Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Events
This year is known as the "Year Without a Summer" after Mount Tambora had erupted in the Dutch East Indies the previous year and cast enough ash into the atmosphere to block out the sun and cause abnormal weather across much of Northern Europe and the Northeastern United States. This pall of darkness inspires Byron to write his poem "Darkness" in July.
Lord Byron separates from his wife and in April leaves England to tour continental Europe, settling in the summer in Switzerland, at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva; in late May he meets, and soon becomes friends with, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shelley's wife-to-be Mary Godwin. Regular conversation with Byron has an invigorating effect on Shelley's poetry. While on a boating tour the two take together, Shelley is inspired to write his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. Shelley, in turn, influences Byron's poetry. This new influence shows itself in the third part of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, which Byron is working on, as well as in Manfred, which he writes in the autumn of this year.
In late August Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin return to England from Switzerland, taking with them some of Byron's manuscripts for his publisher.
Shelley is introduced to John Keats in Hampstead towards the end of the year by their mutual friend, Leigh Hunt, who is to transfer his enthusiasm from Keats to Shelley.
December 30 — Shelley marries his mistress Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in London following the suicides on October 9 of her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, and on December 10 of his pregnant estranged first wife, Harriet.
* February 13: Parisina published together with The Siege of Corinth
* April 14: A Sketch from Private Life, about the separation from his wife, Augusta; printed for private circulation; unauthorized publication in The Champion on April 14 of this year
* April 14: "Fare Thee Well" like A Sketch, about the separation from his wife, also published without authorization in The Champion
* November 18: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Part III; the publisher is able to sell 7,000 copies of both this work and The Prisoner of Chillon, and Other Poems to booksellers at a dinner in December.
J. H. Reynolds, The Naiad, with Other Poems, published anonymously
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude; and Other Poems, published in March
John Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"
Robert Southey:
* The Lay of the Laureate: Carmen nuptiale, written for the marriage of Princess Charlotte; a privately printed edition with the title Carmen Nuptiale is also published this year
* The Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo
John Wilson, The City of the Plague, and Other Poems
William Wordsworth, Thanksgiving Ode, January 18, 1816
Joseph Rodman Drake, "The Culprit Fay", a 600-line poem about a fairy who falls in love with a mortal maiden in the Hudson Valley; republished in 1835 in The Culprit Fay and Other Poems
John Neal, The Portico. Volume III, Baltimore: Neale Wills & Cole
John Pierpont, The Airs of Palestine, a popular long poem which quickly went through three editions; traces the influence of music on Jewish history and praises sacred music; written while the author was a Baltimore shopkeeper, the popular poem gains him a reputation as one of the bestAmerican poets of his time
Lydia Sigourney, using the pen name "Lydia Huntley", Moral pieces, in Prose and Verse, Hartford, Connecticut: Sheldon & Goodwin
Alexander Wilson, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, poems and a biographical essay on the author's life, posthumously published
dies this year aged 64
Births
Death years link to the corresponding " in poetry" article:
October 27 - Santō Kyōden 山東京伝, pen name of Samuru Iwase 岩瀬醒, also known popularly as "Kyōya Denzō" 京屋伝蔵, JapaneseEdo period poet, writer and artist; brother of Santō Kyōzan
