1821 in literature

The year 1821 in literature involved some significant events.

Events

 * In the first known obscenity case in the United States, a Massachusetts court outlawed the John Cleland novel, Fanny Hill . The publisher, Peter Holmes, was convicted for printing a "lewd and obscene" novel.
 * August 4 - Atkinson & Alexander publish the Saturday Evening Post for the first time as a weekly newspaper.

New books

 * James Fenimore Cooper - The Spy
 * Thomas De Quincey - Confessions of an English Opium Eater
 * Pierce Egan - Real Life in London
 * John Galt
 * Annals of the Parish
 * The Ayrshire Legatees
 * Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years
 * I. M. H. Hales - Talisman, a Tale of Mystery
 * Ann Hatton - Lovers and Friends
 * C. D. Haynes - The Spectre of St. Michael's
 * Hannah Maria Jones – Gretna Green
 * Thomas H. Marshall - The Irish Necromancer
 * Charles Nodier - Smarra
 * Thomas Love Peacock - Maid Marian
 * Anna Maria Porter - The Village of Mariendorpt
 * Jane Porter - The Scottish Chiefs
 * Sir Walter Scott - Kenilworth

New drama

 * Alexandre-Vincent Pineux Duval - Le Faux Bonhomme
 * Franz Grillparzer - Das Goldene Vliess

Poetry

 * Heinrich Heine - Poems
 * Alessandro Manzoni - Il Cinque Maggio
 * Percy Bysshe Shelly - Adonais

Non-fiction

 * George Grote - Statement of the Question of Parliamentary Reform
 * William Hazlitt - Table Talk
 * James Mill - Elements of Political Economy
 * John Roberton - Kalogynomia, or the Laws of Female Beauty
 * Robert Southey - Life of Cromwell

Births

 * March 19 - Richard Francis Burton  (+  1890)
 * April 9 - Charles Baudelaire  (+  1867)
 * October 30 - Fyodor Dostoevsky   (+  1881)
 * November 28 - Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov (+ 1877)
 * December 6 - Dora Greenwell  (+  1882)
 * December 12 - Gustave Flaubert   (+  1880)

Deaths

 * January 14 - Jens Zetlitz, Norwegian poet
 * February 23 - John Keats, poet
 * February 26 - Joseph de Maistre, philosopher
 * March 17 - Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes, poet
 * May 2 - Hester Thrale, diarist and friend of Dr Johnson
 * August 1 - Elizabeth Inchbald, writer