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A Time-Line of English Poetry

Old English 449-1066
Middle English 1066-1485
Early Modern English 1485-1800
Renaissance 1485-1603
17th Century 1603-1667
Augustans 1667-1780
Present-day English 1800-present
Romantics 1780-1830
Victorians 1833-1903
Georgians 1903-1920
Moderns 1920-1960
The Beat Generation 1950-1970
The Movement 1960-1980
Postmoderns 1980Note that these divisions simplify the history of poetry and are useful only for characterizing general trends. A poet
in one period may have more in common with a poet in another than with contemporaries.
Old English 449-1066
383-407
ROMAN LEGIONS LEAVE BRITAIN
449
ANGLO-SAXONS INVADE BRITAIN
537
BATTLE OF CAMLAN: ARTHUR, A ROMANO-BRITON LEADER, KILLED
596
AUGUSTINE LEAVES ROME AS MISSIONARY TO BRITAIN
658
Caedmon (Representative Poetry Online), an uneducated herdsman, about this date discovers that he can
extemporaneously utter poetry at the newly-founded monastery at Strenshalc (Whitby) and makes verses on
creation. He is the first known poet and this the first known poem in English.
673
Births
the Venerable Bede (Representative Poetry Online)
700-800
Cynewulf writes and signs four Anglo-Saxon poems: Christ II, Elene, The Fates of the Apostles, and Juliana.

700
About this time runic extracts from The Dream of the Rood are carved on the Ruthwell Cross.
735
The Venerable Bede's "Death Song"
871
ALFRED, KING OF ENGLAND (-899)
900-999
Deor, a scop, writes a poem of consolation, probably in this century
937
The battle of Brunanburh, at which King Athelstan defeated the Scots, is celebrated in a poem in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle.
943
EDWY (-957)
950-1000
Period of the making of the four great poetry manuscripts: the Junius MS, the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, and
the Beowulf MS. The Beowulf can be dated as early as 680.
957
EDGAR (-975)
975
EDWARD THE MARTYR (-978)
978
ETHELRED (-1013)
1000
The Battle of Maldon, a poem on the fight between the English and the Danes in 991.
1013
SWEGN FORKBEARD (-1014)
1016
EDMUND IRONSIDE (-1016); CNUT (-1035)
1035
HAROLD HAREFOOT (-1040)
1040
HARTHACNUT (-1042)
1042
EDWARD THE CONFESSOR (-1066)
Middle English 1066-1485
1066
HAROLD GODWINSON (-1066); DEFEATED BY WILLIAM OF NORMANDY ON OCT. 14 (-1087)
1087
WILLIAM II (-1100)
1100-1200
Layamon, late 12th cent. author of Brut, a 32,000-line poem.
1100
HENRY I (-1135)
1135
STEPHEN (-1154)
1154
HENRY II (-1189)
1155
Wace's Anglo-Norman Roman de Brut (?)
1160-1170
Period of Walter Map, Anglo-Latin poet
1160
Thomas of Britain's Anglo-Norman Tristan
1172
Wace's Anglo-Norman Roman de Rou (?)
1189

RICHARD I (-1199)
1199
JOHN (-1216)
1216
HENRY III (-1272)
1230
first 4,000 lines of Guillaume de Lorris' Roman de la Rose, composed
1250
The Owl and the Nightingale, an amusing verse debate probably written by Nicholas of Guildford about this time
1265
Births
Dante Alighieri.
1272
EDWARD I (-1307)
1275
Jean de Meun extends Roman de la Rose by over 17,500 lines
before 1300
Dame Sirith (?)
1300-1400
Huchown.
1300
Two romances, Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton, were composed about this time.
Births
Richard Rolle (?)
ca. 1307-1321
Alighieri Dante's Divina Commedia.
1307
EDWARD II (-1327)
1314
ROBERT BRUCE DEFEATS EDWARD II AT BANNOCKBURN
ca. 1314-25
Lyrics from British Library Harley 2253, including "Alysoun" and ""Lenten ys come with love to toune."
1321
Deaths
Dante Alighieri.
before 1325
Cursor Mundi, a verse history of the world in about 24,000 lines.
1327
EDWARD III (-1377)
1330
Sir Orfeo, a romance (?)
Births
John Gower (Representative Poetry Online) (?); William Langland (Representative Poetry Online) (?).
1343
Births
Geoffrey Chaucer (Representative Poetry Online) (?).
1349
Deaths
Richard Rolle
ca. 1350-52
Boccaccio's Decameron
1350
Births
Andrew of Wyntoun (Scotland) (?)
1352
Wynnere and Wastoure

1361
Births
Henry Scogan (?).
1362
ENGLISH REPLACES FRENCH IN PARLIAMENT AND LAW COURTS
ca. 1367-70
A-text of Langland's Piers Plowman
1369
Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess
Births
Thomas Hoccleve (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1370
Births
John Lydgate (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1376
John Gower writes his Mirour de l'Omme, or Speculum Meditantis, about 1376-78.
John Barbour (Scotland) writes The Bruce, a verse chronicle of about 13,000 lines.
1377
RICHARD II (-1399)
B-text of Langland's Piers Plowman is written about 1377-79.
1379
John Gower's Vox Clamantis is written about 1379-81.
1380-1400
the works of the so-called Gawain poet, containing Pearl, Patience, Cleanness, and Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight from British Library manuscript Cotton Nero A.x
1380
John Wyclif translates the Bible (?), into English.
1384
Deaths
Wyclif
1385
Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde
C-text of Langland's Piers Plowman about 1385-86
1386
Deaths
"William Langland (?)
ca. 1387-1400
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
1390-1393
John Gower's Confessio Amantis is published at this time in its first version.
1391
Deaths
Sir John Clanvowe, supposed author of The Cuckoo and the Nightingale
1394
Births
Charles, duc d'Orlans; James I of Scotland (Representative Poetry Online)
about 1395
Pierce the Ploughmans Crede
1395
Deaths
John Barbour
1399
HENRY IV (-1413)
before 1400
The alliterative Morte Arthure (?)
Sir Launfal, by Thomas Chestre

1400
Deaths
Geoffrey Chaucer
ca. 1406-25
James I of Scotland, while captured in England, writes "The Kingis Quair.
1407
Deaths
Henry Scogan
1408
Deaths
John Gower
1412
John Lydgate's Troy Book, written about 1412-20
1413
HENRY V (-1422)
1420
John Lydgate's The Siege of Thebes, written about 1420-22
1422
HENRY VI (-1461, 1470-71; Representative Poetry Online)
1424
Births
Robert Henryson (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1425
Deaths
Andrew of Wyntoun (?)
1426
John Lydgate's The Pilgrimage of Man, written about 1426-30
Deaths
Thomas Hoccleve
1431
John Lydgate's The Fall of Princes, written about 1431-28
1437
Deaths
James I of Scotland, killed
1440
Births
Henry the Minstrel, otherwise known as "Blind Harry" (Scotland).
1449
Deaths
John Lydgate
about 1450
Sir Richard Holland's The Buke of the Howlat.
1455
RICHARD, DUKE OF YORK, DEFEATS HENRY VI AT ST. ALBANS ON MAY 22, THE BEGINNING OF THE
WAR OF THE ROSES
1456
Births
William Dunbar (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1460
"Blind Harry" writes the 12,000-line poem, The Wallace (?).
Births
John Skelton (Representative Poetry Online) (?); Walter Kennedy (Scotland) (?)
1461
EDWARD IV (-1469, 1471-83)
1471

Deaths
Henry VI (Representative Poetry Online)
1474
CAXTON PRINTS THE FIRST BOOK IN ENGLAND
Births
Gavin Douglas (Representative Poetry Online) (?); Walter Kennedy (Scotland) (?)
before 1475
The Floure and the Leaf composed (?)
1475
Births
Alexander Barclay (?); Stephen Hawes (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1476
William Caxton prints Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (?)
Births
Henry Parker Morley, lord
1477
Births
Thomas More
1483
EDWARD V (-1483); RICHARD III (-1485)
William Caxton prints Gower's Confessio Amantis
1484
William Caxton prints Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde
Early Modern English 1485-1800
Renaissance 1485-1603
1485
HENRY TUDOR DEFEATS RICHARD III ON BOSWORTH FIELD; HENRY VII (-1509)
1486
Births
Sir David Lindsay (Scotland)
1491
Births
Henry Tudor, the future Henry VIII (Representative Poetry Online)
1492
COLUMBUS DISCOVERS SAN SALVADOR ON OCT. 12
Deaths
"Blind Harry."
1497
JOHN CABOT DISCOVERS NEWFOUNDLAND
Births
John Heywood (?)
1498
John Skelton's The Bowge of Courte composed (?)
1500
Births
John Ballantyne (?)
1503
William Dunbar's The Thrissill and the Rois composed
Henry, son of Henry VII, becomes the Prince of Wales
Births
Sir Thomas Wyatt (Representative Poetry Online)Sir Thomas Wyatt
1506
Deaths
Robert Henryson (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1507

 William Dunbar's The Dance of the Sevin Deidly Synnis, The Goldyn Targe, The Lament for the Makaris, and The
Tretis of the Tua Mariit Wemen composed (?)
1508
William Dunbar's poems are published in Edinburgh
Deaths
Walter Kennedy (?).
1509
HENRY VIII (-1547)
Alexander Barclay's Ship of Fools
Stephen Hawes' Passetyme of Pleasure
Henry Tudor is married to Catherine of Aragon on June 11 and succeeds his father Henry VII on Aug. 21 as Henry
VIII
Births
Thomas Vaux, 2nd baron Vaux of Harrowden (Representative Poetry Online)
1511
Deaths
Stephen Hawes (Representative Poetry Online)
1513
Gavin Douglas translates Virgil's Aeneid (Representative Poetry Online)
Deaths
William Dunbar (?), perhaps at Flodden Field
1514
Dr. D. Cooper (Representative Poetry Online), active at the court of Henry VIII
1517
Births
Henry Howard, earl of Surrey (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1519
Births
Nicholas Grimald (?)
1520
Thomas Churchyard (?)
1521
Births
Anne Askew (Representative Poetry Online)
1522
John Skelton's "Why Come Ye Not to Court?" attacks Cardinal Wolsey
Deaths
Gavin Douglas (Representative Poetry Online)
1523
John Skelton's The Garlande of Laurel written
1528
Births
Thomas Whythorne
1529
Deaths
John Skelton (Representative Poetry Online), on June 21
1530
Births
George Puttenham (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1532
W. Thynne edits Chaucer's works
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso
1533
HENRY VIII SECRETLY MARRIES ANNE BOLEYN
Births
Elizabeth Tudor, later Elizabeth I (Representative Poetry Online)

1534
Births
George Gascoigne (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1535
Deaths
Sir Thomas More, executed
1536
Births
Thomas Sackville, 1st earl of Dorset (Representative Poetry Online)
1540
Henry Howard, earl of Surrey (Representative Poetry Online), develops blank verse 1537-46 in his translation of
the Aeneid, Books 2-6
Births
Barnabe Googe; Isabella Whitney (Representative Poetry Online)
1542
Deaths
Sir Thomas Wyatt (Representative Poetry Online), on Oct. 11
1543
Births
William Byrd (Representative Poetry Online) (?); Sir Edward Dyer (Representative Poetry Online)
1545
Births
Alexander Montgomerie (Scotland) (?); George Turberville (?)
1546
John Heywood's verse proverbs
Births
Giles Fletcher the elder
Deaths
Anne Askew (Representative Poetry Online)
1547
EDWARD VI (-1553)
Deaths
Henry Howard, earl of Surrey (Representative Poetry Online), executed by Henry VIII; Henry VIII (Representative
Poetry Online)
1548
John Bale's Illustrium Majoris Britanniae Scriptorum Summarium, biographical entries on major British writers
Deaths
John Ballantyne (?)
1549
R. Wever (Representative Poetry Online) devises Lusty Juventus about 1549-53
Sir Thomas Wyatt's Certayne Psalmes, an English translation of part of the Biblical psalms.
1550
Births
Gabriel Harvey (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1552
Thomas Churchyard's A Mirror for Man
Births
Walter Ralegh (Representative Poetry Online) (?); Edmund Spenser (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
Deaths
Alexander Barclay
1553
JANE (-1553); MARY I (-1558)
Gavin Douglas' translation of Virgil's Aeneid, published posthumously
William Stevenson (Representative Poetry Online) about this year wrote Gammer Gurton's Needle
Thomas Wilson's Art of Rhetoric
1554

