1791 in poetry

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"On Quitting School", marking his transfer from Christ's Hospital school to Jesus College, Cambridge, although it will not be published until 1834, after his death.

  Works published in English

United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• 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

  United States">American poetry">United States

• 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

  Works published in other languages

• Basilio da Gama, Quitúbia; Brazil

  Births

• 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

  Deaths

• 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 - :de:Elias Caspar Reichard|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