedichte, Austrian

Births

• January 15 - Mihai Eminescu, Romanian
• February 20 - Nérée Beauchemin, Canadian poet and physician
• June 27 - Ivan Vazov, Bulgarian
• July 1 - Florence Van Leer Earle Coates, American
• July 18 - Rose Hartwick Thorpe, American
• September 2 - Eugene Field, American
• November 5 - Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American
• November 13 - Robert Louis Stevenson, Scots novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer
• December 13 - William Chapman, Canadian poet, journalist and bureaucrat
• December 25 - Isabella Valancy Crawford, Irish-born Canadian poet
• Also:
• * Saul Adadi, Libyan Sephardi Jewish hakham, rosh yeshiva and writer of piyyutim
• * Hortensia Antommarchi, Colombian poet
• * Vitthal Bhagwani Lembhe, Indian, Marathi-language poet
• * Savitagauri Pandya, Indian, Gujarati-language woman poet
• * Vishvanatha Dev Varma,, Indian, Sanskrit-language poet

Deaths

• January 20 - Adam Oehlenschlager, Danish
• January 20 - Philip Pendleton Cooke, American lawyer and poet
• April 7 - William Lisle Bowles, English
• April 23 - William Wordsworth, English
• May 23 - Margaret Fuller, American
• May 31 - Giuseppe Giusti, Italian
• August 22 - Nikolaus Lenau, Austrian
• Also:
• * Manoah Bodman, American