1821 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1821.

List of years in literature (table)
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Events

• May – Percy Bysshe Shelley's Queen Mab: a philosophical poem (1813) is distributed by a pirate publisher in London, leading to prosecution by the Society for the Prevention of Vice.^[1]
• August 4 – Atkinson & Alexander publish The Saturday Evening Post for the first time as a weekly newspaper in the United States.^[2]
• unknown dates
  • James Ballantyne begins publishing his Novelist's Library in Edinburgh edited by Sir Walter Scott.^[3]
  • 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 of printing a "lewd and obscene" novel.^[4]
  • Sunthorn Phu is imprisoned and begins his epic poem Phra Aphai Mani.^[5]

New books

Fiction

Portrait of Sir Walter Scott by Thomas Lawrence. Scott's historical novel Kenilworth was published in 1821.

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

Children

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

Drama

• John Banim and Richard Lalor Sheil – Damon and Pythias
• Lord Byron
  • Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice (published & performed)
  • Sardanapalus: a tragedy; The Two Foscari: a tragedy; Cain: a mystery (published together)
• Alfred Bunn –Kenilworth
• Barry Cornwall – Mirandola
• Alexandre-Vincent Pineux Duval – Le Faux Bonhomme
• Aleksander Fredro – Pan Geldhab (Mr. Gelhab)
• Franz Grillparzer – Das goldene Vliess (The Golden Fleece trilogy)
• James Haynes – Conscience
• 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

• Heinrich Heine – Poems
• Alessandro Manzoni – Il Cinque Maggio (May 5)
• Alexander Pushkin - The Gabrieliad
• Percy Bysshe Shelley – Adonaïs

Non-fiction

• 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^[6]
• William Cobbett – The American Gardener^[7]
• George Grote – Statement of the Question of Parliamentary Reform
• William Hazlitt – Table-Talk^[8]
• James Mill – Elements of Political Economy
• Robert Owen – Report to the County of Lanark, of a plan for relieving public distress and removing discontent
• John Roberton – Kalogynomia, or the Laws of Female Beauty
• Robert Southey – Life of Cromwell

Births

• February 22 – Athalia Schwartz, Danish writer, journalist and educator (died 1871)^[9]
• March 15 – William Milligan, Scottish theologian (died 1893)^[10]
• March 19 – Richard Francis Burton, English polymath (died 1890)
• March 20 – Ned Buntline (Edward Zane Carroll Judson Sr.), American publisher, dime novelist and publicist (died 1886)^[11]
• March 25 – Isabella Banks, English poet and novelist (died 1897)
• April 9 – Charles Baudelaire, French poet (died 1867)^[12]
• May 8 – Charlotte Maria Tucker, English children's writer (died 1893)
• May 11 – Grigore Sturdza, Moldavian and Romanian adventurer, literary sponsor and philosopher (died 1901)
• June 30 – William Hepworth Dixon, English historian, traveler and journal editor (died 1879)
• July 21 – Vasile Alecsandri, Romanian patriot, poet, dramatist, politician and diplomat (died 1890)
• October 30 – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist (died 1881)^[13]
• November 28 – Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, Russian poet, writer and critic (died 1877)
• September 21 – Aurora Ljungstedt, Swedish horror writer (died 1908)
• September 24 – Cyprian Norwid Polish poet (died 1883)
• December 1 – Jane C. Bonar, Scottish hymnwriter (died 1884)^[14]
• December 6 – Dora Greenwell, English poet (died 1882)
• December 12 – Gustave Flaubert, French novelist (died 1880)^[15]

