Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
June 5 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, living at Nether Stowey in the Quantock Hills, renews his friendship with William Wordsworth and Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy, who take a house nearby.
August – The British Home Office sends an agent to Nether Stowey to investigate Coleridge and Wordsworth who are suspected of being French spies.
October – Coleridge composes Kubla Khan in an opium-induced dream and writes down only a fragment of it on waking.
William Blake illustrates Edward Young's Night-Thoughts.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poems ... Second Edition
William Drennan, The Wake of William Orr
George Dyer, The Poet's Fate
Alexander Pope, The Works of Alexander Pope, edited by Joseph Warton, posthumous
Charlotte Smith, Elegaic Sonnets, and Other Poems, Volume 2, sequel to Elegaic Sonnets 1784
Mary Wollstonecraft, "On Poetry, and Our Relish for the Beauties of Nature", Monthly Magazine (April 1797), criticism
Sarah Wentworth Morton, publishing under the name "Philenia", Beacon Hill: A Local Poem, Historic and Descriptive, on the American Revolution; conventional verse in neoclassical form
Robert Treat Paine Jr. "The Ruling Passion", the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa poem for this year
Robert Southey, Poems, actually published in 1796, although the title page states "1797"
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
January 10 – Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (died 1848), German
March 27 – Alfred de Vigny (died 1863), French poet, playwright and novelist
August 30 – Mary Shelley, née Godwin (died 1851), English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, travel writer and poet
October 13 – William Motherwell (died 1835), Scottish
December 13 – Heinrich Heine (died 1856), German
December 27 – Mirza Ghalib (died 1869), Indian classical Urdu and Persian poet
Also:
James Wallis Eastburn (died 1819), American
George Moses Horton (died 1883), African-American
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
March 18 – Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter (born 1746), German poet and dramatist
April 7 – William Mason (born 1724), English poet, editor and gardener
June 28 – George Keate (born 1729), English poet and writer
Also:
Joseph Friedrich Engelschall (born 1739), German poet
Yuan Mei (born 1716), Chinese, Qing Dynasty poet, scholar, artist and gastronome
Molla Panah Vagif (born 1717), Azerbaijani poet
