The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

English/American Poets 1800-1899

Influences TO and FROM Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

1800

• the life and works of Robert Burns published

¶ BIRTHS: Caroline Clive; Thomas Babington Macaulay

‡ DEATHS: William Cowper; Mary Robinson; Joseph Warton

 

1801

THOMAS JEFFERSON, PRESIDENT OF USA

• Thomas Moore's Poems by Thomas Little

• Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer

¶ BIRTHS: William Barnes; Thomas Cole (US); J. H. Newman

‡ DEATHS: James Hurdis

 

1802

• Ancient English Metrical Romances, edited by Joseph Ritson

• S. T. Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode"

• Walter Savage Landor's Poetry by the Author of Gebir

• Amelia Opie's Poems

• Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-03), an anthology of ballads

¶ BIRTHS: Lydia Maria Child (US); Sara Coleridge (daughter of S.T.C.); Letitia Elizabeth Landon ("L.E.L."); George Pope Morris (US); Edward Coote Pinkney (US); Winthrop Mackworth Praed; Isaac Williams

‡ DEATHS: Erasmus Darwin

 

1803

¶ BIRTHS: Thomas Lovell Beddoes; Ralph Waldo Emerson (US); James Clarence Mangan (Ireland); Susanna Moodie (Canada); Sarah Helen Whitman (US)

‡ DEATHS: James Beattie; Joseph Ritson

 

1804

• William Blake's Jerusalem, completed in 1820, and his Milton, completed in 1808

• Ann and Jane Taylor's Original Poems for Infant Minds

• William Wordsworth's "Daffodils"

¶ BIRTHS: Nathaniel Hawthorne (US); Joseph Howe (Canada); Francis Sylvester Mahony, aka Father Prout; Charles Whitehead

‡ DEATHS: Joseph Fawcett; Richard Graves; Joseph Mather

 

1805

• H. F. Cary's translation of Dante's Inferno

The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and her Dog

• Sir Roger Newdigate founds the Newdigate Prize for English Poetry at Oxford

• Sir Walter Scott's The Lay of the Last Minstrel

• Robert Southey's Madoc

• William Wordsworth finishes a first version of The Prelude: or, Growth of a Poet's Mind in 13 Books

¶ BIRTHS: Sarah Fuller Flower, née Adams

‡ DEATHS: Christopher Anstey; Sophia Burrell

 

1806

• Lord Byron's Fugitive Pieces

• William Roscoe's The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast, a children's classic

• Walter Savage Landor's Simonidea

• Thomas Moore's Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems

• Sir Walter Scott's Ballads and Lyrical Pieces

• Jane and Ann Taylor's Rhymes for the Nursery, including "Twinkle, twinkle, little star"

¶ BIRTHS: Elizabeth Barrett, later Browning; William Gilmore Simms (US); Nathaniel Parker Willis (US)

‡ DEATHS: Thomas Morris (?); Charlotte Smith; Ann Yearsley

 

1807

• Joel Barlow's The Columbiad

• Lord Byron's Hours of Idleness and Poems on Various Occasions

• George Crabbe's Poems and "The Parish Register"

• Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies

• William Wordsworth's Poems in Two Volumes, including "Intimations of Immortality"

¶ BIRTHS: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; John Greenleaf Whittier (US)

‡ DEATHS: John Carr; John Newton

 

1808

• Sir Walter Scott's Marmion, A Tale of Flodden Field

¶ BIRTHS: Lucretia Maria Davidson; Evan MacColl (Canada)

‡ DEATHS: Isaac Bickerstaffe (?); John Freeth; Thomas Moss

 

1809

• Lord Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers; Byron spent the next two years abroad, notably in Greece

• T. Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Friend 1809-10

• Charles and Mary Lamb's Poetry for Children

¶ BIRTHS: John Barr (New Zealand); David Bates (US); Thomas Holley Chivers (US); Edward Fitzgerald; Oliver Wendell Holmes (US); Fanny Kemble (US); Abraham Lincoln (US); Monckton Milnes; Edgar Allan Poe (US); Alfred Tennyson