Births
Fulke Greville (Representative Poetry Online), 1st baron Brooke; John Lyly (Representative Poetry Online) (?); Sir
Philip Sidney (Representative Poetry Online), on Nov. 30
1555
John Heywood's Epigrams
Births
Nicholas Breton (Representative Poetry Online) (?); Richard Carew (Representative Poetry Online) of Anthony
Deaths
Sir David Lindsay
1556
John Heywood's The Spider and the Fly
Births
George Peele (Representative Poetry Online)
Deaths
Henry Parker Morley, lord; Thomas Vaux, 2nd baron Vaux of Harrowden (Representative Poetry Online)
1557
The translation by Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, of books II and IV of Virgil's neid is published.
Thomas Tusser's Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie
Tottel's Miscellany
William Gray of Reading (Representative Poetry Online) is active about this time.
Births
Sir Arthur Gorges; Thomas Watson (?)
1558
ELIZABETH I (-1603)
Births
Chidiock Tichborne (Representative Poetry Online); Thomas Lodge (Representative Poetry Online); Thomas
Morley (Representative Poetry Online) (?); William Warner (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1559
The Mirror of Magistrates, with 20 tragic tales; enlarged repeatedly until 1609
Births
George Chapman (Representative Poetry Online)
1560
Births
Robert Greene (Representative Poetry Online) (?); Anthony Munday (Representative Poetry Online)
1561
Julius Caesar Scaliger's poetics published in France
Births
Sir John Harington (?); Mary Herbert, countess of Pembroke; Robert Southwell (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1562
Births
Henry Constable; Samuel Daniel (Representative Poetry Online); Nicholas Grimald
1563
Barnabe Googe's Eclogues, Epitaphs, and Sonnets
second edition of The Mirror of Magistrates
Births
John Dowland (Representative Poetry Online); Michael Drayton (Representative Poetry Online); Sir Robert Sidney
(Philip's younger brother); Joshua Sylvester (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1564
Births
Christopher Marlowe (Representative Poetry Online) on Feb. 6; William Shakespeare (Representative Poetry
Online) on April 23
1565
Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, books I-IV, published, completed in 1575
Births
John Davies (?).
1566

Births
John Hoskyns (Representative Poetry Online); James I of England (James VI of Scotland).
1567
Births
Thomas Campion (Representative Poetry Online); Thomas Nashe (Representative Poetry Online)
1568
John Skelton's poems published
Births
Sir Henry Wotton (Representative Poetry Online)
1569
Barnabe Barnes' sonnet sequence Parthenophil and Parthenophe
Births
Sir John Davies; Emilia Lanyer (Representative Poetry Online), ne Bassano
1570
Births
Sir Robert Aytoun (Scotland); Thomas Bateson (Representative Poetry Online) (?); Thomas Dekker (Representative
Poetry Online) (?); Thomas Middleton (?); Samuel Rowlands (?)
1571
Births
Martin Peerson (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1572
Rauf Coilyear (late 15th cent. Scot.), published
Births
John Donne (Representative Poetry Online)
1573
George Gascoigne's A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres
Births
Ben Jonson (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1574
Births
Richard Barnfield (Representative Poetry Online); Joseph Hall (Representative Poetry Online); John Wilbye
(Representative Poetry Online)
1575
George Gascoigne's Certayne notes of instruction concerning the Making of verse or ryme in English names
"Poulter's Measure," iambic couplets of 12- and 14-syllable lines; also his Poesies
Births
John Marston (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1576
Richard Edwards' compilation of Paradyse of Dainty Devises
George Gascoigne's The Steele glas
Births
Thomas Weelkes (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1577
Deaths
George Gascoigne (Representative Poetry Online) on Nov. 15
1578
Thomas Proctor's A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions
Births
George Sandys; John Taylor the "water poet" (?)
Deaths
John Heywood
1579
Stephen Gosson's prose The School of Abuse attacks poets and players
Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calender (Representative Poetry Online)
Births
John Fletcher (Representative Poetry Online)

1580
Thomas Churchyard's translation of Ovid's Tristia, I-III
Births
Thomas Ford (Representative Poetry Online) (?); John Webster (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
Deaths
John Heywood (?); Isabella Whitney (Representative Poetry Online) (after)
1581
Sir Philip Sidney completes the Old Arcadia and writes his Defence of Poetry or An Apologie for Poetrie 1579-81
(published in 1595), in response to Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse
1582
Stanyhurst's translation of Virgil's Aeneid, I-IV
Philip Sidney writes Astrophel and Stella about this time: 108 sonnets and 11 songs about his unrequited love for
Penelope Rich
Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway
Births
Richard Corbet (Representative Poetry Online) (Corbett); Phineas Fletcher; Edward, lord Herbert of Cherbury
(Representative Poetry Online)
1583
Sir Philip Sidney completes the New Arcadia within two years
Births
Sir John Beaumont; Orlando Gibbons (Representative Poetry Online); Aurelian Townshend (?)
1584
Births
Francis Beaumont (Representative Poetry Online)
Deaths
Thomas Norton
1585
James VI of Scotland writes Essays of a Prentice in the Art of Poesie
Births
William Drummond of Hawthornden (Representative Poetry Online); Giles Fletcher the younger (Representative
Poetry Online)
1586
William Warner's Albions England
William Webbe's Discourse of English Poetry
Deaths
Sir Philip Sidney (Representative Poetry Online) on Oct. 17, from a war wound; Chidiock Tichborne
(Representative Poetry Online), executed
1587
Births
Lady Mary Sidney Wroth (?).
Deaths
John Bellenden (Scotland)
1588
William Byrd's Psalmes, Sonets, & Songs of sadnes and pietie
Births
George Wither (Representative Poetry Online)
1589
William Byrd's Songs of Sundrie Natures
George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie
Deaths
Humfrey Gifford (Representative Poetry Online)
1590
Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde: Euphues golden legacie
George Peele's Polyhymnia
Thomas Watson's Italian Madrigals Englished

 revised version of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia published posthumously

Edmund Spenser (Representative Poetry Online): The Faerie Queene, Books I-III
Births
William Browne (Representative Poetry Online); Walter Porter (Representative Poetry Online) (?)
1591
Sir John Harrington's translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso
Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella
Edmund Spenser's Daphnaida and Complaints
Births
Robert Herrick (Representative Poetry Online)
1592
Samuel Daniel's "Delia (Representative Poetry Online). Contayning certayne sonnets: with the complaint of
Rosamond
Joshua Sylvester's translation of The Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas, completed in 1608
Births
Henry King (Representative Poetry Online); Francis Quarles (Representative Poetry Online)
Deaths
Thomas Watson
1593
Henry Constable's sonnet sequence Diana
Michael Drayton (Representative Poetry Online): Idea
Thomas Morley's Canzonets
The Phoenix Nest, compiled by R. S.
Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis
Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia republished with the three books of the old version
Births
George Herbert (Representative Poetry Online)
Deaths
Christopher Marlowe (Representative Poetry Online) on May 30, murdered
1594
George Chapman's The Shadow of Night
Michael Drayton's Ideas Mirrour
R. Carew's translation of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata
Thomas Morley's Canzonets and Madrigalls
Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece
Deaths
Barnabe Googe
1595
George Chapman's Ovid's Banquet of Sense
Samuel Daniel's Civil Wars between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York, completed in 8 books in 1609.
Michael Drayton's Endimion and Phoebe
Thomas Morley's Balletts and Canzonets
Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesie and sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella posthumously published
Edmund Spenser's sonnet sequence "Amoretti," and his wedding poem "Epithalamion," both about Elizabeth Boyle
Births
Thomas Carew
Deaths
Robert Southwell, executed (and canonized in 1970)
1596
Sir John Davies' Orchestra or a Poeme of Dauncing
Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Books IV-VI, Fowre Hymnes, and Prothalamion
Births
James Shirley (Representative Poetry Online)
Deaths
George Peele (Representative Poetry Online); George Whythorne
1597

 Francis Bacon's Essays, first edition

John Dowland (Representative Poetry Online): The First Booke of Songes
Joseph Hall's Virgidemiarum
Francis Mere's Palladis Tamia, including a critical survey of English writers, such as Shakespeare
Deaths
George Turberville (?)
1598
Richard Barnfield's The encomium of lady Pecunia; or the praise of money
George Chapman's translation of Homer's Iliad, I-II, VII-XI
Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander, posthumously published
Deaths
Alexander Montgomerie
1599
Samuel Daniel's Musophilus
Sir John Davies, in Hymnes of Astraea, writes 26 acrostic poems dedicated to Queen Elizabeth.
Shakespeare's The Passionate Pilgrim
Deaths
Edmund Spenser (Representative Poetry Online), on Jan. 16
1600
Englands Helicon, an anthology of poems
Thomas Morley (Representative Poetry Online): Madrigals
Thomas Nashe (Representative Poetry Online): Summers Last Will and Testament (play)
John Dowland (Representative Poetry Online): Second Booke of Songs
Christopher Marlowe's translation of Lucan's Pharsalia posthumously published
Thomas Weelkes' Canto
Births
Charles I (Representative Poetry Online); John Ogilby (Scots.)
1601
Robert Chester's Loues martyr: or, Rosalins complaint
John Donne secretly weds Ann More, niece of his employer, Sir Thomas Egerton
Thomas Morley's First Booke of Ayres
Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle published in Chester's Loves Martyr
Deaths
Thomas Nashe
1602
Thomas Campion's Observations in the Art of English Poesie
A Poetical Rhapsody, compiled by Francis and Walter Davison
Robert Southwell's St. Peter's Complaint, with Other Poems
Births
Edward Benlowes; Owen Felltham (?); William Strode
Deaths
Thomas Morley
17th Century 1603-1667
1603
JAMES I (-1625)
Samuel Daniel's Defence of Rhyme, a reply to Thomas Campion's Observations
John Dowland's Third and Last Booke of Songs
James VI of Scotland is crowned James I of England
Births
Shackerly Marmion
Deaths
Elizabeth I
1604
Thomas Bateson's Cantus. The first set of English Madrigales
Deaths
Thomas Churchyard

1605
Bartas: his Devine weekes and works, translated by Joshua Sylvester
Births
William Habington; Thomas Randolph
1606
Michael Drayton's Poems Lyric and Pastoral, including "The Ballad of Agincourt"
Births
Sir William D'Avenant, on March 3; Edmund Waller
Deaths
John Lyly
1607
JAMESTOWN FOUNDED IN VIRGINIA
Thomas Ford's Musicke of sundrie kindes
Deaths
Sir Edward Dyer
1608
Births
John Milton on Dec. 9
Deaths
Thomas Sackville, 1st earl of Dorset
1609
Shakespeares sonnets (including "A Lover's Complaint") published by Thomas Thorpe
John Wilbye's The Second Set of Madrigales
Births
Sir John Suckling
Deaths
William Warner
1610
GALILEO SHOWS EARTH'S ROTATION AROUND THE SUN
Giles Fletcher's Christs Victory and Triumph
Ben Jonson receives a royal pension, making him unofficially the first British Poet Laureate
Births
Lucius Cary Falkland
1611
Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
John Donne's An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary
King James' version of the Bible
Deaths
Giles Fletcher the elder
1612
second edition of Francis Bacon's Essays
John Donne's The Second Anniversary: The Progress of the Soul
John Dowland's A Pilgrimes Solace
Michael Drayton's The Poly-Olbion, Part I (1612-13)
Orlando Gibbon's First Set of Madrigals and Mottets
Births
Ann Bradstreet; James Graham, 5th earl and first marquis of Montrose (Scotland)
Deaths
Sir John Harington
1613
William Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, completed in 1616
Richard Carew of Anthony's "The Excellency of the English Tongue"
Joshua Sylvester's Lachrymae Lachrymarum
George Wither's Abuses Stript and Whipt
Births
Samuel Butler; John Cleveland; Richard Crashaw (?)

