1837 in poetry

Updated on Dec 07, 2024

Edit

Comment

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

Events

July – English "peasant poet" John Clare first enters an asylum for the insane, at High Beach in Essex.

October – The United States Magazine and Democratic Review is established by John L. O'Sullivan, a political and literary magazine that publishes Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau and others.

United Kingdom

Richard Harris Barham's Ingoldsby Legends

Lord Byron, Dramas (poetry, despite the title)

Eliza Cook's The Old Armchair

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Letters and Works, including introductory anecdotes by Lady Louisa Stuart (See also Works 1803)

Thomas Love Peacock's The Paper Money Lyrics

Robert Southey, The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, first two volumes published this year; second two volumes published in 1838

Letitia Elizabeth Landon, writing under the pen name "L.E.L." Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838

United States

Thomas Holley Chivers, Nacoochee

George Moses Horton's Hope of Liberty — Poems by a Slave, a second edition of Hope of Liberty, originally published in 1829; the new edition was published in Philadelphia by an antislavery group; Horton received no royalties (although the North Carolina slave was trying to earn money for his freedom), and likely didn't even know that this and another edition had been published in Boston in 1838); contains 23 poems, including three on the author's feelings about having been a slave;

Frederick William Shelton, The Trollopiad; or, Travelling Gentlemen in America, a verse satire on British travel writer Frances Trollope, who wrote harshly about Americans in her Domestic Manners of the Americans 1832

John Greenleaf Whittier, Poems Written During the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, the author's first poetry book, published in an unauthorized edition by Boston abolitionists; the next year, Whittier expanded the collection and published it under the title Poems; includes poems attacking slavery, such as "Clerical Oppressors", which focuses on Southern church leaders who use Christianity to defend slavery, and "Stanzas", on the irony of America's commitments to both freedom and slavery

Works published in other languages

Victor Hugo, Les Voix intérieures, France

José de Espronceda, El estudiante de Salamanca, first fragment, Spain

Alphonse de Lamartine's Chute d'un ange, France

Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Les Pensées d'août, France

Births

Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

January 30 – Augusta Webster, born Julia Augusta Davies (died 1894), English

February 24 – Rosalía de Castro (died 1885), Spanish Galician poet and writer

March 1 – William Dean Howells (died 1920), American writer, editor and critic

March 6 – Sully Prudhomme (died 1907), French

April 1 – Jorge Isaacs, born Jorge Isaacs Ferrer (died 1895), Colombian writer, politician and explorer

April 5 – Algernon Charles Swinburne (died 1909), English

April 10 – Forceythe Willson, born Byron Forceythe Willson (died 1867), American

September 8 – Joaquin Miller, born Cincinnatus Heine Miller (died 1913), American "Poet of the Sierras"

Undated – Ram Sharma (died 1918), Indian, English-language poet and journalist

Deaths

Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

January 29 – Alexander Pushkin (born 1799), Russian poet, killed in a duel

June 14 – Giacomo Leopardi (born 1798), Italian poet, philosopher, essayist and philologist

March 15 – Lukijan Mušicki (born 1777), Serbian poet, prose writer and polyglot

September 8 – Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges (born 1762), English

October 17 – George Colman the Younger (born 1762), English dramatist and miscellaneous writer

October 19 – Hendrik Doeff (born 1764), Dutch trader, the first westerner to write haiku in Japanese

November 11 – Thomas Green Fessenden (born 1771), American

References

1837 in poetry Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA

Contents