‡ DEATHS: Mrs. Hannah Cowley; Thomas Holcroft; Anna Seward

 

1810

• William Blake's engravings for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

• Gammer Gurton's Garland or the Nursery Parnassus, including "Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep"

• George Crabbe's The Borough in 24 epistles, including one on Peter Grimes, a poem based on Aldeburgh

• Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake

• Percy Bysshe Shelley's Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire and Zastrozzi

¶ BIRTHS: Margaret Fuller (US); Edmund Hamilton Sears (US); Martin Farquhar Tupper

 

1811

• Sir Walter Scott's The Vision of Don Roderick

• Oxford University expells Percy Bysshe Shelley

¶ BIRTHS: Arthur Hallam; William Makepeace Thackeray

‡ DEATHS: John Leyden; Thomas Percy

 

1812

• Lord Byron's Childe Harold, Parts I-II, and The Curse of Minerva

• H. F. Cary's translation of Dante's Purgatorio and Paradiso

• Robert Southey's and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Omniana (prose)

¶ BIRTHS: Robert Browning; Edward Lear

‡ DEATHS: Joel Barlow

 

1813

• Lord Byron's The Bride of Abydos and The Giaour

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Remorse

• Sir Walter Scott's Rokeby and The Bride of Triermain

• Percy Bysshe Shelley's Queen Mab

• Robert Southey made British Poet Laureate

¶ BIRTHS: William Edmondstone Aytoun (Scotland); Charles Timothy Brooks (US); Christopher Pearse Cranch (US); Epes Sargent (US); Jones Very (US)

‡ DEATHS: Henrietta Battier; Jane Cave; Henry James Pye

 

1814

• Lord Byron's The Corsair, Lara, and Ode to Napoleon

• Augusta Gordon bore her half-brother Lord Byron's daughter

• Francis Scott Key on Sept. 14 writes "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the British attack on Baltimore, Maryland

• Robert Southey's Roderick, the Last of the Goths

• William Wordsworth's The Excursion

¶ BIRTHS: Sarah Tittle Bolton, née Barrett; Aubrey Thomas De Vere

‡ DEATHS: Charles Dibdin; Samuel Jackson Pratt; Edward Rushton

 

1815

• Lord Byron's Hebrew Melodies, including "The Destruction of Sennacherib"

• marriage of Lord Byron to Annabella Milbanke

• Philip Morin Freneau's Poems

• Leigh Hunt was jailed (1815-17) for criticizing the Prince Regent in The Examiner

• Sir Walter Scott's The Lord of the Isles

• William Wordsworth's Poems

¶ BIRTHS: Daniel Decatur Emmett (US)

‡ DEATHS: George Ellis; Samuel Henley

 

1816

• Lord Byron's The Prisoner of Chillon and other Poems, Childe Harold, Part III, and The Siege of Corinth; he leaves England permanently for Geneva

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Christabel and Other Poems, including "Kubla Khan"

• Leigh Hunt publishes an essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats in The Examiner, and The Story of Rimini

• John Keats is certified as an apothecary and publishes "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"

• Percy Bysshe Shelley marries Mary Woolstonecraft Godwin

• Percy Bysshe Shelley's Alastor and Other Poems

• Robert Southey's A Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo

¶ BIRTHS: Philip James Bailey; Charlotte Brontë; Frances Brown (Browne); Josiah D. Canning (US); Philip Pendleton Cooke (US); Charles Heavysege (Canada)

‡ DEATHS: Richard Brinsley Sheridan

 

1817

• Lord Byron's Manfred and The Lament of Tasso

• S. T. Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, Vol. I

• John Keats' Poems

• John Gibson Lockhart in the October Blackwood's Magazine vilifies the "Cockney School of Poetry," said to include Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, John Keats and others

• Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh

• Sir Walter Scott's Harold the Dauntless

• Percy Bysshe Shelley's Laon and Cythna

¶ BIRTHS: Cornelius Mathews (US); Henry David Thoreau (US); John McPherson (Canada)

‡ DEATHS: Ann Batten Cristall (this year or after)

 

1818

• Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Book IV, and Beppo

• John Wilson Croker's anonymous review attacks John Keats' Endymion in the Quarterly Review

• William Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets

• Leigh Hunt's Foliage

• John Keats' Endymion published; he falls in love with Fanny Brawne (1800-65) and writes his great odes this year and the next

• Thomas Love Peacock's Rhododaphne

• Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Revolt of Islam, originally Laon and Cythna (1817); he leaves England.

