1790 in poetry

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

Events

 * Henry James Pye became Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
 * March - Jens Baggesen, after ridiculing his fellow Danes in his poem, Holger the Dane and leaving Denmark for Germany, Baggensen went on to Switzerland, became a good friend of the Swiss poet Johan Kaspar Lavater, a leader in the Sturm und Drang movement, and this month returned to Denmark.

United Kingdom

 * Joanna Baillie, published anonymously, Poems
 * William Blake, published anonymously, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, illuminated book with 27 relief-etched plates
 * Robert Burns, "Tam o' Shanter" Scottish
 * Anne Francis, anonymously published "by a lady", then reissued this year under the author's name, Miscellaneous Poems
 * Robert Merry, The Laurel of Liberty
 * William Sotheby, Poems
 * Ann Yearsley, Stanzas of Woe

United States

 * Peter Markoe, the Reconciliation; or, The Triumph of Nature, an unproduced opera in verse
 * Sarah Wentworth Morton, published under the name "Philenia, a Lady of Boston", Ouabi; or, The Virtues of Nature: An Indian Tale in Four Cantos, narrative poem portraying a love triangle between an Indian chief, his wife and an aristocrat from Europe; set to music in 1793 by Hans Graham; the poem inspired Louis James Bacon to write the play The American Indian in 1795
 * Mercy Otis Warren, Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous, the first work printed under the author's own name; includes verse tragedies; many of the poems promote republican virtues and show women as moral authorities

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 1 – James Wills (died 1868), Irish writer and poet
 * January 10 – Anders Abraham Grafström (died 1870), Swedish historian, priest and poet
 * October 21 – Alphonse de Lamartine (died 1869), French writer, poet and politician
 * July 8 – Fitz-Greene Halleck (died 1867), American

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * May 21 – Thomas Warton (born 1728), English
 * July 25 – William Livingston (born 1723), English Colonial American public official, poet and writer
 * Also:
 * Andrew Macdonald (poet) (born 1755), Scottish clergyman, poet and playwright