1759 in poetry

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

Events

• August 12 — Battle of Kunersdorf (Seven Years' War): German poet Major Ewald Christian von Kleist is fatally injured.
• September 12 — Just before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, in the Seven Years' War, British General James Wolfe is said to have recited Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) to his officers, adding, "Gentlemen, I would rather have written that poem than take Quebec tomorrow".
• Christopher Smart, confined to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in London, begins to write Jubilate Agno.
• Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch becomes professor of rhetoric and poetry at the University of Jena.

Works published

• Sameul Butler, The Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose, posthumous^[1]
• Edward Capell, editor, Prolusions; or, Select Pieces of Antient Poetry, published anonymously this year, although the book states 1760^[1]
• John Gilbert Cooper, translator, Ver-Vert; or, The Nunnery Parrot, published anonymously, translated from the French of Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset's mock epic Ver-Vert 1733^[1]
• Mary Latter, The Miscellaneous Works^[1]
• William Mason, Caractacus^[1]
• Augustus Montague Toplady, Poems on Sacred Subjects, published aononymously^[1] (the author's 18th birthday was this year)
• Francis Williams, "Ode to Governor Haldane", the first known published poem by a Jamaican black^[2]
• Edward Young, Conjectures on Original Composition (criticism)

Births

Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• January 25 – Robert Burns, also known as "Rabbie Burns", "Scotland's favourite son", "the Ploughman Poet", "the Bard of Ayrshire" and, in Scotland, simply "The Bard" (died 1796), Scottish poet and a lyricist, called the national poet of Scotland
• November 10 – Friedrich Schiller (died 1805), German poet and dramatist
• date not known – Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton, (died 1846), American^[3]

Deaths

Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• June 12 – William Collins (born 1721), 37, English poet
• August 24 – Ewald Christian von Kleist (born 1715), German poet
• Martha Brewster (after this year)
• Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (born 1708), English diplomat and satiric poet
• Approximate year of death Mary Masters, birth date unknown, Scottish poet

See also

• Poetry
• List of years in poetry
• 18th century in poetry
• Augustan poetry
• Augustan literature

Notes

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Cox, Michael, editor, The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-860634-6
2. ↑ "Selected Timeline of Anglophone Caribbean Poetry" in Williams, Emily Allen, Anglophone Caribbean Poetry, 1970–2001: An Annotated Bibliography, page xvii, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, ISBN 978-0-313-31747-7, retrieved via Google Books, February 7, 2009
3. ↑ Web page titled "American Poetry Full-Text Database / Bibliography" at University of Chicago Library website, retrieved March 4, 2009