1839 in poetry

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

Events

 * William Wordsworth granted an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree by Oxford University.

United Kingdom

 * Philip James Bailey, Festus, reprinted in numerous editions up to 1889, when the 50th anniversary edition was published
 * Thomas De Quincey, biographical essays on the Lake Poets in the series Recollections of the Lake Poets, in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (see also Recollections 1834, 1835, 1840):
 * "William Wordsworth," January, February, and April
 * "William Wordsworth and Robert Southey," July
 * "Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge," August
 * "Recollections of Grasmere," September
 * "The Saracen's Head," December
 * Henry Hart Milman, Poetical Works
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley, posthumous works (died 1822):
 * The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in four volumes is published from January to May, edited by Mary Shelley, with her preface and notes, and dedicated to the Shelleys' son, Percy Florence Shelley; London: Edward Moxon (reprinted in 1847 )
 * England in 1819, a political sonnet composed in 1819, first published
 * The 'Pearl Poet', Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a late 14th-century Middle English alliterative romance first published complete, in Syr Gawayne: a collection of ancient romance-poems by Scottish and and English authors relating to that celebrated knight of the Round Table edited by Frederic Madden for the Bannatyne Club

United States

 * Ralph Waldo Emerson:
 * "Each and All", a poem calling Nature "the perfect whole"
 * "The Humble-Bee", praising the "yellow breeched philosopher"
 * "The Rhodora"
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Voices of the Night, the author's first volume of original poetry; includes "A Psalm of Life" and "Light of the Stars"
 * Edgar Allan Poe, The Haunted Palace, an allegory of mental states; considered one of the author's best poems, written at a time when his finances forced him to concentrate on stories rather than poetry; originally published in the Baltimore Museum and later included in "The Fall of the House of Usher"
 * William Gilmore Simms, Southern Passages and Pictures, lyrical, sentimental and descriptive poems; New York
 * Jones Very, Essays and Poems, prose and poetry

Other

 * Gooru Churun Dutt, School Hours or Poems Composed at School, Calcutta: T.B. Scott and Co.; India, Indian poetry in English

Other languages

 * Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Pauvres Fleurs, France

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 1 - James Ryder Randall, American
 * April 18 - Henry Kendall (died 1882), Australian
 * June 21 - Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (died 1909), Brazilian
 * August 4 - Walter Pater (UK)
 * August 25 - Bret Harte (d 1902)
 * December 30 - John Todhunter, Irish
 * Also:
 * William Little (Australian poet) (died 1916), Australian
 * Velutteri Keshavan Vaidyar (died 1897), Indian, Malayalam-language poet

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * May 4 - Denis Davydov (born 1784), Russian soldier-poet of the Napoleonic Wars who invented a specific genre — hussar poetry noted for its hedonism and bravado
 * May 21 - José María Heredia y Campuzano, Cuban
 * July 15 - Winthrop Mackworth Praed (UK)
 * Also:
 * Thomas Haynes Bayley