¶ BIRTHS: Cecil Frances Alexander, née Humphreys; Emily Brontë; William Ellery Channing (US); Eliza Cook; Alexander McLachlan (Canada); John Mason Neale

‡ DEATHS: Matthew Gregory Lewis; John Williams

 

1819

• Lord Byron's Mazeppa and Don Juan, I and II

• John Keats falls sick and his writing ceases after "To Autumn" in September

• Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Cenci and Rosalind and Helen; he writes "Ode to the West Wind" on October 1819 in a wood by the Arno River near Florence

• William Wordsworth's Peter Bell and The Waggoner

¶ BIRTHS: A. H. Clough; Thomas Dunn English (US); Josiah Gilbert Holland (US); Julia Ward Howe (US); Charles Kingsley; James Russell Lowell (US); Herman Melville (US); William Wetmore Story (US); Walt Whitman (US)

‡ DEATHS: John Wolcot

 

1820

GEORGE III (-1830)

• Elizabeth Barrett's The Battle of Marathon

• John Clare's Poems, Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery

• Introduction of the limerick in The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women

• John Keats' Lamia, The Eve of St. Agnes, Hyperion, and Other Poems

• Thomas Love Peacock's The Four Ages of Poetry, which sparked Shelley to write his Defence of Poetry

• Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and Other Poems, and his essay on a philosophical view of reform (published in 1920)

• William Wordsworth's The River Duddon and Vaudracour and Julia

• formation of the Apostles, a Cambridge intellectual society

¶ BIRTHS: Anne Brontë; Henry Howard Brownell (US); Alice Patty Lee Cary (US); John Harris (Cornwall); John Henry Hopkins, Jr. (US); Jean Ingelow

‡ DEATHS: Joseph Rodman Drake; William Hayley; James Woodhouse

 

1821

• William Cullen Bryant's Poems

• John Clare's The Village Minstrel

• John Hamilton Reynolds' The Garden of Florence

• Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes Epipsychidion and Adonais (on John Keats) and writes his Defence of Poetry

• Robert Southey's A Vision of Judgement

¶ BIRTHS: Isabella Banks, née Varley; Frederick Locker Lampson; Maria White Lowell (US); Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (US)

‡ DEATHS: Anne Hunter; John Keats (Feb., in Rome), of tuberculosis

 

1822

• Lord Byron's Werner and his review of Robert Southey's "The Vision of Judgement" in The Liberal

• Percy Bysshe Shelley's Hellas

¶ BIRTHS: Matthew Arnold; Thomas Buchanan Read (US); Charles Sangster (Canada); James Monroe Whitfield (US)

‡ DEATHS: John Aikin; Percy Bysshe Shelley, in August, by drowning

 

1823

• Lord Byron's Don Juan, VI-XIV, and Vision of Judgement

• Clement Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas"

• John H. Payne's "Home Sweet Home" written, the theme song of Sir Henry Rowley Bishop's opera Clari

¶ BIRTHS: George Henry Boker (US); William Johnson Cory; Margaret Miller Davidson (US); James Mathewes Legaré; Coventry Patmore; William Brighty Rands

‡ DEATHS: William Combe; Charles Wolfe

 

1824

• Lord Byron's Don Juan, XV-XVI, and The Deformed Transformed,

• Percy Bysshe Shelley's "The Triumph of Life"

¶ BIRTHS: William Allingham (Ireland); Sabine Baring-Gould; Phoebe Cary (US); Sydney Thompson Dobell; Charles Godfrey Leland (US); George MacDonald (Scotland); George Boyer Vashon (US)

‡ DEATHS: Lord Byron, by fever in Greece; Elizabeth Cobbold; Thomas Maurice

 