Deaths
Henry Constable
1615
Births
Sir John Denham
1616
George Chapman's translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
William Drummond's Poems
Ben Jonson's Works, including "On My First Son"
Births
Joseph Beaumont
Deaths
Francis Beaumont; William Shakespeare
1618
Births
Abraham Cowley; Richard Lovelace
Deaths
John Davies; Sir Walter Ralegh, executed; Joshua Sylvester
1619
Michael Drayton's last edition of Idea, including "Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part"
Deaths
Samuel Daniel
1620
MAYFLOWER LANDS ON DEC. 22
Martin Peerson's Private Musick
Francis Quarles' A Feast for Worms
Births
Alexander Brome
Deaths
Thomas Campion; Richard Carew of Anthony
1621
George Sandys' verse translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1621-26)
Births
Andrew Marvell
Deaths
Mary Herbert, countess of Pembroke, of smallpox
1622
Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion, II
George Wither's Fidelia and Fair-virtue
Births
Henry Vaughan; Thomas Vaughan
1623
William Drummond's Flowers of Sion
Shakespeare's fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell publish the first folio of his works
Births
Margaret Newcastle, duchess of Newcastle
Deaths
William Byrd; Giles Fletcher the younger; Thomas Weelkes
1625
CHARLES I (-1649)
third edition of Francis Bacon's Essays
Deaths
John Fletcher; Orlando Gibbons; Sir Arthur Gorges; James I of England; Thomas Lodge
1626
Deaths
Francis Bacon; Nicholas Breton; Sir John Davies; John Dowland

1627
Michael Drayton's "The battaile of Agincourt
Deaths
Richard Barnfield; Sir John Beaumont
1628
George Wither's Britain's Remembrancer, about the 1625 London plague
Births
John Bunyan
Deaths
Fulke Greville, baron Brooke
1629
John Milton composes On the Morning of Christ's Nativity at Christmas
1630
Michael Drayton's The muses Elizium
Births
Charles Cotton
Deaths
Thomas Bateson; Samuel Rowlands (?)
1631
Births
John Dryden; Katherine Philips; John Phillips
Deaths
John Donne; Michael Drayton; Gabriel Harvey
1632
Walter Porter's Madrigales and ayres
Francis Quarles' Divine Fancies
Deaths
Thomas Dekker; John Webster (?)
1633
Certaine Learned and Elegant Works by Fulke Greville, lord Brooke, including Caelica
John Donne's Poems posthumously published
Phineas Fletcher's The Purple Island; or, The Isle of Man
George Herbert's The Temple
Births
Wentworth Dillon (?)
Deaths
George Herbert; Anthony Munday
1634
John Milton's "Comus performed
Deaths
George Chapman; John Marston
1635
Francis Quarles' Emblemes
George Wither's Emblems, Ancient and Moderne
Births
Sir George Etherege (?); Thomas Sprat
Deaths
Richard Corbet (Corbett); Thomas Randolph
1637
John Milton's Lycidas in memory of Edward King
Births
Thomas Flatman; Thomas Traherne
Deaths
Ben Jonson
1638

 Sir William D'Avenant made unofficial British Poet Laureate

Francis Quarles' Hieroglyphikes of the Life of Man
Thomas Randolph's Poems with the Muses looking-glasse
Sir John Suckling's Aglaura
Births
Charles Sackville, earl of Dorset; Sir Charles Sedley (?)
Deaths
Sir Robert Aytoun (?); John Hoskyns; Shakerly Marmion; John Wilbye
1639
Births
Sir Charles Sedley (?)
Deaths
Sir Henry Wotton
1640
Thomas Carew's Poems
Ben Jonson's Timber, criticism on poets and poetry; and his translation of Horace's Ars Poetica
Births
Aphra Behn (?)
Deaths
Thomas Carew; John Ford (?)
1642
first version of Sir John Denham's Cooper's Hill
Births
Thomas Shadwell (?)
Deaths
Sir John Suckling; Edward Taylor (US) (?)
1643
Deaths
Lucius Cary Falkland; Aurelian Townshend (?)
1644
Deaths
Francis Quarles; George Sandys
1645
John Milton's Poems, including "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso"
Edmund Waller's Poems
Deaths
William Browne; Emilia Lanyer; William Strode
1646
Richard Crashaw's Delights of the Muses and Steps to the Temple
Sir John Sucking's Fragmenta Aurea
Henry Vaughan's Poems
1647
John Cleveland's The Character of a London Diurnal
Richard Corbet's Certain Elegant Poems
Abraham Cowley's The Mistresse
Births
John Wilmot, earl of Rochester
1648
Robert Herrick's Hesperides
Deaths
Edward, lord Herbert of Cherbury
1649
NO KING; GOVERNMENT BY COUNCIL (-1653)
Richard Lovelace's Lucasta
Births
Elkanah Settle

Deaths
Charles I; Richard Crashaw; William Drummond of Hawthornden
1650
Henry Vaughan's Silex Scintillans
Anne Bradstreet's The Tenth Muse
Deaths
Phineas Fletcher; James Graham, marquis of Montrose, executed; Martin Peerson
1651
Sir William D'Avenant's "Preface to Gondibert"
Deaths
Lady Mary Sidney Wroth (?)
1652
Edward Benlowe's Theophilia, or Love's Sacrifice
Richard Crashaw's Carmen Deo Nostro
Births
Nahum Tate
1653
OLIVER CROMWELL, LORD PROTECTOR (-1658)
John Cleveland's Poems
Margaret Newcastle's Poems and Fancies
Births
Thomas D'Urfey; John Oldham;
Deaths
John Taylor the "water poet"
1654
Births
Sir Richard Blackmore
Deaths
William Habington
1655
John Cotgrave's The English Treasury of Literature and Language and Wits Interpreter: The English Parnassus
1656
Abraham Cowley's Poems
Richard Crashaw's Carmen Del Nostro
Births
Lady Mary Chudleigh
Deaths
Joseph Hall
1657
Henry King's Poems, Elegies, Paradoxes and Sonnets
Births
John Dennis
Deaths
Richard Lovelace
1658
RICHARD CROMWELL, LORD PROTECTOR (-1659)
Births
Charles Mordaunt, earl of Peterborough
Deaths
John Cleveland
1659
Richard Lovelace's Last Remains
Births
Henry Purcell
Deaths
Walter Porter

1660
CHARLES II (-1685)
John Dryden's Astraea Redux, celebrating the restoration of the monarchy
Births
Daniel Defoe; Anne Killigrew (?)
1661
Births
Anne Finch, countess of Winchilsea
1662
Samuel Butler's Hudibras, Book I
Births
William King; John Smith
1663
Samuel Butler's Hudibras, Book II
Abraham Cowley's Verses upon Several Occasions
1664
NEWTON FORMULATES THE LAW OF GRAVITY
Births
Matthew Prior
Deaths
Katherine Philips, of smallpox
1665
Edward Herbert, lord Herbert of Cherbury's Occasional Verses
1666
Deaths
James Shirley299; Thomas Vaughan
Augustans 1667-1780
1667
Katherine Philips' Poems
John Dryden's Annus Mirabilis
John Milton's Paradise Lost, published in ten books
Births
Alicia D'Anvers, ne Clarke; John Pomfret; John Reynolds; John Richardson (?); Jonathan Swift; Edward Ward
Deaths
Abraham Cowley>; George Wither
1668
John Dryden's essay Of Dramatick Poesie
John Dryden made British Poet Laureate
Thomas Sprat's "An Account of the Life and Writings of Mr. Abraham Cowley"
Deaths
Sir William D'Avenant; Owen Felltham
1669
Deaths
Sir John Denham; Henry King
1670
Births
William Congreve; Sarah Fyge; Bernard Mandeville
1671
John Milton's "Paradise Regained and "Samson Agonistes
Births
Colley Cibber; Sarah Dixon (?)
1672
Sir George Etherege's Poems
Births
Joseph Addison (Representative Poetry Online)

Deaths
Anne Bradstreet
1673
John Milton's Poems on Several Occasions, revised edn.
Births
John Oldmixon (?); Ambrose Philips
Deaths
Margaret Newcastle, duchess of Newcastle
1674
John Milton's "Paradise Lost (2nd edn.), published in 12 books
Thomas Rymer's translation of Ren Rapin's Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poesie
Births
Ambrose Philips; Nicholas Rowe; Isaac Watts
Deaths
Edward Benlowes; Robert Herrick; John Milton; Thomas Traherne
1675
John Wilmot, earl of Rochester's A Satire against Mankind
Births
William Somervile
1676
Births
John Philips
Deaths
John Ogilby
1678
Samuel Butler's "Hudibras, Book III
Anne Bradstreet's Poems
Henry Vaughan's Thalia Rediviva
Births
John Winstanley (?)
Deaths
Andrew Marvell, of medical treatment; Mary Monck (?)
1679
John Oldham's Satire against Virtue
Births
Thomas Parnell (Ireland)
1680
Samuel Butler's Hudibras, Part III
Wentworth Dillon, 4th earl of Roscommon, publishes a translation of Horace's Ars Poetica
John Wilmot, earl of Rochester's Poems on several Occasions
Deaths
Samuel Butler; John Wilmot, earl of Rochester
1681
John Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel
Andrew Marvell's Miscellaneous Poems, posthumously published, including "To his Coy Mistress"
1682
John Dryden's Religio Laici, Macflecknoe, and "Absalom and Achitophel, II; all but 200 lines are by Nahum Tate
Births
Richardson Pack
1683
Births
Edward Young
Deaths
John Oldham, of smallpox
1684

 Wentworth Dillon's Essay on Translated Verse

John Oldham's Poems and Translations
1685
JAMES II (-1688)
Aphra Behn's Miscellany, being a collection of poems by several hands
Edmund Waller's Divine Poems
John Dryden's Sylvae
Births
George Berkeley; William Diaper; John Gay; William Harrison; Aaron Hill; Thomas Tickell
Deaths
Wentworth Dillon; Anne Killigrew, from smallpox
1686
Anne Killigrew's Poems, to which John Dryden contributed an ode in memory of Anne Killigrew
Births
Allan Ramsay (Scotland)
1687
John Dryden's Song for St. Cecilia's Day and "The Hind and the Panther
Matthew Prior's and Charles Montagu's Story of the Country-Mouse and the City-Mouse, a burlesque of Dryden's
Hind
Births
Henry Carey (?)
Deaths
Charles Cotton
1688
John Dryden's Britannia Rediviva
Thomas Shadwell made British Poet Laureate
Births
Laurence Eusden; Alexander Pope; Thomas Warton (?); Leonard Welsted
Deaths
John Bunyan; Thomas Flatman
1689
WILLIAM III (-1702) AND MARY II (-1694)
Charles Cotton's Poems on Several Occasions
Andrew Marvell's Poems on Affairs of State published posthumously
Births
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ne Pierrepont
Deaths
Aphra Behn
1690
Sir William Temple's essay "Of Poetry"
Births
Andrew Brice; Mary Barber (?); Mary Collier (?); Samuel Croxall (?)
1691
Alicia D'Anvers' Academia, or The Humours of the University of Oxford
Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas
Deaths
Sir George Etherege; Samuel Wesley
1692
Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen
Nahum Tate made British Poet Laureate
Births
John Byrom; Elizabeth Tollet
Deaths
Thomas Shadwell
1693

