1821 in literature

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1821.

Events[edit]

• August 4 – Atkinson & Alexander publish The Saturday Evening Post for the first time as a weekly newspaper in the United States.
• James Ballantyne begins publishing his Novelist's Library in Edinburgh edited by Sir Walter Scott.^[1]
• Percy Bysshe Shelley's Queen Mab: a philosophical poem (1813) is distributed by an unauthorized publisher in London leading to prosecution by the Society for the Prevention of Vice.
• In the first known obscenity case in the United States, a Massachusetts court outlaws the John Cleland novel Fanny Hill (1748). The publisher, Peter Holmes, is convicted for printing a "lewd and obscene" novel.
• At about this date Sunthorn Phu is imprisoned and begins his epic poem Phra Aphai Mani.

New books[edit]

Fiction[edit]

• James Fenimore Cooper – The Spy
• Pierce Egan – Life in London; Boxiana Vol. III
• John Galt
  • Annals of the Parish
  • The Ayrshire Legatees
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years (Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre)
• Ann Hatton – Lovers and Friends
• Hannah Maria Jones – Gretna Green
• Charles Nodier – Smarra
• Anna Maria Porter – The Village of Mariendorpt
• Jane Porter – The Scottish Chiefs
• Sir Walter Scott – Kenilworth

Children[edit]

• Maria Hack – Harry Beaufoy; or the Pupil of Nature
• Thomas Love Peacock – Maid Marian

Drama[edit]

• Lord Byron
  • Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice (published & performed)
  • Sardanapalus: a tragedy; The Two Foscari: a tragedy; Cain: a mystery (published together)
• Alexandre-Vincent Pineux Duval – Le Faux Bonhomme
• Aleksander Fredro – Pan Geldhab (Mr. Gelhab)
• Franz Grillparzer – Das goldene Vliess (The Golden Fleece trilogy)
• Heinrich von Kleist (died 1811) – The Prince of Homburg (Prinz Friedrich von Homburg oder die Schlacht bei Fehrbellin, first performance, in abridged version as Die Schlacht von Fehrbellin; completed 1810)

Poetry[edit]

• Heinrich Heine – Poems
• Alessandro Manzoni – Il Cinque Maggio (May 5th)
• Percy Bysshe Shelly – Adonaïs

Non-fiction[edit]

• James Burney – An Essay, by Way of Lecture, on the Game of Whist
• Owen Chase – Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex
• William Cobbett – The American Gardener
• 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[edit]

• March 19 – Richard Francis Burton, English polymath (died 1890)
• March 25 – Isabella Banks, English poet and novelist (died 1897)
• April 9 – Charles Baudelaire, French poet (died 1867)
• May 8 – Charlotte Maria Tucker, English children's writer (died 1893)
• June 30 – William Hepworth Dixon, English historian, traveler and journal editor (died 1879)
• October 30 – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist (died 1881)
• November 28 – Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, Russian poet, writer and critic (died 1877)
• September 21– Aurora Ljungstedt, Swedish horror writer (died 1908)
• December 6 – Dora Greenwell, English poet (died 1882)
• December 12 – Gustave Flaubert, French novelist (died 1880)

Keats's grave in Rome

Deaths[edit]

• January 14 – Jens Zetlitz, Norwegian poet (born 1761)
• February 23 – John Keats, English poet (tuberculosis, born 1795)^[2]
• February 26 – Joseph de Maistre, Savoyard philosopher (born 1753)
• March 17 – Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes, French poet (born 1757)
• May 2 – Hester Thrale (Mrs Piozzi), English diarist and arts patron (born 1741)
• May 22 – Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, German philosopher (born 1740)
• August 1 – Elizabeth Inchbald, English novelist and dramatist (born 1753)
• November 17 – James Burney, English rear-admiral and naval writer (born 1750)
• Unknown date – Thomas Scott, English cleric and religious writer (born 1747)

Awards[edit]

• Chancellor's Gold Medal and Newdigate Prize – George Howard

References[edit]