1816 in poetry

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

Events

 * This year was known as the "Year Without a Summer" after Mount Tambora had erupted in the Dutch East Indies the previous year and cast enough ash in to the atmosphere to block out the sun and cause abnormal weather across much of Northeastern United States and Northern Europe. This pall of darkness inspired Byron to write his poem, "Darkness" in July.
 * Lord Byron separates from his wife then leaves England to tour Europe, settling in the summer in Switzerland, at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva; in late May he meets, and soon becomes friends with, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shelley's wife-to-be Mary Godwin. Regular conversation with Byron has an invigorating effect on Shelley's poetry. While on a boating tour the two took together, Shelley was inspired to write his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. Shelley, in turn, influenced Byron's poetry. This new influence showed itself in the third part of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, which Byron was working on, as well as in Manfred, which he wrote in the autumn of this year.
 * In late August Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin return to England from Switzerland, taking with them some of Byron's manuscripts for his publisher.
 * Shelley is introduced to John Keats in Hampstead towards the end of the year by their mutual friend, Leigh Hunt, who was to transfer his enthusiasm from Keats to Shelley.
 * December 30 &mdash; Shelley marries Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin after Shelley's first wife, Harriet, drowns herself (her body was found December 10).

United Kingdom

 * Eaton Stannard Barrett, The Talents Run Mad; or, Eighteen Hundred and Sixteen


 * Mary Matilda Betham, The Lay of Marie
 * Thomas Brown, The Wanderer in Norway
 * Lord Byron (listed in chronological order of publication):
 * Parisina published together with The Siege of Corinth
 * April 14: A Sketch from Private Life, about the separation from his wife, Augusta; printed for private circulation; unauthorized publication in The Champion on April 14 of this year
 * April 14: "Fare Thee Well" like A Sketch, about the separation from his wife, also published without authorization in The Champion
 * September 16: Monody on the Death of the Right Honorouble R. B. Sheriden, written at the request of Douglas Kinnaird; spoken at Drury Lane Theatre by Mrs. Maria Davison on this date
 * November 18: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Part III; the publisher is able to sell 7,000 copies of both this work and The Prisoner of Chillon, and Other Poems to booksellers at a dinner in December.
 * December 5: The Prisoner of Chillon, and Other Poems
 * Poems
 * "The Dream"
 * "Prometheus"
 * Darkness (inspired by the darkness of this year, see above)
 * Manfred
 * Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel; Kubla Khan: A Vision; The Pains of Sleep, including "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan"
 * James Hogg:
 * Mador of the Moor
 * The Poetic Mirror; or, The Living Bards of Britain, published anonymously; has parodies of William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge and Robert Southey
 * Leigh Hunt, Story of Rimini
 * Hannah More, Poems
 * Edward Quillinan, The Sacrifice of Isabel
 * J.H. Reynolds, The Naiad, with Other Poems, published anonymously
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude; and Other Poems (including "Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude"), published in March
 * John Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"
 * Robert Southey:
 * The Lay of the Laureate: Carmen nuptiale, written for the marriage of Princess Charlotte; a privately printed edition with the title Carmen Nuptiale was also published this year
 * The Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo
 * John Wilson, The City of the Plague, and Other Poems
 * William Wordsworth, Thanksgiving Ode, January 18, 1816

United States

 * Joseph Rodman Drake, "The Culprit Fay", a 600-line poem about a fairy who falls in love with a mortal maiden in the Hudson Valley; republished in 1835 in The Culprit Fay and Other Poems
 * John Neal, The Portico. Volume III, Baltimore: Neale Wills & Cole
 * John Pierpont, The Airs of Palestine, a popular long poem which quickly went through three editions; traces the influence of music on Jewish history and praises sacred music; written while the author was a Baltimore shopkeeper, the popular poem gains him a reputation as one of the best American poets of his time
 * Lydia Sigourney, using the pen name "Lydia Huntley", Moral pieces, in Prose and Verse, Hartford, Connecticut: Sheldon & Goodwin
 * Alexander Wilson, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, poems and a biographical essay on the author's life, posthumously published

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * April 21 – Charlotte Brontë (died 1855)
 * April 22 – Philip James Bailey
 * April 23 – Douglas Smith Huyghue (died 1891), Canadian and Australian poet, fiction writer, essayist, and artist
 * May 2 – Charles Heavysege (died 1876), English and Canadian poet
 * October 26 – Philip Pendleton Cooke (died 1850), American lawyer and poet
 * Also:
 * Shirley Brooks, English
 * Frances Brown (Browne)
 * Josiah D. Canning, American
 * Charles Heavysege, Canadian

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * June 16 – Hugh Henry Brackenridge, (born 1748), American writer, poet, lawyer, judge, and Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice
 * July 7 – Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 64, Irish playwright, Whig statesman, writer and poet
 * October 27 – Santō Kyōden 山東京伝, pen name of Samuru Iwase 岩瀬醒, also known popularly as "Kyōya Denzō" 京屋伝蔵 (born 1761), Japanese Edo period poet, writer and artist; brother of Santō Kyōzan