Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
June–August – Keats with his friend Charles Armitage Brown makes a walking tour of Scotland, Ireland, and the Lake District. While in Scotland he visits Burns Cottage, the home of Robert Burns (1759–96). Before Keats arrives, he writes to a friend that "one of the pleasantest means of annulling self is approaching such a shrine as the cottage of Burns — we need not think of his misery — that is all gone — bad luck to it — I shall look upon it all with unmixed pleasure."
September–November – Keats meets and falls in love with Fanny Brawne (1800–65)
December – Keats is invited to move into Brown's home at Wentworth Place, in Hampstead, at this time a pastoral suburb north of London. In the next 17 months as Brown’s housemate, Keats writes "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "Ode to a Nightingale", among other works.
January 11 – Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" is published in Leigh Hunt's weekly The Examiner (London; p. 24) under the pen name 'Glirastes'; Horace Smith's contribution to the same informal sonnet-writing competition, "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below" is published on February 1 under his initials.
February 4 – While John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley are at Leigh Hunt's home for the evening, all three compete in composing sonnets about the Nile. Hunt is judged the winner, with:
March 12 – Percy Bysshe Shelley and family, along with his sister-in-law Claire Clairmont, mother of Lord Byron's child, leaves England for the Continent, reaching Milan April 4 and visiting the Italian lakes. In June they move to the Bagni di Lucca, where Shelley translates Plato's Symposium, writes "On Love," and completes Rosalind and Helen. In August, they move to Este, near Venice to be closer to Lord Byron; there Shelley begins Prometheus Unbound. Their daughter Clara dies September 24 and the Shelleys visit Venice October 12–31, then travel to Rome and Naples, where they remain until February 28, 1819.
Bernard Barton:
The Convict's Appeal
Poems, anonymously published as "by an amateur"
Thomas Haynes Bayly, published under the pen name "Q. in the Corner", Parliamentary Letters, and Other Poems
Mary Matilda Betham, Vignettes
William Blake, Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion, illuminated book of 100 plates, estimated to have been published this date, although "1804" is printed on the title plate, but "this probably indicates the date when Blake began the work"
Sir Thomas Burges, The Dragon Knight
Lord Byron:
Beppo: A Venetian story, published anonymously
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Canto the Fourth (see also Child Harold, 1812, 1816)
William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (criticism)
Felicia Dorothea Hemans, Translations from Camoens and Other Poets, with Original Poetry
Leigh Hunt:
Foliage; or, Poems Original and Translated
Literary Pocket-Book (miscellaneous poetry and prose)
John Keats:
Endymion
"When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be"
Thomas Moore, publishing as "Thomas Brown the Younger", The Fudge Family in Paris, at least nine editions published this year
Hannah More, Tragedies
Thomas Love Peacock, Rhododaphne; or, The Thessalian Spell
Percy Bysshe Shelley:
Julian and Maddalo
Ozymandias
William Sotheby, Farewell to Italy, and Occasional Poems
William Cullen Bryant, To a Waterfowl
Thomas Green Fessenden, The ladies monitor, a poem (Bellows Falls: Printed by Bill Blake & Co.)
John Neal:
The Portico Volume 3 (Baltimore: Neale Wills & Cole)
Battle of Niagara
Goldau, or, the Maniac Harper
James Kirke Paulding, The Backwoodsman (Philadelphia: M. Thomas), a long poem in heroic couplets about a New York pioneer on the frontier in Kentucky
Samuel Woodworth, The Poems, Odes, Songs, and Other Metrical Effusions, of Samuel Woodworth (New York: Abraham Asten and Matthias Lopez)
Richard Henry Wilde, "My Life is Like the Summer Rose", John Greenleaf Whittier called it "a perfect poem"
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Revolt of Islam, originally Laon and Cythna (actually printed in December 1817 although the book states the year of publication as this year)
Kristijonas Donelaitis, The Seasons ("Metai" in Lithuanian), written about 1765-1775, is published in Königsberg
Adam Mickiewicz, City Winter ("Zima miejska" in Polish), his first poem, is published in Vilnius
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
January 24 - John Mason Neale
April - Cecil Frances Alexander, née Humphreys
July 30 - Emily Brontë (died 1848)
October 16 – William Forster (died 1882) Australian politician, Premier of New South Wales and poet
December 24 - Eliza Cook
Date unknown:
Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle
Alexander McLachlan, Canadian
Charlotta Öberg, Swedish poet, (died 1856)
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
May 14 - Matthew Gregory Lewis
Date unknown:
John Williams
