1842 in poetry

Events

Works published in English

United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• Robert Browning, Dramatic Lyrics, including "My Last Duchess", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" and "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister"; the author's first collection of shorter poems
• Thomas Campbell, The Pilgrim of Glencoe, with Other Poems
• Frederick William Faber, The Styrian Lake, and Other Poems
• J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, The Nursery Rhymes of England, anthology
• Leigh Hunt, The Palfrey
• Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome, including "Horatius"
• Robert Montgomery, Luther
• Alfred Tennyson, Poems, including "Locksley Hall", "Morte d'Arthur", "Ulysses", "Lady Clara Vere de Vere", "The Two Voices", "The Vision of Sin", "Godiva" and "The Lady of Shalott" (published May 14 in two volumes, with reprinted poems in Volume 1, and new poems in Volume 2
• William Wordsworth, Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years, includes The Bordereers

  United States">American poetry">United States

• Charles Timothy Brooks, translator, Songs and Ballads, translations of German poems
• William Cullen Bryant, The Fountain and Other Poems, a collection of parts of a larger work, never to be completed; published in response to many requests for a longer, more ambitious work of poetry
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Saadi"
• Charles Fenno Hoffman, The Vigil of Faith and Other Poems, a popular book with four editions in three years
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
• * Poems on Slavery, written in support of the abolitionist movement, dedicated to William Ellery Channing; the author donates the contents of the book to the New England Anti-Slavery Tract Society to republish and distribute
• * Ballads and Other Poems, including "The Wreck of the Hesperus"
• Alfred Billings Street, The Burning of Schenectady, and Other Poems, descriptive verses
• Rufus Wilmot Griswold, editor:
• * The Poets and Poetry of America, popular anthology that went into several reprints; with poems from over 80 authors, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Lydia Sigourney, Edgar Allan Poe, and Charles Fenno Hoffman, a friend of Griswold's The collection was dedicated to Washington Allston. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart
• * Gems from American Female Poets, anthology

  Works published in other languages

• Théodore de Banville, Les Cariatides, France
• Sándor Petőfi, "A borozó", Hungary
• Giovanni Antonio Vassallo, Il-Ġifen Tork, Malta
• Henrik Wergeland, Jøden, Norway

  Births

• February 3 - Sidney Lanier, American
• February 4 - Arrigo Boito, Italian
• February 25 - Karl May, German writer, principally of adventure novels
• March 18 - Stéphane Mallarmé, French
• June 24 - Ambrose Bierce, American poet and writer
• July 11 - Henry Abbey, American poet, best known for his poem "What Do We Plant When We Plant A Tree?"
• July 17 - William John Courthope, English poet and historian of poetry
• August 14 - Henry Duff Traill, English literary journalist
• October 1 - Charles Cros, French poet and inventor
• Date not known - John Arthur Phillips, English-born Canadian

  Deaths

• May 23 - José de Espronceda, Spanish
• June 12 - Thomas Arnold, English, educator, historian and poet
• July 28 - Clemens Brentano, German Romantic poet and novelist
• October 30 - Allan Cunningham, Scottish poet and author
• December 9 - Samuel Woodworth, American author, literary journalist, playwright, librettist and poet
• Date not known - Macdonald Clarke, American "Mad Poet"