1821 in literature

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

Events

• 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

• James Fenimore Cooper – The Spy
• Thomas De Quincey – Confessions of an English Opium Eater
• 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 (German: Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre)
• 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

• 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; completed 1810)

Poetry

• Heinrich Heine – Poems
• Alessandro Manzoni – Il Cinque Maggio
• Percy Bysshe Shelly – Adonais

Non-fiction

• Owen Chase – Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex
• George Grote – Statement of the Question of Parliamentary Reform
• William Hazlitt – Table-Talk
• Georg Konrad Horst – Zauber-Bibliothek (1821-1826)
• 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, English polymath (died 1890)
• 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

• January 14 – Jens Zetlitz, Norwegian poet (born 1761)
• February 23 – John Keats, English poet (tuberculosis, born 1795)
• 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)

Awards

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

References