1821 in literature

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

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]

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, in abridged version as Die Schlacht von Fehrbellin; completed 1810)

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
William Cobbett – The American Gardener
George Grote – Statement of the Question of Parliamentary Reform
William Hazlitt – Table-Talk
James Mill – Elements of Political Economy
John Roberton – Kalogynomia, or the Laws of Female Beauty
Robert Southey – Life of Cromwell

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)
March 25 – Isabella Banks, English poet and novelist (died 1897)
April 9 – Charles Baudelaire, French poet (died 1867)
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)
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

^ Kim Wheatley (1999). Shelley and His Readers: Beyond Paranoid Politics. University of Missouri Press. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-8262-6209-7.
^ Grace Greenwood (1857). The Little Pilgrim. L.K. Lippincott. p. 1.
^ "The Ballantyne Brothers". Walter Scott. Edinburgh University Library. 2007-12-11.
^ 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.
^ Sunthō̜n Phū; Montri Umavijani (1990). Sunthorn Phu: An Anthology. Office of National Culture Commission. p. 14. ISBN 978-974-7903-41-6.
^ "BBC - History - Historic Figures: John Keats (1795-1821)". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 3 January 2017.