Births
Hildebrand Jacob
1694
Births
James Bramston (?); Philip Dormer Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield
1695
Henry Purcell's The Indian Queen
Deaths
Henry Purcell; Henry Vaughan
1696
Births
Matthew Green; William Oldys
1697
Aphra Behn's Poetical Remains
John Dryden's Alexander's Feast, or, the Power of Musique
Births
Edward Chicken; Thomas Edwards; Richard Savage (?); Hetty Wright
1698
Aphra Behn's Poetical Remains
Births
Henry Baker
Deaths
Edward Littleton (?)
1699
Thomas Traherne's A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation of the Mercies of God
Births
Robert Blair; John Ellis; Leonard Howard (?); Christopher Pitt; Alexander Ross (Scotland)
Deaths
Joseph Beaumont
1700
John Dryden's Fables Ancient and Modern and The Secular Masque
Births
John Dyer (Wales); James Thomson (Scotland)
Deaths
John Dryden
1701
Daniel Defoe's A True-born Englishman
John Dennis' The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry
John Philips' The Splendid Shilling
Deaths
Sir Charles Sedley
1702
ANNE (-1714)
Sir Charles Sedley's Miscellaneous Works, published posthumously
Births
Philip Doddridge; Robert Nugent, earl Nugent; Kenrick Prescot
Deaths
John Pomfret
1703
Lady Mary Chudleigh's Poems upon Several Occasions
Sarah Fyge's Poems on Several Occasions
Births
Henry Brooke (?); Robert Dodsley; John Wesley
1704
John Dennis' The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry

Births
Moses Browne; William Hamilton (Scotland); Soame Jenyns
1705
Joseph Addison's The Campaign, on the victory at Blenheim
John Philips' Blenheim
Births
Isaac Hawkins Browne; Stephen Duck; David Mallet (?)
1706
Isaac Watts' Horae Lyricae
Deaths
Charles Sackville, 6th earl of Dorset
1707
Matthew Prior's Poems on Several Occasions
Isaac Watts' Hymns and Spiritual Songs
Births
Charles Wesley
1708
John Philips' Cider
Births
John Collier; Sir Charles Hanbury Williams
1709
First copyright law in England.
Alexander Pope's Pastorals
Matthew Prior's Poems on Several Occasions
Jonathan Swift's "Description of a City Shower" and "Description of the Morning"
Births
John Armstrong; John Bancks; Martha Brewster, ne Wadsworth; John Dalton; Sneyd Davies; William Dunkin (?);
Samuel Johnson
Deaths
John Philips
1710
Births
George Alexander Stevens; Paul Whitehead
Deaths
Jean Adams (Scotland); Lady Mary Chudleigh
1711
Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism
Births
John Gambold; Jupiter Hammon (US); Henry Taylor
1712
Sir Richard Blackmore's Creation: a philosophical poem
Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock published in Lintot's Miscellanies, and enlarged in 1714
Births
Emanuel Collins (?); Richard Glover; Josiah Relph
Deaths
William King
1713
Joseph Addison's Cato
Anne Finch, countess of Winchelsea's Miscellany Poems
Alexander Pope's Windsor Forest
Births
Alison Cockburn (Scotland), ne Rutherford (?); Thomas Gilbert (?); George Smith
Deaths
William Harrison; Thomas Sprat
1714
GEORGE I (-1727)

 John Gay's The Shepherd's Week and The Fan

the Scriblerus Club met January-July, a group including John Gay, Thomas Parnell, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan
Swift
Births
William Shenstone
Deaths
Paul Whitehead
1715
Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad, Book I, followed by Books II in 1716, III in 1717, IV in 1718, and
V-VI in 1720.
Nicholas Rowe mad British Poet Laureate
Isaac Watts' Divine Songs for the Use of Children, including "How doth the little busy Bee"
Births
John Brown; Richard Jago; Richard Graves; William Whitehead
Deaths
Mary Monck; Nahum Tate
1716
John Gay's Trivia or the Art of Walking the Streets of London and Court Poems
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's "Court Eclogues
Births
Thomas Gray
1717
Alexander Pope's Collected Works, including "Eloisa to Abelard
Births
Horace Walpole, earl of Oxford
Deaths
William Diaper; David Garrick; John Smith
1718
Laurence Euston made British Poet Laureate
Deaths
Thomas Parnell; Nicholas Rowe
1719
Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy
Isaac Watts' Psalms of David
Births
James Cawthorn; James Eyre Weeks (?)
Deaths
Joseph Addison (Representative Poetry Online)
1720
John Gay's Poems on Several Occasions
Births
Francis Fawkes; Gilbert White
Deaths
Anne Finch, countess of Winchilsea
1721
Thomas Parnell's Night-Piece on Death
Jonathan Swift's Letter of Advice to a Young Poet
Births
Mark Akenside (Representative Poetry Online); William Collins (Representative Poetry Online); James Grainger;
Matthew Prior (Representative Poetry Online); Tobias Smollett; William Wilkie (Scotland)
1722
Thomas Parnell's Poems on Several Occasions
Births
James Dance; Mary Leapor; Christopher Smart; Joseph Warton
1723

Deaths
Thomas D'Urfey; Sarah Fyge
1724
Births
Christopher Anstey; Frances Brooke; Evan Lloyd; William Mason
Deaths
Elkanah Settle
1725
Orpheus Caledonius: or a Collection of the Best Scotch Songs, compiled by William Thomson
Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Odyssey, Books I-III (with William Broome and Elijah Fenton), books IVV to follow in 1726
Edward Young's Love of Fame, the Universal Passion (1725-28)
Births
John Newton
Deaths
Alicia D'Anvers
1726
Henry Carey's "Namby Pamby, including fragments of many still-popular nursery rhymes, such as "London Bridge
is broken down"
Thomson's "Winter
1727
GEORGE II (-1760)
John Gay's Fables, I, to be followed by II in 1738, but completed only in 1750.
Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry, a parody of Longinus's treatise on the sublime
Thomson's "Summer
Births
Thomas Cole (?)
Deaths
John Reynolds
1728
John Gay's Beggar's Opera
Alexander Pope's "The Dunciad, Books I-III, followed by Book IV (the New Dunciad) in 1742, and completed in
1743
James Thomson's Spring
Births
Lady Dorothea Du Bois (Ireland); Thomas Warton the younger
Deaths
Richardson Pack
1729
Alexander Pope's The Dunciad Variorum
Births
John Cunningham; George Keate; Thomas Percy
Deaths
Sir Richard Blackmore; William Congreve; Edward Taylor
1730
Colley Cibber made British Poet Laureate
Stephen Duck's Poems
Aaron Hill's The Progress of Wit
James Thomson's The Seasons, including Autumn
Births
Oliver Goldsmith (?); John Scott
Deaths
Laurence Eusden
1731
Alexander Pope's Of Taste and four Moral Essays (1731-35)

Births
Samuel Bishop; Charles Churchill; William Cowper; Erasmus Darwin; John Freeth (?); Francis Grose (ca); William
Woty
Deaths
Daniel Defoe; Edward Ward
1732
John Gay's libretto for Handel's Acis and Galatea
Births
John Carr; William Falconer; Thomas Morris
Deaths
John Gay
1733
Alexander Pope's An Essay on Man, completed 1734, and Imitations of Horace, Book I, followed by Book II in
1734
Births
Isaac Bickerstaffe; Robert Lloyd
Deaths
Bernard Mandeville
1734
Mary Barber's Poems on Several Occasions
Births
John Maclaurin, lord Dreghorn
Deaths
Edward Littleton
1735
Alexander Pope's Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot
William Somervile's The Chace
James Thomson's Liberty, parts I-III ("Italy," "Greece," and "Rome"), followed in 1736 by parts IV-V ("Britain"
and "The Prospect")
Births
James Beattie; John Langhorne; William Julius Mickle; James Woodhouse
Deaths
Charles Mordaunt, earl of Peterborough
1736
Births
Charles Jenner; James Macpherson (Scotland)
1737
Alexander Pope's "Imitations of Horace
William Shenstone's Poems upon Various Occasions, including "The Schoolmistress"
Jonathan Swift's Poems on Several Occasions
John Wesley's Psalms and Poems
Births
Joseph Mather
Deaths
Matthew Green
1738
Samuel Johnson's London
Jonathan Swift's The Beasts' Confession
Births
Mary Darwall; John Wolcot
1739
Jonathan Swift's Verses on the Death of Dr Swift
John and Charles Wesley's Hymns and Sacred Poems
Births
Edward Thompson (?)

Deaths
Hildebrand Jacob
1740
John Dyer's The Ruins of Rome
James Thomson's Alfred, including "Ode in Honour of Great Britain," that is, "Rule Britannia"
Births
Samuel Henley; Thomas Moss (?); Augustus Montagu Toplady
Deaths
Thomas Tickell
1741
About this time Thomas Seaton established the Seatonian Prize at Cambridge University for religious poetry
William Whitehead's The Danger of Writing Verse
Births
William Combe
1742
William Collins' Persian Eclogues
Edward Young's "The Complaint, or Night Thoughts (1742-45)
Births
Mary Alcock (?); Anne Hunter (Scotland); Thomas Penrose; Anna Seward
Deaths
John Oldmixon; William Somervile
1743
Robert Blair's The Grave
Alexander Pope's The New Dunciad
Births
Anna Laetitia Barbauld; Mrs. Hannah Cowley
Deaths
James Bramston; Henry Carey (?); Andrew Michael Ramsay; Josiah Relph; Richard Savage
1744
Mark Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, revised 1757
Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, with "Baa, baa, black sheep"
Joseph Warton's The Enthusiast
John and Charles Wesley's A Collection of Psalms and Hymns
Deaths
Alexander Pope
1745
Mark Akenside's "Odes on Several Subjects
John Armstrong's The Art of Preserving Health
Births
William Crowe; Charles Dibdin; William Hayley; Thomas Holcroft; Hannah More; Charles Morris; Henry James
Pye
Deaths
Sarah Dixon; Jonathan Richardson; Jonathan Swift; Thomas Warton the elder
1746
William Collins' Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (dated 1747)
John Warton's Odes on Various Subjects
Births
Michael Bruce
Deaths
Robert Blair; Edward Chicken; Mary Leapor, from measles
1747
Thomas Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
Thomas Warton Jr's The Pleasures of Melancholy
Births
John Aikin; Susanna Blamire; John O'Keeffe

Deaths
Thomas Gilbert; Leonard Welsted
1748
Robert Dodsley's A Collection of Poems, 1848-58
Mary Leapor's Poems upon Several Occasions (1748-51), posthumously published
James Thomson's The Castle of Indolence
Births
Henry Alline (Canada); Major Henry Livingston, Jr. (USA)
Deaths
Christopher Pitt; James Thomson; Isaac Watts
1749
Samuel Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes
Births
James Graeme; Samuel Jackson Pratt; Charlotte Smith
Deaths
Ambrose Philips
1750
James Thomson's posthumous Poems on Several Occasions
Births
Lady Anne Barnard (Scotland); Sophia Burrell; Robert Fergusson (Scotland); Lady Anne Lindsay; John Taylor; John
Trumbull (US)
Deaths
Aaron Hill; John Winstanley; Hetty Wright
1751
Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard
Births
Henrietta Battier (?); Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Deaths
John Bancks; Philip Doddridge
1752
Christopher Smart's Poems on Several Occasions
Births
Thomas Chatterton; Philip Morin Freneau (US); Edmund Gardner (?); Joseph Ritson; Ann Yearsley, ne Cromartie
1753
John and Charles Wesley's Hymns and Spiritual Songs
Births
John Frederick Bryant; George Ellis; William Roscoe; Phillis Wheatley (US) about this time
Deaths
George Berkeley
1754
Thomas Gray's The Progress of Poesy
Births
John Codrington Bampfylde; Joel Barlow (US); George Crabbe; Thomas Maurice
Deaths
Elizabeth Tollet
1755
Births
George Dyer; George Galloway (?); Robert Merry; Andrew Macdonald (?)
1756
John Warton's Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope
Births
Edward Rushton; Jane Cave (by this year)
Deaths
Stephen Duck, by suicide
1757

 Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful
John Dyer's The Fleece
Odes by Mr. Gray, including "The Progress of Poesy"
William Whitehead made British Poet Laureate after Thomas Gray refuses it
Births
William Blake; William Sotheby
Deaths
Mary Barber; Colley Cibber; Thomas Edwards
1758
Mark Akenside's "Ode to the Country Gentlemen of England
Christopher Smart writes "Jubilate Agno (about 1758-63), only published in 1939
Births
Sir George Dallas; Joseph Fawcett (?); William Parsons (?); Mary Robinson
Deaths
John Dyer; Allan Ramsay
1759
ENGLISH UNDER WOLFE WIN QUEBEC
Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition (criticism)
Births
Robert Burns
Deaths
Martha Brewster (after this year); William Collins; Sir Charles Hanbury Williams
1760
GEORGE II (-1820)
James Macpherson's Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands
The Famous Tommy Thumb's Little Story-book, with "Little Boy Blue"
Births
Richard Polwhele
Deaths
Isaac Hawkins Browne
1761
Charles Churchill's The Rosciad and The Apology
Births
Anabella Plumptre; John Williams
Deaths
James Cawthorn; William Oldys
1762
Charles Churchill's "The Ghost, Books I-III, followed by Book IV in 1763
William Falconer's The Shipwreck, revised in 1764 and 1769
James Macpherson's Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem
Births
Joanna Baillie; James Bisset (?); William Lisle Bowles; Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges; George Colman the younger;
James Hurdis; Thomas Russell
Deaths
Mary Collier (?); Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, of breast cancer
1763
Hugh Blair's A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian
James Macpherson's Temora
Christopher Smart's "Song to David
Births
John Hurdis; Samuel Rogers
Deaths
John Byrom; John Dalton; William Shenstone
1764
Births
Elizabeth Cobbold; John Thelwall

Deaths
Charles Churchill; Robert Dodsley; Robert Lloyd
1765
Oliver Goldsmith's The Traveller
Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare's Plays
James Macpherson's Works of Ossian
Mother Goose's Melody, including "Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree top" and "Ding, dong, bell"
Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, in 3 volumes
Christopher Smart's translation of The Psalms of David
Births
Manoah Bodman (US); William Taylor
Deaths
Jean Adams; William Dunkin; David Mallet; Edward Young
1766
Isaac D'Israeli's The Literary Character
Births
Laurence Hynes Halleran
Deaths
Robert Andrews (?); John Brown; James Grainger; Catherine Jemmat
1767
John and Charles Wesley's Hymns for the Use of Families
Births
John Quincy Adams (US)
Deaths
Michael Bruce; Leonard Howard
1768
Thomas Gray's Poems, including "The Fatal Sisters" and "The Descent of Odin"
Lady Mary Montagu's Poetical Works
Births
William Shepherd
Deaths
Thomas Mozeen
1769
DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA
Births
Ann Batten Cristall; John Hookham Frere; Amelia Opie
Deaths
William Falconer, by drowning; Sneyd Davies
1770
Oliver Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village
Births
George Canning (Representative Poetry Online); Joseph Cottle; James Hogg; James Plumptre; William Wordsworth
(Representative Poetry Online)
Deaths
Mark Akenside (Representative Poetry Online); Thomas Chatterton (Representative Poetry Online), suicide by
arsenic poisoning
1771
James Beattie's "The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius, Book I, followed in 1774 by Book II The English
Garden, in 4 volumes 1771-81
Births
Thomas John Dibdin; James Montgomery (Scotland); Sir Walter Scott; Sydney Smith; Dorothy Wordsworth
Deaths
Samuel Bowden; John Gambold; Thomas Gray; Christopher Smart; Tobias Smollett
1772
William Jones' Poems from Asiatic Languages
John Trumbull's The Progress of Dulness

Births
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Deaths
James Graeme; William Wilkie
1773
Anna Laetitia Barbauld's Poems
Phillis Wheatley's Poems, the first book of poetry by an Afro-American slave, including "On Being Brought from
Africa to America"
Births
Reginald Heber
Deaths
Andrew Brice; John Cunningham; Philip Dormer Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield
1774
History of English Poetry by Thomas Warton, the younger, in 3 vols., 1774-1781
Oliver Goldsmith's "Retaliation; a poem
Births
Robert Southey
Deaths
Henry Baker; James Dance; Lady Dorothea Du Bois; Robert Fergusson; Oliver Goldsmith; Charles Jenner
1775
Births
Charles Lamb; Walter Savage Landor; Matthew Gregory Lewis; John Leyden; Joseph Blanco White
1776
AMERICAN DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (JULY 4)
Births
Lady Morgan, ne Sydney Owenson; Charles Newton (?)
Deaths
Evan Lloyd; George Smith
1777
Thomas Chatterton's Poems, supposed to have been Written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley, edited by Thomas
Tyrwhitt
Births
Thomas Campbell (Scotland)
Deaths
Francis Fawkes; Horace Walpole, earl of Oxford
1778
Births
Sir Humphrey Davy; William Hazlitt; John Kirke Paulding (US)
Deaths
Augustus Montagu Toplady
1779
Samuel Johnson's The Works of the English Poets (1779-81), 52 critical biographies
Births
Washington Allston (US); Francis Scott Key (US); Clement Moore (US); Thomas Moore
Deaths
John Armstrong; David Garrick; John Langhorne; Thomas Penrose; Kenrick Prescot
Romantics 1780-1830
1780
George Crabbe's The Candidate
Births
George Croly; Anna Maria Porter
1781
George Crabbe's The Library
Births
Ebenezer Elliott

Deaths
Richard Jago
1782
William Cowper's Poems
Births
Ann Taylor
1783
PEACE OF VERSAILLES: ENGLAND RECOGNIZES USA
William Blake's Poetical Sketches
Jane Cave's Poems on Various Subjects
George Crabbe's "The Village
Orlando Furioso, translated by John Hoole
Births
Reginald Heber; Washington Irving (US); Jane Taylor
Deaths
Henry Brooke; John Scott
1784
Births
Leigh Hunt
Deaths
Henry Alline; Bernard Barton; Samuel Johnson; Alexander Ross; George Alexander Stevens; Phillis Wheatley
1785
William Cowper's The Task in 6 Books
Thomas Warton made British Poet Laureate
Births
Lady Caroline Lamb; Thomas Love Peacock; John Pierpont (US); Samuel Woodworth (US)
Deaths
Richard Glover; Henry Taylor; William Whitehead
1786
Robert Burns' Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
Philp Morin Freneau's Poems
Births
Barron Field (Australia); Brian Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall; Brit.)
Deaths
John Collier; Jupiter Hammon (?); Edward Thompson
Floruit
Anne Hecht (Can.)
1787
Births
Richard Henry Dana (US); Margaret Davidson (US); Mary Russell Mitford
Deaths
Moses Browne; Soame Jenyns
1788
Peter Pindar's Poetical Works
Births
R. H. Barham; George Gordon, Lord Byron; Sarah Josepha Hale (US)
Deaths
William Mickle; Robert Nugent, lord Nugent; Thomas Russell; Charles Wesley
1789
GEORGE WASHINGTON BECOMES PRESIDENT OF USA
William Blake's Songs of Innocence and "The Book of Thel
Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of the Plants, republished in 1791 as The Botanic Garden, part II
Births
Charlotte Elliott; William Knox (Scotland); Thomas Pringle (South Africa); Richard Henry Wilde (US)
Deaths
Frances Brooke; Frances Greville

1790
William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Henry James Pye made British Poet Laureate
Literary Fund Society established by David Williams (by 1818 the Royal Literary Fund) to aid indigent authors
Births
Fitz-Greene Halleck (US)
Deaths
Andrew Macdonald; Thomas Warton the younger
1791
Anna Laetitia Barbauld's Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
William Blake's "The French Revolution
Robert Burns' "Tam o'Shanter
Erasmus Darwin's The Botanic Garden, part I ("The Economy of Vegetation")
Mother Goose's Melodies (originally published about 1781)
Births
John Howard Payne (US); Lydia Howard Sigourney (US); Charles Wolfe (Ireland)
Deaths
John Frederick Bryant; John Ellis; Francis Grose; John Wesley; William Woty
1792
William Blake's Song of Liberty
Samuel Rogers' The Pleasures of Memory
Births
John Frederick William Herschel; Percy Bysshe Shelley
1793
William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion and America, A Prophecy
Robert Burns' Poems
William Wordsworth's An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches
Births
John Clare; Felicia Dorothea Hemans; Henry Francis Lyte; John Neal (US); Standish O'Grady (Canada) about this
year
Deaths
Gilbert White
1794
William Blake's Songs of Experience, Europe, A Prophecy, and "The Book of Urizen
Births
Maria Gowen Brooks (?); William Cullen Bryant (US); Carlos Wilcox (US)
Deaths
Susanna Blamire; Alison Cockburn
1795
William Blake's The Book of Los, The Book of Ahania, The Song of Los, and The Songs of Innocence and
Experience
Philip Morin Freneau's Poems
Walter Savage Landor's Poems
Robin Hood: A Collection of all the Ancient Poems, edited by Joseph Ritson
Births
Thomas Carlyle; George Darley; Joseph Rodman Drake (US); John Keats; James Gates Percival; Janet Thomson
(Scotland)
Deaths
Samuel Bishop
1796
Joel Barlow's The Hasty Pudding
S. T. Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects
Births
John Gardiner Calkins Brainard (US); Hartley Coleridge; Eliza Dunlop (Australia); John Hamilton Reynolds
Deaths
Robert Burns, from rheumatic heart disease; Thomas Cole; John Maclaurin, lord Dreghorn; James Macpherson

1797
William Blake illustrates Edward Young's Night Thoughts
S. T. Coleridge composes "Kubla Khan" in an opium-induced dream and writes down only a fragment of it on
waking.
Robert Southey's Poems
Births
Thomas Haynes Bayley; George Moses Horton (US), about this time; William Motherwell (Scotland)
Deaths
John Codrington Bampfylde; George Keate; William Mason
1798
G. Canning and J. H. Frere parody Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of the Plants in their "The Loves of the Triangles"
first edition of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (with Coleridge's Rime of the
Ancient Mariner), revised in 1800 and 1802
Births
Macdonald Clarke (US); Samuel Henry Dickson (US); David Macbeth Moir (Scotland)
Deaths
Mary Alcock; Edmund Gardner; Robert Merry
1799
T. Campbell's "The Pleasures of Hope
Births
A. Bronson Alcott (US); Thomas Hood; Mary Howitt
Present-day English 1800-present
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); John Henry 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); Robert Stephen Hawker; 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, ne Adams (Representative Poetry Online)
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 Louis Vivian Derozio (India); 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; Kasiprasad Ghose
(India); 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); William Miller (Scotland); 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; Charles Dickens; 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, ne Barrett; James Joseph Sylvester; 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 Bront; Shirley Brooks; 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 (Academy of American Poets Web site; 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, ne Humphreys; Emily Bront; 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); Mary Ann Evans (pseud. "George Eliot"); 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 Bront; Henry Howard Brownell (US); Alice Patty Lee Cary (US); John Harris (Cornwall); John Henry
Hopkins, Jr. (US); Jean Ingelow; William J. Macquorn Rankine (Scotland)
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
Charles Baudelaire (France); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Isabella Banks, ne 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
"An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas" (attributed Major Henry Livingston, Jr.)
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 Legar;
Coventry Patmore; William Brighty Rands; Anna Letitia Waring;
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); John Askham; Henrietta Anne Huxley; Thomas Henry Huxley; Adelaide Anne Procter;
Bayard Taylor (US); Frances Ellen Watkins (US)

Deaths
Lady Anne Barnard; Anna Laetitia Barbauld; Mary Darwall; Lucretia Maria Davidson; William Knox (Scotland);
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); Elizabeth Siddall;
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); William McGonagall (ca; Scotland); 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; James Clerk Maxwell; David Mills
(Canada)
Deaths
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (India); 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); Joseph Skipsey; 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 Lyall (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; 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); Charles
Mair (Canada); Abram Joseph Ryan (US); Margaret E. Sangster