1825

¶ BIRTHS: Peter John Allan (Canada); Frances Ellen Watkins (US); William McGonagall (perhaps in 1830; Scotland), widely regarded as an appallingly bad poet; Adelaide Anne Procter; Bayard Taylor (US)

‡ DEATHS: Lady Anne Barnard; Anna Laetitia Barbauld; Mary Darwall; Lucretia Maria Davidson; Lady Anne Lindsay

 

1826

• Elizabeth Barrett (Browning)'s An Essay on Mind and Other Poems

¶ BIRTHS: Dinah Maria Mulock Craik; Stephen Foster (US); Robert Lowry (US)

‡ DEATHS: Reginald Heber; John Taylor

 

1827

• John Clare's The Shepherd's Calendar

• Edgar Allan Poe's Tamerlane and Other Poems

¶ BIRTHS: Rose Terry Cooke (US); Francis Miles Finch (US); James McIntyre, poet of the mammoth cheese (Canada); John Hollin Ridge (US); John Townsend Trowbridge (US)

‡ DEATHS: William Blake; George Canning; Carlos Wilcox

 

1828

• Felicia Hemans' Records of Women, with Other Poems

• John Gibson Lockhart's Life of Robert Burns

¶ BIRTHS: George Meredith; Arthur Joseph Munby; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Henry Timrod (US)

‡ DEATHS: John Gardiner Calkins Brainard; Lady Caroline Lamb; Edward Coote Pinkney

 

1829

• Thomas Hood's The Dream of Eugene Aram

• Edgar Allan Poe's Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Other Poems

• Samuel Kettell's Specimens of American Poetry

¶ BIRTHS: Rosanna Eleanor (Mullins) Leprohon (Canada)

‡ DEATHS: William Crowe; Sir Humphry Davy

 

1830

WILLIAM IV (-1837)

• Ebenezer Elliott's Corn Law Rhymes

• Sarah Josepha Hale's Poems for our Children, including "Mary's Lamb"

• Alfred Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, including "The Kraken"

¶ BIRTHS: Charlotte Alington Barnard; Thomas Edward Brown; Emily Dickinson (US); Paul Hamilton Hayne (US); Helen Hunt Jackson (US); Christina Rossetti; Alexander Smith (?); James M. Whitfield (US)

‡ DEATHS: William Hazlitt

 

1831

• Walter Savage Landor's Gebir, Count Julian

• Edgar Allan Poe's Poems

¶ BIRTHS: Charles Stuart Calverley; Isa Craig (Scotland); Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton

‡ DEATHS: Laurence Hynes Halloran; William Roscoe

 

1832

• Alfred Tennyson's Poems (dated 1833), including "The Lady of Shalott" and "The Lotos-Eaters"

¶ BIRTHS: Elizabeth Akers Allen (US); Sir Edwin Arnold; Benjamin Paul Blood (US); Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson); Henry Clay Work (US)

‡ DEATHS: James Bisset; George Crabbe; Philip Morin Freneau; James Plumptre; Anna Maria Porter; Sir Walter Scott

Victorians 1833-1903

 

1833

• Robert Browning's Pauline

• Hartley Coleridge's Poems, Songs and Sonnets

• J. S. Mill's "Thoughts on Poetry and its Variants"

¶ BIRTHS: Richard Watson Dixon; Adam Lindsay Gordon (Australia); Edmund Clarence Stedman (US)

‡ DEATHS: Sir George Dallas; Arthur Hallam, in whose memory Alfred lord Tennyson will write In Memoriam; Hannah More; John O'Keeffe; William Sotheby

 

1834

• Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies

• Thomas Pringle's African Sketches

¶ BIRTHS: George Arnold (US); William Morris; Roden Berkely Wriothesley Noel; James Thomson (Scotland)

‡ DEATHS: Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Charles Lamb; Thomas Pringle; Thomas Thelwall

 

1835

• Robert Browning's Paracelsus

• John Clare's The Rural Muse

• William Wordsworth's Yarrow Revisited and Other Poems

¶ BIRTHS: Alfred Austin; Isodore Gordon Ascher (Canada); Augusta Cooper Bristol (US); Phillips Brooks (US); Samuel Langhorne Clemens, i.e., Mark Twain (US); Sir Alfred Comyn (India); Adah Isaacs Menken (US); John James Platt (US); Celia Thaxter (US); James Byrne Leicester Warren, baron de Tabley

