1790 in poetry explained

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

Events

March - Jens Baggesen returns to Denmark. After ridiculing his fellow Danes in his poem, Holger the Dane and leaving the country for Germany, Baggensen proceeded to Switzerland and became a good friend of the Swiss poet Johan Kaspar Lavater and a leader in the Sturm und Drang movement.^[1]
May 21 - Thomas Warton dies. He is succeeded as Poet Laureate of Great Britain by writer and police magistrate Henry James Pye (who has just retired as a Member of Parliament) following William Hayley's refusal of the office.

Joanna Baillie, published anonymously, Poems^[2]
William Blake, published anonymously, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, illuminated book with 27 relief-etched plates
Robert Burns, "Tam o' Shanter" Scottish, written
Thomas Edwards (Twm o'r Nant), Gardd o Gerddi, Welsh
George Ellis, ed., Specimens of the Early English Poets
Anne Francis, anonymously published "by a lady", then reissued this year under the author's name, Miscellaneous Poems^[2]
Robert Merry, The Laurel of Liberty^[2]
William Sotheby, Poems^[2]
Ann Yearsley, Stanzas of Woe^[2]

Peter Markoe, the Reconciliation; or, The Triumph of Nature, an unproduced opera in verse^[3]
Sarah Wentworth Morton, published under the name "Philenia, a Lady of Boston", Ouabi; or, The Virtues of Nature: An Indian Tale in Four Cantos,^[4] 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^[5]
Mercy Otis Warren, Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous,^[4] 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^[5]

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
July 8 - Fitz-Greene Halleck (died 1867), American
October 21 - Alphonse de Lamartine (died 1869), French writer, poet and politician
date unknown - Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq (died 1854), Urdu poet

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

May 21 - Thomas Warton (born 1728), English literary historian, critic and Poet Laureate of Great Britain
July 25 - William Livingston (born 1723), English Colonial American public official, poet and writer
August 22 - Andrew Macdonald (born 1757), Scottish clergyman, poet and playwright

Giovanni Bach, Richard Beck, Adolph B. Benson, Axel Johan Uppvall, and others, translated in part and edited by Frederika Blankner (1938). The History of the Scandinavian Literatures: A Survey of the Literatures of the Norway, Sweden, Denamark, Iceland and Finland From Their Origins to the Present Day. New York: Dial Press. p. 179.
Cox, Michael, editor, The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2004,
Ludwig, Richard M., and Clifford A. Nault, Jr., Annals of American Literature: 1602 - 1983, 1986, New York: Oxford University Press
Davis, Cynthia J., and Kathryn West, Women Writers in the United States: A Timeline of Literary, Cultural, and Social History, Oxford University Press US, 1996, retrieved via Google Books on February 7, 2009
Burt, Daniel S., The Chronology of American Literature: : America's literary achievements from the colonial era to modern times, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004,, retrieved via Google Books