Keats's grave in Rome

Deaths

• January 7 – Anne Hunter, Scottish poet and salonnière (born 1742)^[16]
• January 14 – Jens Zetlitz, Norwegian poet (born 1761)
• February 23 – John Keats, English poet (tuberculosis, born 1795)^[17]
• February 26 – Joseph de Maistre, Savoyard philosopher (born 1753)
• March 17 – Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes, French poet (born 1757)
• April 14 – Susan Carnegie, writer and founder of the first public asylum in Scotland (born 1743)^[18]
• April 16 – Thomas Scott, English cleric and religious writer (born 1747)
• May 2 – Hester Thrale (Mrs Piozzi), English diarist and arts patron (born 1741)^[19]
• May 21 – John Jones (Jac Glan-y-gors), Welsh poet and satirist (born 1766)^[20]
• May 22 – Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, German philosopher (born 1740)
• June 15 – John Ballantyne, publisher (born 1774)^[21]
• August 1 – Elizabeth Inchbald, English novelist and dramatist (born 1753)
• August 24 – John William Polidori, English physician, writer (born 1795) (suicide)^[22]
• November 17 – James Burney, English rear-admiral and naval writer (born 1750)
• November – Richard Fenton, poet and author (born 1747)^[23]

Awards

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

References

1. Kim Wheatley (1999). Shelley and His Readers: Beyond Paranoid Politics. University of Missouri Press. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-8262-6209-7.
2. Grace Greenwood (1857). The Little Pilgrim. L.K. Lippincott. p. 1.
3. "The Ballantyne Brothers". Walter Scott. Edinburgh University Library. 2007-12-11.
4. Wayne C. Bartee; Alice Fleetwood Bartee (1992). Litigating Morality: American Legal Thought and Its English Roots. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-275-94127-7.
5. Sunthō̜n Phū; Montri Umavijani (1990). Sunthorn Phu: An Anthology. Office of National Culture Commission. p. 14. ISBN 978-974-7903-41-6.
6. Thomas Farel Heffernan Stove by a Whale: Owen Chase and the Essex Wesleyan University Press 1990 pp. 120 - 134 ISBN 978-0-8195-6244-9
7. S. Clifford-Smith, "William Cobbett: cottager's friend", Australian Garden History, 19 (5), 2008, pp. 4–6.
8. "Review of Table Talk, or Original Essays by William Hazlitt". The Quarterly Review. 26: 103–108. October 1821.
9. Hilden, Adda. "Athalia Schwartz (1821–1871)". Dansk kvindebiografisk leksikon (in Danish). Archived from the original on 2018-03-13. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
10. Cooper, James (1901). "Milligan, William" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.
11. Pond, Fred E. (1919). Life and Adventures of Ned Buntline. New York: Camdus Book Shop.
12. Charles Baudelaire, Richard Howard. Les Fleurs Du Mal. David R. Godine Publisher, 1983, p.xxv. ISBN 0-87923-462-8, ISBN 978-0-87923-462-1.
13. Morson, Gary Saul (7 November 2023). "Fyodor Dostoyevsky". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
14. Julian, John (1892). "BONAR, JANE CATHARINE (nee LUNDIE)". A Dictionary of Hymnology: Setting Forth the Origin and History of Christian Hymns of All Ages and Nations, with Special Reference to Those Contained in the Hymn Books of English-speaking Countries and Now in Common Use . (Public domain ed.). Murray. p. 162.
15. Gustave Flaubert (1980). The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857. Harvard University Press. p. 1.
16. Bettany, George Thomas (1891). "Hunter, Anne" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 28. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
17. "BBC - History - Historic Figures: John Keats (1795-1821)". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 3 January 2017.
18. Elizabeth Ewan; Sue Innes; Sian Reynolds, eds. (2006). The biographical dictionary of Scottish women : from the earliest times to 2004. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 67–8. ISBN 978-0-7486-2660-1. OCLC 367680960.
19. Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie; Joy Dorothy Harvey (2000). The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: L-Z. Taylor & Francis. p. 1026. ISBN 978-0-415-92040-7.
20. Iolo Morganwg; Geraint H. Jenkins; Ffion Mair Jones (2007). The Correspondence of Iolo Morganwg: 1810–1826. University of Wales Press. p. 616. ISBN 978-0-7083-2134-8.
21. Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1885). "Ballantyne, John (1774-1821)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
22. Viets, Henry R. (1961). ""By The Visitation Of God": The Death Of John William Polidori, M.D., In 1821". The British Medical Journal. 2 (5269): 1773–1775. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.5269.1773. ISSN 0007-1447. JSTOR 20356143. PMC 1970869. PMID 14037964.
23. "Fenton, Richard". Dictionary of Welsh Biography. National Library of Wales. Retrieved 26 February 2018.