Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
January 29 – Greenock Burns Club holds the first Burns dinner, in Alloway, in honour of Scottish poet Robert Burns (died 1796).
April 15 – William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, walking by Ullswater near their home in the Lake District of England, come across a "long belt" of daffodils, a circumstance which inspires his poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", written in 1804, first published in 1807 and in revised form in 1815. It is titled "The Daffodils" in some anthologies.
May 3–9 – Having recollected in tranquility while walking on Barton Fell near Ullswater an experience of despondency, William Wordsworth writes "The Leech-Gatherer", the first draft of his poem "Resolution and Independence" (published in 1807).
Summer – Adam Oehlenschläger writes at a sitting the poem "Guldhornene", introducing Romanticism into Danish poetry.
September 3 – Wordsworth writes the sonnet "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802."
October 4 – Wordsworth marries Mary Hutchinson.
Henry Boyd completes the first full English translation of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Robert Bloomfield, Rural Tales, Ballads and Songs
Sir Alexander Boswell, Songs, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dejection: An Ode, first published October 4, 1802, in the Morning Post (see also Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads, below, in which the poem is again published this year)
George Dyer, Poems
William Gifford, The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis
Joseph Ritson, Ancient English Metrical Romances
Walter Savage Landor, Poetry by the author of Gebir
Amelia Opie, Poems
Tadhg Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin (died 1795), Timothy O'Sullivan's Pious Miscellany, Irish Gaelic language poet published in Ireland
Sir Walter Scott, editor, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–03), published anonymously, an anthology of ballads, Volume 3 published in 1893
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, new edition of Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems, published under Wordsworth's name but with poems by Coleridge as well; Preface of 1801 expanded and texts of numerous poems amended; includes Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode" (Later, revised editions: 1798, 1801, 1805)
John Blair Linn, The Powers of Genius, A Poem, in Three Parts, By John Blair Linn ... Second Edition, Corrected and Enlarged, Philadelphia: John Conrad, & Co.; sold by M. and J. Conrad & Co., United States
Charles Morris, Songs Political and Convivial, United States
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
February 11 – Lydia Maria Child (died 1880), American abolitionist, women's rights activist, Indian rights activist, novelist, journalist and poet; author of "Over the River and Through the Woods"
February 26 – Victor Hugo (died 1885), French novelist, playwright and poet
March 14 – Rangga Warsita (died 1873), Javanese
July 28 – Winthrop Mackworth Praed (died 1839) English politician and poet
August 14 – Letitia Elizabeth Landon, also known as "L.E.L." (died 1838), English poet and novelist
August 28 – Thomas Aird (died 1876), Scottish
October 1 – Edward Coote Pinkney (died 1828), American poet, lawyer, sailor, professor, and editor
October 10 – George Pope Morris (died 1864), American editor, poet, and songwriter
December 23 – Sara Coleridge (died 1852), English poet and translator; daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
date not known – Isaac Williams(died 1865) English poet and tractarian, a prominent member of the Oxford Movement
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
April 18 – Erasmus Darwin (born 1731), English physician, natural philosopher, physiologist, inventor and poet (grandfather of Charles Darwin)
September 17 – Richard Owen Cambridge (born 1717), English
Also:
Sophia Burrell (born 1750), English poet and playwright
Christoph Friedrich Sangerhausen (born 1740), German
