1818 in poetry

— John Keats, Endymion

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

Events

John Keats

• In December, Keats is invited by his friend, Charles Armitage Brown, to move into Brown's home at Wentworth Place, in Hampstead, then a pastoral suburb north of London. In the next 17 months as Brown’s housemate, Keats wrote "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "Ode to a Nightingale", among other works.^[1]
• John Keats falls in love with Fanny Brawne (1800–65) and writes some of his finest poetry—the period from September of this year to September 1819 is often referred to among Keats scholars as the Great Year, or the Living Year (see 1819 in poetry)
• John Keats took a trip to Scotland to visit the home of Robert Burns, years after Burns' death in 1796. Before Keats arrived, he wrote 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."^[1]

Other events

• 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:^[2]

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,

Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,

And times and things, as in that vision, seem

Keeping along it their eternal stands [...]

• 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.

Works published

United Kingdom

Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.^[3]

• Bernard Barton:
  • The Convict's Appeal^[4]
  • Poems, anonymously published "by an amateur", as the book stated^[4]
• Thomas Haynes Bayly, published under the pen name "Q. in the Corner", Parliamentary Letters, and Other Poems^[4]
• Mary Matilda Betham, Vignettes^[4]
• 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", according to The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature (2004)^[4]
• Sir Thomas Burges, The Dragon Knight^[4]
• Lord Byron:
  • Beppo: A Venetian story, published anonymously^[4]
  • Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Canto the Fourth (see also Child Harold, 1812, 1816)^[4]
• William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (criticism)
• Felicia Dorothea Hemans, Translations from Camoens and Other Poets, with Original Poetry^[4]
• Leigh Hunt:
  • Foliage; or, Poems Original and Translated^[4]
  • Literary Pocket-Book miscellaneous poetry and prose^[4]
• 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^[4]
• Hannah More, Tragedies^[4]
• Thomas Love Peacock, Rhododaphne; or, The Thessalian Spell^[4]
• Percy Bysshe Shelley:
  • Julian and Maddalo
  • Ozymandias
• William Sotheby, Farewell to Italy, and Occasional Poems^[4]

United States

• William Cullen Bryant, To a Waterfowl^[5]
• Thomas Green Fessenden, The ladies monitor, a poem Bellows Falls: Printed by Bill Blake & Co.^[6]
• John Neal:
  • The Portico Volume 3 (Baltimore: Neale Wills & Cole^[6]
  • Battle of Niagara^[5]
  • Goldau, or, the Maniac Harper^[5]
• James Kirke Paulding, The Backwoodsman, a long poem^[7] Philadelphia: M. Thomas^[6] in heroic couplets about a New York pioneer on the frontier in Kentucky^[8]
• Samuel Woodworth, The Poems, Odes, Songs, and Other Metrical Effusions, of Samuel Woodworth, New York: Abraham Asten and Matthias Lopez^[6]
• Richard Henry Wilde, "My Life is Like the Summer Rose", John Greenleaf Whittier called it "a perfect poem"^[9]

Works misdated as this year

• 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)^[4]

Works published in other languages

• Kristijonas Donelaitis, The Seasons ("Metai" in Lithuanian), written about 1765-1775, is published in Königsberg

Births

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)

Deaths

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

• May 14 - Matthew Gregory Lewis

Date unknown:

• John Williams

See also

Poetry portal

• Poetry
• List of years in poetry
• List of years in literature
• 19th century in literature
• 19th century in poetry
• Romantic poetry
• Golden Age of Russian Poetry (1800–1850)
• Weimar Classicism period in Germany, commonly considered to have begun in 1788 and to have ended either in 1805, with the death of Friedrich Schiller, or 1832, with the death of Goethe
• List of poets

Notes