‡ DEATHS: Felicia Dorothea Hemans; James Hogg; William Motherwell

 

1836

• Lyra Apostolica, religious poems by several authors, including John Newman

¶ BIRTHS: Thomas Bailey Aldrich (US); W. S. Gilbert; Bret Harte (US); Sarah Morgan Piatt (US); Annie Louisa Walker (Canada)

‡ DEATHS: George Colman the younger; William Taylor

 

1837

VICTORIA I (-1901)

• Richard H. Barham's Ingoldsby Legends

• The Civil List Act provides for pensions for needy authors in England.

• John Clare is institutionalized as insane.

• Eliza Cook's "The Old Arm Chair"

• George Moses Horton's Hope of Liberty -- Poems by a Slave (2nd edn.; first published as early as 1829)

• Thomas Love Peacock's The Paper Money Lyrics

¶ BIRTHS: William Dean Howells (US); Joaquin Miller (US); Algernon Charles Swinburne; Julia Augusta Webster (US); Forceythe Willson (US)

‡ DEATHS: Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges

 

1838

• Elizabeth Barrett's The Seraphim

• Leigh Hunt publishes "Abou Ben Adhem"

• William Wordsworth's Sonnets

¶ BIRTHS: Henry Adams (US); Sarah Elizabeth Carmichael (US); John Hay (US); William Reed Huntington (US); Abram Joseph Ryan (US); Charles Mair (Canada)

‡ DEATHS: Margaret Miller Davidson; Letitia Elizabeth Landon, likely by suicide; Charles Morris; Annabella Plumptre; Richard Polwhele

 

1839

¶ BIRTHS: Walter Pater; James Ryder Randall (US)

‡ DEATHS: Thomas Haynes Bayley; Winthrop Mackworth Praed

 

1840

• Robert Browning's Sordello

• Percy Bysshe Shelley's Defence of Poetry, posthumously published

¶ BIRTHS: Wilfred Scawen Blunt; Henry Austin Dobson; Thomas Hardy; John Addington Symonds; Constance Fenimore Woolson (US)

 

1841

• Robert Browning's Pippa Passes

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Ballads and other Poems, including "The Wreck of the Hesperus"

¶ BIRTHS: Mathilde Blind; Robert Williams Buchanan; Charles Edward Carryl (US); Joaquin Miller (US); Edward Rowland Sill (US)

‡ DEATHS: Thomas John Dibdin; George Dyer; Standish O'Grady; Joseph Blanco White

 

1842

• Robert Browning's Dramatic Lyrics, including "My Last Duchess" and "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Poems on Slavery

• Thomas Babington Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. including "Horatius"

• Alfred Tennyson's Poems, including "Locksley Hall," "Morte d'Arthur," and "Ulysses"

• William Wordsworth's Poems Chiefly of Early and Late Years

¶ BIRTHS: Ambrose Bierce (US); Ina Donna Coolbrith (US); William John Courthorpe; Sidney Lanier (US); John Arthur Phillips (Canada); Henry Duff Traill

‡ DEATHS: Thomas Arnold; Macdonald Clarke; Samuel Woodworth

 

1843

• Thomas Hood's "The Song of the Shirt" (Punch)

• William Wordsworth made British Poet Laureate

¶ BIRTHS: Charles Montagu Doughty; Violet Fane aka Mary Montgomerie Lamb

‡ DEATHS: Washington Allston; Francis Scott Key; Robert Southey

 

1844

• Isabella Banks' Ivy Leaves, including "Neglected Wife"

• William Barnes' Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect

• Elizabeth Barrett's Poems

¶ BIRTHS: Robert Bridges; George Washington Cable (US); Ada Cambridge, later Cross; Richard Watson Gilder (US); Gerard Manley Hopkins; Andrew Lang (Scotland); Caroline Lindsay; Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy; Arabella Eugenia Smith (US), about this time

‡ DEATHS: Thomas Campbell; Margaret Davidson

 