Deaths
Margaret Miller Davidson; Letitia Elizabeth Landon, likely by suicide; Charles Morris; Annabella Plumptre;
Richard Polwhele
1839
Births
Walter Pater; James Ryder Randall (US); John Todhunter;
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; William Cosmo Monkhouse; 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 is 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; Ernest Myers; John Boyle O'Reilly (US); Arthur
William Edgar O'Shaughnessy; Arabella Eugenia Smith (US), about this time Paul Verlaine (France); (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US);
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; Sydney Smith
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 Bront, Emily Bront, and Anne Bront's Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, edited by Charlotte
Bront
Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense, revised in 1861 and 1863
Births
Alexander MacGregor Rose (Scotland-Canada);
Deaths
George Darley; Barron Field (Australia); John Hookham Frere
1847
Ralph Waldo Emerson's Poems
Walter Savage Landor's The Hellenics
Henry Wadworth Longfellow's The Belfy of Bruges and other Poems
"Henry Francis Lyte composes "Abide with Me"
Alfred lord Tennyson's The Princess, including "Tears, idle Tears," which he adds to up to 1850
Births
Alice Meynell, ne Thompson
Deaths
Henry Francis Lyte; 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, Elizabeth Siddal, and others
Births
Romesh Chunder Dutt (India);
Deaths
John Quincy Adams; Emily Bront; Thomas Cole; Sarah Fuller Flower, ne Adams (Representative Poetry Online)
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; Thomas Lovell Beddoes; Anne Bront; 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 "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 (Academy of American Poets Web site; 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
Deaths
James Montgomery (Scotland)
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); Woodrow Wilson (US); Alexander Young (Scotland)
Deaths
Charlotte Bront; 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; Dollie Radford; 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 Rubiyt of Omar Khayym, revised up to 1879
Alfred lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King, including "Enid," "Vivien," "Elaine," and "Guinevere"
Births
Katharine Lee Bates (US); William Herbert Carruth (US); Perceval Gibbon (South Africa); A. E. Housman; Ernest
Rhys; James Kenneth Stephen; Francis Thompson
Deaths
Leigh Hunt; Washington Irving; James Mathews Legar; Thomas Babington Macaulay; Lady Morgan, ne 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 composes "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; Walter Alexander Raleigh; Louise Imogen Guiney (US);
Maurice Henry Hewlett; Katharine Hinkson, aka Katharine Tynan (Ireland); Pauline Johnson, aka Tekahionwake
(Canada); Archibald Lampman (Canada); Amy Levy; Frederick George Scott (Canada) Rabindranath Tagore
(India);
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
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
in February Dante Gabriel Rossetti places a sheaf of poems (a few years later retrieved) in the coffin of his wife
Elizabeth Siddal
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
Elizabeth Siddall, of opium overdose; Henry David Thoreau, of tuberculosis; (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US);
1863
Births
C. P. Cavafy (Egypt); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) George Essex Evans (Australia); Robert Fuller
Murray; Stuart Merrill (US); George Santayana; Ernest Lawrence Thayer (US)
Deaths
Gamaliel Bradford (US); Clement Moore; William Makepeace Thackeray
1864
Robert Browning's Dramatis Personae, including "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Caliban upon Setebos"
Robert Lowry's "Beautiful River"
William Brighty Rands' Lilliput Levee, for children
Alfred lord Tennyson's Enoch Arden
Births
Miguel de Unamuno (Spain); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Mary Gilmore (Australia); Richard
Hovey (US); A. B. ("Banjo") Paterson (Australia)
Deaths
John Clare; Stephen Foster; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Walter Savage Landor; George Pope Morris; Adelaide Anne
Procter
1865
LINCOLN ASSASSINATED; CIVIL WAR ENDS; SLAVERY ABOLISHED DEC. 18
Matthew Arnold's Essays in Criticism, 1st series, including "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time"
Robert Williams Buchanan's "The Session of the Poets," an attack on Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in
Spectator
George Moses Horton's Naked Genius
John Newman's The Dream of Gerontius
Algernon Charles Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon
Walt Whitman's "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd," on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Henry Clay Work's "Marching through Georgia"
Births
Arthur A. D. Bayldon (Australia); Madison Cawein (US); Adela Florence Nicolson Cory (pseud. "Lawrence Hope");
Thomas William Hodgson Crosland; Rudyard Kipling (UK); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); William
Butler Yeats (Ireland); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
George Arnold; William Edmondstone Aytoun; Abraham Lincoln (US); Lydia Howard Sigourney; Isaac Williams
1866
Sarah Elizabeth Carmichael's Poems
Christina Rossetti's The Prince's Progress
Algernon Charles Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, 1st series, including "Dolores"
John Greenleaf Whittier's Snow-Bound
Births
Barcroft Blake (Australia); Katharine Harris Bradley (half of "Michael Field"); Gelett Burgess (US); Edmund Vance
Cooke (US)
Deaths
Richard Le Gallienne; Francis Sylvester Mahony; Thomas Love Peacock
1867
DOMINION OF CANADA ESTABLISHED ON JULY 1
Matthew Arnold's New Poems, including "Dover Beach"
Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark
Ralph Waldo Emerson's May-Day
Algernon Charles Swinburne's Song of Italy
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy
Births
Ernest Christopher Dowson; Lionel Pigot Johnson; Henry Lawson (Australia); George William Russell ("";
Ireland); David McKee Wright (New Zealand)

Deaths
Charles Baudelaire (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Fitz-Greene Halleck; John Hollin Ridge; Alexander
Smith; Henry Timrod; Nathaniel Parker Willis; Forceythe Willson
1868
Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book, in 12 Books and over 21,000 lines (1868-69)
Frederick James Furnivall founds the Chaucer Society
William Morris' The Earthly Paradise, I, completed in 1870
Births
Edgar Lee Masters (?) (US)
Deaths
Adah Isaacs Monken
1869
W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poems
Alfred lord Tennyson's The Holy Grail and Other Poems, with "The Coming of Arthur," "The Holy Grail," "Pelleas
and Ettarre," and "The Passing of Arthur"
Births
Laurence Binyon; Olivia Bush, ne Ward, later Banks (US); Arthur Sheerly Cripps (Rhodesia); Stephen Leacock;
Charlotte Mary Mew; William Vaughn Moody (US); Edwin Arlington Robinson (US)
Deaths
Charlotte Alington Barnard
1870
Adam Lindsay Gordon's Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poems, including "Jenny" and a fragment of "The House of Life"
mathematician James Joseph Sylvester publishes his The Laws of Verse
Births
Hilaire Belloc (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Christopher John Brennan (Australia); Lord Alfred Bruce
Douglas; Eva Selena Gore-Booth (Ireland); Thomas Sturge Moore
Deaths
David Bates; Charles Dickens; Adam Lindsay Gordon; William Gilmore Simms; James M. Whitfield
1871
Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, including "Jabberwocky"
Edward Lear's Nonsense Songs, including "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat"
Thomas Maitland (i.e., Robert Williams Buchanan) attacks Dante Gabriel Rossetti in "The Fleshly School of
Poetry" in Contemporary Review (Oct.); and Rossetti replies in "The Stealthy School of Criticism" in Athenaeum
(Dec.)
Joaquin Miller's Songs of the Sierras
Algernon Charles Swinburne's Songs before Sunrise
Alfred lord Tennyson's "The Last Tournament"
Walt Whitman's Passage to India
Births
Stephen Crane (US); William Henry Davies; Ralph Edwin Hodgson; James Weldon Johnson (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US) Francis Joseph Sherman (Canada); John Millington Synge (Ireland) Paul Valry (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Alice and Phoebe Cary; Charlotte Elliott; John Frederick William Herschel; Thomas Buchanan Read; James Monroe
Whitfield
1872
Edward Lear's More Nonsense, Rhymes
William Morris' Love is Enough
Christina Rossetti's Sing-Song, a Nursery Rhyme Book
Alfred lord Tennyson's "Gareth and Lynette"
Births
Paul Laurence Dunbar (US); Dr. John McCrae (Canada); John Shaw Nielson (Australia); Leonora Speyer (US)

Deaths
Henry Howard Brownell; Samuel Henry Dickson; Helena Mabel Forrest (Australia); William J. Macquorn Rankine
(Scotland)
1873
William Morris's Love is Enough
Births
Gilbert E. Brooke (Singapore); George Herbert Clarke (Canada); Walter De la Mare; George Cabot Lodge (US);
Alexander L. Posey (US)
Deaths
Caroline Clive; Kasiprasad Ghose (India); Janet Hamilton; Joseph Howe; Frederick Goddard Tuckerman
1874
J. Thomson's "The City of Dreadful Night," published in National Reformer, and later in 1880
Births
Maurice Baring; Mary Ursula Bethell (New Zealand); Gordon Bottomley; A. H. Reginald Buller; G. K. Chesterton;
Robert Frost (US); Stanley de Vere Alexander Julius; Amy Lowell (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Lucy Maud Montgomery (Canada); Josephine Peabody (US); Robert William Service (Canada); Gertrude Stein
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Trumbull Stickney (US)
Deaths
Shirley Brooks; Sydney Thompson Dobell; Brian Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall)
1875
Robert Browning's Aristophane's Apology
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Masque of Pandora
Births
Edmund Clerihew Bentley; Anna Branch (US); Alice Dunbar-Nelson (US; wife of Paul L. Dunbar) Rainer Maria
Rilke (Prague); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Robert Stephen Hawker; Charles Kingsley
1876
Robert Browning's Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper
Brewster Higley's "Home on the Range"
William Morris' The Story of Sigurd the Volsung, and the Fall of the Niblungs
Births
Sarah Cleghorn (US)
Deaths
Charles Heavysege; John Neal; Edmund Hamilton Sears
1877
Coventry Patmore's The Unknown Eros and Other Odes
Edward Lear's Laughable Lyrics
Deaths
Toru Dutt (India), of pulmonary tuberculosis
1878
Algernon Charles Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, 2nd series
Births
Adelaide Crapsey (US); Wilfrid Wilson Gibson; Oliver Joseph St John Gogarty (Ireland); Don Marquis (US); John
Edward Masefield; Carl August Sandburg (US); Edward Thomas
Deaths
William Cullen Bryant; Frank Oliver Call (Canada); Bayard Taylor; George Boyer Vashon; Sarah Helen Whitman
1879
THOMAS EDISON PATENTS THE ELECTRIC LIGHTBULB
Robert Browning's Dramatic Idyls, including "Ivn Ivnovitch"
Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Pirates of Penzance
Alfred lord Tennyson's Ballads and Other Poems
Births
Joseph Campbell (Ireland); Vachel Lindsay (US); Harold Edward Munro; Wallace Stevens (US)

Deaths
Frances Brown (Browne); James Branch Cabell (US); Richard Henry Dana; Sarah Josepha Hale; Rosanna Eleanor
(Mullins) Leprohon; James Clerk Maxwell
1880
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Ultima Thule
Algernon Charles Swinburne's The Heptalogia
Seven Balliol College Oxford members led by H. C. Beeching and J. W. Mackail publish The Masque of B-ll--l,
which is immediately suppressed by authorities
Births
Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm-Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Joseph
Warren Beach (US); Radclyffe Hall; Alfred Noyes (UK); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Lydia Maria Child; Eliza Dunlop; Mary Ann Evans (pseud. "George Eliot"); George Moses Horton ?; Epes Sargent;
Jones Very
1881
Frederick James Furnivall founds the Browning Society
Christina Rossetti's A Pageant, and other Poems
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Ballads and Sonnets, with "The House of Life" complete, and Poems
Oscar Wilde's Poems
Births
Franklin Pierce Adams; Clive Bell; Witter Bynner (US); Lascelles Abercrombie; Padraic Colum (Ireland); Eleanor
Farjeon
Deaths
Thomas Carlyle; Edgar Albert Guest; Josiah Gilbert Holland; Sidney Lanier; Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy
1882
F. J. Child's edition of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, in 5 vols. (1882-98): multiple versions of 305 ballads
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's In the Harbor
Births
Martin Donisthorpe Armstrong; John Drinkwater; James Joyce (Ireland); Mina Loy (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US); A. A. Milne; E.J. Pratt (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Anne Spencer (US); James Stephens
(Ireland)
Deaths
Ralph Waldo Emerson (US); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; William Brighty Rands; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; James
Thomson
1883
Robert Browning's Jocoseria
Emma Lazarus writes "The New Colossus" in aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund (for the New York "Statue of
Liberty")
George Meredith's Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth
Algernon Charles Swinburne's A Century of Roundels
Ella (Wheeler) Wilcox's Poems of Passion
Births
William Baylebridge (Australia); Charles Badger Clark (US); Thomas Ernest Hulme; Geoffrey Anketell Studdert
Kennedy; Marjorie Pickthall (Canada); William Carlos Williams (US)
Deaths
Charles Timothy Brooks; Edward Fitzgerald
1884
Isabella Valency Crawford's Old Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie, and Other Poems
Amy Levy's A Minor Poet and Other Verse
Percy Montrose's "Oh My Darling Clementine"
Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Births
James Elroy Flecker; Edith Alice Mary Harper, aka Anna Wickham; John Collings Squire; Francis Brett Young
Deaths
Charles Stuart Calverley; John Harris; Henry Clay Work
1885

 Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses

Algernon Charles Swinburne's Marino Faliero
Alfred lord Tennyson's Tiresias and Other Poems, and "Balin and Balan"
Births
Charles Richard Allen (New Zealand); Kingsley Fairbridge (Rhodesia); David Herbert Lawrence; Ezra Pound (US);
Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie (US); Andrew John Young (Scotland)
Deaths
George Frederick Cameron; Helen Hunt Jackson; Monckton Milnes; Susanna Moodie; Charles Whitehead
1886
Frederick James Furnivall founds the Shelley Society
Rudyard Kipling's Departmental Ditties
Alfred lord Tennyson's "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After"
Births
Zo Rumbold Akins (US); William Rose Bent (US); Frances Cornford; Hilda Doolittle (US); John Gould Fletcher
(US); John Henry Gray; Joyce Kilmer (US); Siegfried Sassoon; Charles Williams
Deaths
William Barnes; Emily Dickinson; Paul Hamilton Hayne; John Pierpont; Abram Joseph Ryan
1887
Robert Browning's Parleyings with Certain People
George Meredith's Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life
Births
Leonard Bacon (US); Rupert Brooke; Elizabeth Daryush, daughter of Robert Bridges; Sir Julian Sorell Huxley; John
Robinson Jeffers (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Marianne Craig Moore (US); Edwin Muir (Scotland);
Edith Louisa Sitwell; Sir Sacheverell Sitwell
Deaths
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik; Isabella Valency Crawford; Emma Lazarus (US); Edward Rowland Sill
1888
Matthew Arnold's Essays in Criticism, second series
Ernest Henley's A Book of Verses
George Meredith's A Reading of Earth
Ernest Lawrence Thayer's "Casey at the Bat"
Births
T. S. Eliot (US to 1927; then British); Julian Grenfell; Aline Kilmer (US); Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand);
Eugene O'Neill (US); Fernando Pessoa (Portugal) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Crowe Ransom
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Alan Seeger
Deaths
A. Bronson Alcott; Matthew Arnold; Mary Howitt; Edward Lear; John Crowe Ransom
1889
Robert Browning's Asolando
Eugene Field's A Little Book of Western Verse, including "Little Boy Blue" and "Wynkyn, Blynkyn and Nod"
Amy Levy's A London Plane Tree
Walter Pater's Appreciations: With an Essay on Style
Algernon Charles Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, 3rd series
Alfred lord Tennyson's Demeter and Other Poems; he writes "Crossing the Bar" in Oct. as he crossed the Solent
W. B. Yeats' The Wanderings of Oisin
Births
Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova (Ukraine); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) William Hervey Allen (US);
Conrad Aiken (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Claude McKay (US); Arthur David Waley; Dorothy
Wellesley
Deaths
William Allingham; Robert Browning; Eliza Cook; Gerard Manley Hopkins, of typhoid; Amy Levy, by suicide;
Cornelius Mathews; Martin Farquhar Tupper
1890
Emily Dickinson's poems published posthumously
Walter Pater's Appreciations with an Essay on Style
Robert Louis Stevenson's Ballads

Births
Zora Cross (Australia); Ivor Gurney; A. P. Herbert; Boris Pasternak (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Isaac Rosenberg
Deaths
George Henry Boker (US); J. H. Newman; John Boyle O'Reilly (US)
1891
John Davidson's In a Music Hall
William Morris's Poems by the Way
The Rhymers Club gathered at the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street, London, 1891-93, including John Davidson,
Ernest Dowson, W. B. Yeats, and others
James Kenneth Stephen's Lapsus Calami and Quo Musa Tendis
Births
John Peale Bishop (US); Francis Ledwidge (Ireland) Osip Mandelstam (Russia); (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US);
Deaths
John Henry Hopkins, Jr.; James Russell Lowell; Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton; Herman Melville (US)
1892
Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads, including "Gunga Din"
Alfred Tennyson's The Death of Oenone
Births
Richard Aldington; Djuna Barnes (US); Mary Phelps Crosby (US); Archibald MacLeish (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Hugh MacDiarmid (Scotland); Edna St. Vincent Millay (US); Victoria Mary ("Vita") SackvilleWest; J. R. R. Tolkien Csar Vallejo (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Barcroft Boake, by suicide; Maxwell Bodenheim; Josiah D. Canning; Robert P. Coffin (US); Rose Terry Cooke;
William John Cory; Christopher Pearse Cranch; Alfred lord Tennyson; Walt Whitman; John Greenleaf Whittier
1893
SUFFRAGE REFORM IN NEW ZEALAND
Thomas Edward Brown's Old John, and Other Poems
John Davidson's Fleet Street Eclogues
Francis Thompson's Poems, including "The Hound of Heaven"
Births
Gerald William Bullett; Arthur Stanley Bourinot (Canada); Richard Church; Jorge Guilln (Spain); (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US) Thomas MacGreevy (Ireland); Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols; Wilfred Owen;
Dorothy Parker (US); Sir Herbert Edward Read; Ivor Armstrong Richards; Sylvia Townsend Warner
Deaths
Sarah Tittle Bolton; Phillips Brooks; Fanny Kemble; Charles Sangster; John Addington Symonds
1894
Robert Browning's Asolando
John Davidson's "Thirty Bob a Week"
Ben King's Verse (2nd edn., 1898)
Algernon Charles Swinburne's Astrophel and Other Poems
The Yellow Book, published 1894-97
W. B. Yeats' The Land of Heart's Desire
Births
Edward Estlin Cummings, aka e. e. cummings (US); Eileen Duggan (New Zealand); Charles Reznikoff (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US); W. W. E. Ross (Canada); Jean Toomer (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US);
Deaths
John Askham; Robert Fuller Murray, of consumption; Oliver Wendell Holmes; Benjamin Franklin King; Roden
Berkely Wriothesley Noel; Walter Pater; Christina Rossetti, of cancer; Robert Louis Stevenson, of a brain
haemorrhage, in Samoa; Celia Thaxter; Julia Augusta Webster; Constance Fenimore Woolson
1895
Katharine Lee Bates' "America the Beautiful"
Gelett Burgess' "The Purple Cow"
James Whitcomb Riley's "Little Orphant Annie"

Births
Capel Boake (Australia); Lilian Bowes-Lyon; Babette Deutsch (US); Paul Eluard (France); (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US) Robert Graves (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Hillyer (US); David
Michael Jones (Wales); Charles Hamilton Sorley
Deaths
Cecil Frances Alexander; Louisa Sarah Bevington; Eugene Field; Thomas Henry Huxley; Frederick LockerLampson; William Wetmore Story; James Byrne Leicester Warren, baron de Tabley
1896
Alfred Austin made British Poet Laureate
Ernest Christopher Dowson's Verses, including "Non Sum Qualis Eram"
A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad
William Morris publishes the Kelmscott Press edition of Chaucer's works
Andrew Barton (`Banjo') Paterson's The Man from Snowy River
Births
Edmund Charles Blunden; Austin Clarke (Ireland); Nancy Cunard (US); Walter D'arcy Cresswell (New Zealand);
Frederick Robert Higgins (Ireland) Eugenio Montale (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Mathilde Blind; Henry Cuyler Bunner; Thomas Edward Brown; Alexander McLachlan; William Morris; Coventry
Patmore Paul Verlaine, at 52 (Jan. 8); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1897
Edwin Arlington Robinson's The Children of the Night
Births
Louise Bogan (US); Kenneth Burke (US); William Faulkner (US)
Deaths
Isabella Banks; Jean Ingelow; James Joseph Sylvester
1898
Thomas Hardy's Wessex Poems
Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Births
Stephen Vincent Bent (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Louise Bogan (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US) Harindranath Chattopadhyana (India); Govinda Krishna Chettur (India); Philip Albert Child; Horace
Gregory (US); Luis Pals Matos (Puerto Rico); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edgell Rickword;
William Soutar (Scotland)
Deaths
Lewis Carroll; Evan MacColl; Alexander MacGregor Rose (Scotland-Canada)
1899
Stephen Crane's War is Kind
Ernest Dowson's Decorations: in Verse and Prose
W. B. Yeats' The Wind among the Reeds
Births
Lonie Fuller Adams (US; Academy of American Poets Web site); Nol Coward; Hart Crane (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US) Ernest Miller Hemingway (US); Raymond Knister (Canada); Federico Garcia Lorca (Spain;
Academy of American Poets Web site; US); F. R. Scott (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Allen Tate (US);
Constance Woodrow
Deaths
Archibald Lampman; Robert Lowry; Allen Tate (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1900
COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA PROCLAIMED JULY 9
Stephen Crane's The Black Riders and Other Lines
Ernest Henley's For England's Sake
Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch edits The Oxford Book of English Verse.
W. B. Yeats' The Shadowy Waters
Births
Basil Bunting; Robert Desnos (France); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Richard A. W. Hughes (Wales);
Yvor Winters (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Giorgos Seferis (Greece); (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US); Yvor Winters (US)

Deaths
Stephen Crane; Richard Watson Dixon; Ernest Christopher Dowson; Richard Hovey; William Larminie; Melvin
Tolson; Henry Duff Traill; Oscar Wilde
Floruit
Alice Mary Buckton (South Africa);
1901
EDWARD VII (-1910)
Thomas Hardy's Poems of the Past and Present
a small plaque is set on the Statue of Liberty and holds Emma Lazarus' poem, "The New Colossus" (1883)
George Meredith's A Reading of Life
Births
Adrian Hanbury Bell; Ignatius Roy D. Campbell (South Africa); Sterling Brown (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US) Salvatore Quasimodo (Italy); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Laura Riding Jackson
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kenneth Slessor (Australia)
Deaths
Robert Williams Buchanan; Sarah Elizabeth Carmichael; William Ellery Channing; William Cosmo Monkhouse;
Albery Allson Whitman
Floruit
Thomas Craig (South Africa);
1902
Thomas Hardy's Poems of the Past and Present
Walter De la Mare's Songs of Childhood
John Edward Masefield's Salt-Water Ballads, including "I must go down to the sea again"
on June 2, Clara Butt sings a special version of "Land of Hope and Glory," the final chorus from the "Coronation
Ode" composed by Edward Elgar with lyrics by Arthur Christopher Benson
W. B. Yeats' Cathleen Ni Houlihan
Births
Arna Bontemps (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Kay Boyle (US); Kenneth Fearing; Nazim Hikmet
(Greece); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Langston Hughes (US); Ogden Nash (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Michael William Edward Roberts; A. J. Smith (Canada); Stevie Smith (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Philip James Bailey; Aubrey Thomas De Vere; Thomas Dunn English; Lionel Pigot Johnson; Bret Harte; William
McGonagall (ca; Scotland); Albery A. Whitman
Georgians 1903-1920
1903
ORVILLE AND WILBUR WRIGHT MAKE THE FIRST AIR FLIGHT
Thomas Traherne's Poetical Works, published posthumously.
W. B. Yeats' Ideas of Good and Evil
Births
Countee Cullen (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lorine Niedecker (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US); William Charles Franklyn Plomer (South Africa); A. L. Rowse (Cornwall)
Deaths
Isa Craig (Scotland); William Ernest Henley; Charles Godfrey Leland; David Mills (Canada)
1904
Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts, I, followed by II (1906) and III (1908)
Christina Rossetti's Poetical Works, edited by W. M. Rossetti
Algernon Charles Swinburne's A Channel Passage, and Other Poems
W. B. Yeats' The King's Threshold and The Hour-Glass
Births
Harold Acton; A. Alexandra Brown (Canada); Earle Birney (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Arthur R. D.
Fairburn (New Zealand); Cecil Day-Lewis; Richard Eberhart (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Mary
Elizabeth Frye; Pablo Neruda (Chile); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Louis Zukovsky (US)
Deaths
Sir Edwin Arnold; Daniel Decatur Emmett; Adela Florence Nicolson Cory (pseud. "Lawrence Hope"), of suicide;
Trumbull Stickney