1845

• Robert Browning's Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, including "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix"

• George Moses Horton's Poetical Works

• Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven and Other Poems, including "The Raven"

¶ BIRTHS: Louisa Sarah Bevington (US); William Carleton (US); John Banister Tabb (US)

‡ DEATHS: R. H. Barham; Maria Gowen Brooks; Thomas Hood; John McPherson

 

1846

• Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning are married in Sept. and elope to Italy, where they settle in Casa Guidi in Florence

• Robert Browning's Bells and Pomegranates

• Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, and Anne Brontë's Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, edited by Charlotte Brontë

• Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense, revised in 1861 and 1863

‡ DEATHS: George Darley; John Hookham Frere; William Makepeace Thackeray

 

1847

• Ralph Waldo Emerson's Poems

• Walter Savage Landor's The Hellenics

• Henry Wadworth Longfellow's The Belfy of Bruges and other Poems

• Alfred lord Tennyson's The Princess, including "Tears, idle Tears," which he adds to up to 1850

¶ BIRTHS: Alice Meynell, née Thompson

‡ DEATHS: William Shepherd; Richard Henry Wilde

 

1848

• James Russell Lowell's A Fable for Critics

• pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in London, lasting until about 1880, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and others

‡ DEATHS: John Quincy Adams; Emily Brontë; Thomas Cole; Sarah Fuller Flower, née Adams

 

1849

• Matthew Arnold's The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline

¶ BIRTHS: Edmund Gosse; William Ernest Henley; Sarah Orne Jewett (US); Emma Lazarus (US); James Whitcomb Riley (US)

‡ DEATHS: Bernard Barton; T. L. Beddoes; Anne Brontë; Hartley Coleridge; Ebenezer Elliott; Edgar Allan Poe; James Clarence Mangan, of malnutrition

 

1850

• Thomas Lowell Beddoes' Death's Jest-book, published posthumously

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poems with "Sonnets from the Portuguese," including How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

• Robert Browning's Christmas Eve and Easter Day

• Stephen Foster's "De Camptown Races"

• Leigh Hunt's Autobiography

• D. G. Rossetti's The Blessed Damozel, published in The Gem

• Alfred Tennyson publishes In Memoriam and is made British Poet Laureate.

• William Wordsworth's The Prelude, published posthumously in 14 Books.

¶ BIRTHS: Isabella Valency Crawford (Canada); Eugene Field (US); William Larminie (US); Robert Louis Stevenson; Rose Hartwick Thorpe (US); Albery A. Whitmann (US); Ella Wheeler Wilcox (US)

‡ DEATHS: Manoah Bodman; William Lisle Bowles; Philip Pendleton Cooke; Margaret Fuller; William Wordsworth

 

1851

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Casa Guidi Windows

• Stephen Foster's "The Old Folks at Home"

• George Meredith's Poems, including "Love in the Valley"

¶ BIRTHS: James Lister Cuthbertson (Australia); Arthur Clement Hilton; Albery Allson Whitman (US)

‡ DEATHS: Joanna Baillie; David Macbeth Moir

 

1852

• Matthew Arnold's Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems

• Edmund Hamilton Sears' "It Came upon a Midnight Clear"

¶ BIRTHS: Francis William Bourdillon; Emma Maria Caillard; Edwin Markham (US); Henry Van Dyke (US)

‡ DEATHS: Sara Coleridge; Thomas Moore; John Howard Payne; Thomas Moore; John Hamilton Reynolds

 

1853

• Matthew Arnold's Poems, including "Sobrab and Rustum" and "The Scholar-Gipsy"

• Martha Browne's [Mattie Griffith's] Poems

¶ BIRTHS: Ernest Fenollosa (US)

‡ DEATHS: Joseph Cottle; Maria White Lowell; Amelia Opie

 

1854

• Julia Ward Howe's Passion Flowers

• Coventry Patmore's The Angel in the House, Part I (Part II in 1856, Part III in 1860; and Part IV in 1863)

• Alfred Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," published in The Examiner on Dec. 9

¶ BIRTHS: James A. Bland (US); George Frederick Cameron (Canada); William Henry Drummond (Canada); Oscar Wilde

 

1855

• Matthew Arnold's Poems, Second Series

• Robert Browning's Men and Women, including "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"

• Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"

• Caroline Hayward (Canada) active about this time

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Hiawatha

• Alfred lord Tennyson's Maud and Other Poems

• Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, regularly amplified (2nd edn., 1856; final author's edition, 1891-92)

¶ BIRTHS: Henry Cuyler Bunner (US); Alexander Young (Scotland)

‡ DEATHS: Charlotte Brontë; Mary Russell Mitford; Samuel Rogers; Dorothy Wordsworth

 

1856

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh (post-dated 1857), a verse novel in 11,000 lines about a woman writer

• Sydney Dobell's England in Time of War

• Coventry Patmore's The Espousals

¶ BIRTHS: Toru Dutt (India); Alfred Denis Godley; Lizette Woodworth Reese (US)

‡ DEATHS: James Gates Percival

 

1857

• Frederick Locker Lampson's London Lyrics (12 re-editions to 1893)

¶ BIRTHS: Jane Barlow (Ireland); Hubert N. W. CHurch (Australia); John Davidson (Scotland); Benjamin Franklin King (US)

 

1858

• William Barnes' Hwomely Rhymes: A second collection of poems of rural life in the Dorset Dialect

• William Johnson Cory's Ionica

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish

• William Morris' The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems

• Adelaide Anne Procter's Legends and Lyrics (1858-61), including "A Lost Chord"

¶ BIRTHS: William Wilfred Campbell (Canada); Edith Nesbit; Sir William Watson

‡ DEATHS: Thomas Holley Chivers

 

1859

CHARLES DARWIN'S ORIGIN OF SPECIES

• Daniel Decatur Emmett's "Dixie's Land"

• Edmund Fitzgerald's The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, revised up to 1879

• Alfred lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King, including "Enid," "Vivien," "Elaine," and "Guinevere"

¶ BIRTHS: Katharine Lee Bates (US); Perceval Gibbon (South Africa); A. E. Housman; Ernest Rhys; James Kenneth Stephen; Francis Thompson

‡ DEATHS: Leigh Hunt; Washington Irving; James Mathews Legaré; Thomas Babington Macaulay; Lady Morgan, née Sydney Owenson

 

1860

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PRESIDENT OF USA

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poems before Congress

• Coventry Patmore's Faithful for Ever

¶ BIRTHS: Helena Jane Coleman (Canada); Hamlin Garland (US); Harriet Monroe (US); Charles G. D. Roberts (Canada); Clinton Scollard (US)

‡ DEATHS: Richard Croly; James Kirke Paulding

 

1861

CONFEDERATE STATES TAKE FORT SUMTER ON APRIL 12: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Last Poems, posthumously published

• Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic"

• Francis Turner Palgrave's The Golden Treasury, a poetic anthology revised in 1897 and since then by others

• Annie Louisa Walker's Leaves from the Backwoods

¶ BIRTHS: Bliss Carman (Canada); Mary Elizabeth Coleridge; Louise Imogen Guiney (US); Maurice Henry Hewlett; Pauline Johnson, aka Tekahionwake (Canada); Archibald Lampman (Canada); Amy Levy; Frederick George Scott (Canada); Katharine Tynan (Ireland)

‡ DEATHS: Elizabeth Barrett Browning; A. H. Clough

 

1862

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning's posthumous Last Poems, edited by Robert Browning

• Charles Calverley's Verses and Translations

• A. H. Clough's Last Poems, posthumously published

• Julia Ward Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn, including "Paul Revere's Ride"

• George Meredith's Modern Love and Poems of the Roadside

• Coventry Patmore's Victories of Love

• Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Other Poems

¶ BIRTHS: John Kendrick Bangs (US); Arthur Christopher Benson; Jean Blewett (Canada); John Jay Chapman (US); Edith Emma Cooper (half of "Michael Field"); Sir Henry John Newbolt; George Santayana (US); Duncan Campbell Scott (Canada); Edith Wharton (US)

‡ DEATHS: Henry David Thoreau

 

1863<