1905
ALBERT EINSTEIN PROPOSES HIS SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY
Edmund Clerihew Bentley's Biography for Beginners and the invention of the clerihew
Ernest Dowson's Poems
Duncan Campbell Scott's "The Forsaken"
Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, published posthumously
Births
Brian Coffey (Ireland); Idris Davies (Wales); Frank Marshall Davis (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Geoffrey Grigson; Patrick Kavanagh (Ireland); Stanley Kunitz (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Phyllis
McGinley (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Quennel; Kenneth Rexroth (US); Rex Warner
(Ireland); Robert Penn Warren (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Violet Fane; John Hay; George MacDonald
1906
C. M. Doughty's The Dawn in Britain
Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts, II
Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein
Births
Samuel Beckett; John Betjeman; Bruce Charles (Canada); William Empson, later Sir; Anne Lindbergh (US); Vernon
Watkins (Wales)
Deaths
Ronald Bottrall; Martha Browne; Paul Laurence Dunbar; James McIntyre
1907
James Joyce's Chamber Music
Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer's Prejudice Unveiled
Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Rudyard Kipling
Robert Service's The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses, also titled Songs of a Sourdough, including "The
Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee"
Births
W. H. Auden (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Alec Derwent Hope (Australia); Lincoln Kirstein (US);
John Lehmann; Louis MacNeice (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (US); Mary Coleridge; William Henry Drummond; Francis Miles Finch; John Arthur
Phillips; Francis Thompson; Annie Louisa Walker
1908
John Davidson's Mammon and his Message
Barbara Frietchie, a film directed by J. Stuart Blackton (redone in 1915 and 1924) and based on the story told by
John Greenleaf Whittier in the poem of the same name.
Edith Nesbit's Ballads & Lyrics of Socialism
Ezra Pound's A Lume Spento
Births
Julian Bell; Dennis Devlin (Ireland); Paul Engle (US); Josephine Jacobsen (Canada); (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US) George Oppen (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kathleen Jessie Raine; Theodore Roethke
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Ernest Fenollosa; Alexander L. Posey; James Ryder Randall; Edmund Clarence Steadman
1909
Andrew Cecil Bradley's Oxford Lectures on Poetry
Founding of the Poetry Recital Society (now the Poetry Society)
Thomas Hardy's Time's Laughingstocks
George Meredith's Last Poems
Ezra Pound's Personae
Robert Service's Ballads of a Cheechako
John Millington Synge's Poems and Translations

Births
Charles Brasch (New Zealand); John Glassco (Canada); Robert Garioch (Scotland); A.M. Klein (Canada; Canadian
Poetry Web site); Dorothy Livesay (Canada); Stephen Spender (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
John Davidson; Romesh Chunder Dutt (India); George Essex Evans (Australia); Richard Watson Gilder; William
Reed Huntington; Sarah Orne Jewett; George Cabot Lodge; George Meredith; Stephen Spender (Feb. 28); Algernon
Charles Swinburne; John Millington Synge; John Banister Tabb (US)
Floruit
Edith L. M. King (South Africa);
1910
GEORGE V (-1936)
John Masefield's Ballads and Poems
W. B. Yeats' Poems: Second Series
Births
Norman Alexander MacCaig (Scotland); Charles Olson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Augusta Cooper Bristol; Gilbert E. Brooke (Singapore); James Lister Cuthbertson; Julia Ward Howe; William
Vaughn Moody (US); Arthur Joseph Munby; Mark Twain; Anna Letitia Waring
1911
Britain establishes six copyright libraries (to which copies of all books published in the country must be sent):
Bodleian Library (Oxford); British Library (London); National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh); National Library of
Wales (Aberystwyth); Trinity College (Dublin); and University Library (Cambridge)
Rupert Brooke's Poems 1911
Ezra Pound's Canzoni
Births
Elizabeth Bishop (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) J. V. Cunningham (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US) Allen Curnow (New Zealand); Robert W. V. Gittings; Paul Goodman (US) Sorley Maclean, aka Somhairle
Macgill-Eain (Gailic); Josephine Miles (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Czeslaw Milosz (Lithuania);
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kenneth Patchen (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Mervyn
Laurence Peake
Deaths
Elizabeth Akers Allen; James A. Bland; Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall (India); W. S. Gilbert; Frances Ellen Watkins
1912
Pauline Johnson's Flint and Feather
Sir Edward Marsh's anthology Georgian Poetry 1911-12
H. E. Monro edits The Poetry Review, journal of the Poetry Recital Society
Harriet Munroe founds Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in Chicago
Ezra Pound's Ripostes
Robert Service's Rhymes of a Rolling Stone
Births
Kenneth Allott; Clement Byrne Christesen (Australia); Lawrence George Durrell; Roy Fuller; Christopher Vernon
Hassall; Irving Layton (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Charles Henry Madge; Frank Prince (South Africa);
Anne Ridler; May Sarton (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Andrew Lang (Scotland); Caroline Lindsay; Margaret E. Sangster
Floruit
Francis Ernley Walrond (South Africa);
1913
Robert Bridges made British Poet Laureate
Robert Frost's A Boy's Will
D. H. Lawrence's Love Poems
Vachel Lindsay's General Booth Enters Heaven and Other Poems
Harold Monro founds the Poetry Bookshop in London
Births
George Barker (US); Aime Csaire (Martinique); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Robert Hayden
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Frederick Nims (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);

Muriel Rukeyser (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Delmore Schwartz (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US); Karl Shapiro (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); R. S. Thomas (Wales)
Deaths
Alfred Austin; Edith Emma Cooper; Pauline Johnson; George Johnston (Canada); Joaquin Miller
1914
WAR WORLD I BEGINS (JULY-SEPT.)
Robert Frost's North of Boston
Thomas Hardy's Satires of Circumstance
Des Imagistes: An Anthology, edited by Ezra Pound
Joyce Kilmer's Trees and Other Poems, including "Trees"
Carl Sandburg publishes "Chicago" in the magazine Poetry
W. B. Yeats' Responsibilities
Births
John Berryman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Clifford Dyment (Wales); David Ignatow (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); Randall Jarrell (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Weldon Kees (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US); Laurie Lee; Douglas Lepan (Canada); Octavio Paz (Mexico) (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); Henry Reed; Charles Hubert Sisson; Dylan Thomas (Wales); (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Isodore Gordon Ascher; Ambrose Bierce (?); Katharine Harris Bradley; Madison Cawein; Adelaide Crapsey;
Henrietta Anne Huxley
1915
Richard Aldington's Images 1910-1915
Rupert Brooke's 1914 & Other Poems
Adelaide Crapsey's Verse, and her invention of the quintain, a five-line form
T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" published in Poetry (Chicago)
Thomas Hardy publishes "The Convergence of the Twain," on the sinking of the Titanic
Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology
Ezra Pound's Cathay
Edith Sitwell's The Mother and Other Poems
Births
Mona Brand (Australia); John Cornford; R. A. D. Ford (Canada); Isabella Stewart Gardner (US); Alun Lewis
(Wales); Sydney Goodsir Smith (Scotland); Ruth Stone (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Judith Wright
(Australia)
Deaths
Rupert Brooke; James Elroy Flecker; Julian Grenfell, killed at Ypres; Stuart Merrill; Eric Roach (Tobago); Charles
Hamilton Sorley, killed in WW1 in France
1916
Hilda Doolittle's Sea Garden ("H.D.")
Robert Frost's Mountain Interval, including "Out, Out--"
D. H. Lawrence's Amores
Ezra Pound's Lustra
Carl Sandburg's Chicago Poems
Robert Service's Rhymes of a Red Cross Man
Charles Hamilton Sorley's Marlborough and Other Poems
Births
John Ciardi (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Gavin Buchanan Ewart; David Gascoyne; Eve Merriam
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); P.K. Page (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
H. H. Munro ("Saki"); James Whitcomb Riley; Alan Seeger, in WW1 in France; Arabella Eugenia Smith; John
Todhunter; John Townsend Trowbridge
1917
UNITED STATES ENTERS WORLD WAR I
Sarah Cleghorn's Portraits and Protest
T. S. Eliot's Prufrock and Other Observations
Thomas Hardy's Moments of Vision

 D. H. Lawrence's Look! We have Come Through!

Edna St. Vincent Millay's Renascence and Other Poems
Poetry (Chicago) publishes Ezra Pound's first three cantos
Siegfried Sassoon's The Old Huntsman
Edward Thomas's Poems
W. B. Yeats' The Wild Swans at Coole
Births
Gwendolyn Brooks (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Charles Causley; Robert Conquest; Ruth
Herschberger (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Lowell (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US); James McAuley (Australia); Bertram Warr (Canada)
Deaths
William Hamilton (South Africa), died in Flanders; Thomas Ernest Hulme, killed in WW1; Francis Ledwidge, killed
at Flanders in WW1; Dr. John McCrae; John James Platt; Edward Thomas, killed in WW1 at Arras
1918
Rupert Brooke's Collected Poems
Gerard Manley Hopkins' Poems, edited by Robert Bridges
James Joyce's Exiles
D. H. Lawrence's New Poems
Wilfred Owen composes Dulce et Decorum Est
Siegfried Sassoon's Counter-Attack
Edward Thomas' Last Poems
Arthur David Waley's A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems
W. B. Yeats' Per Amica Silentia Lunae
Awards
Sara Teasdale's Love Songs (1917) wins a special Pulitzer prize
Births
Margaret Avison (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Martin Bell; Louis Dudek (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web
site); Anne Elder (New Zealand); William Sydney Graham (Scotland); John Heath-Stubbs; James Kirkup; Al Purdy
(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); William Jay Smith (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Muriel Spark
(Scotland)
Deaths
Henry Adams; Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm-Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky) (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US) Jane Barlow; William John Courthorpe; Joyce Kilmer, at the second battle of the Marne; Wilfred Owen,
killed at the Sambre canal; Isaac Rosenberg, killed in action
1919
TREATY OF VERSAILLES ENDS WORLD WAR I (JUNE 28)
T. S. Eliot's Poems
Thomas Hardy's Collected Poems
Lieut.-Col. John McCrae's In Flanders Fields and Other Poems, posthumously published
Ezra Pound's Quia Pauper Amavi
Sigfried Sassoon's War Poems
Awards
Carl Sandburg's Cornhuskers (1918), awarded a special Pulitzer prize
Margaret Widdemer's Old Road to Paradise (1918) wins a special Pulitzer prize
Births
Louise Simone Bennett, aka Louise Bennett-Coverley, aka "Miss Lou" (Jamaica); Ruth Dallas (New Zealand);
Madeline DeFrees (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Robert Duncan (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US) Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) William Meredith (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); Jiri Orten (Czechoslovakia); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); May
Swenson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Benjamin Paul Blood; Wilfred Campbell; Sarah Morgan Piatt; Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Moderns 1920-1960
1920
WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE ADOPTED IN THE UNITED STATES

 T. S. Eliot's The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism and Poems
Wilfred Owen's Poems, posthumously published
Ezra Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Carl Sandburg's Smoke and Steel
W. B. Yeats' Michael Robartes and the Dancer
Births
Charles Bukowski (US; Aug. 16); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Paul Celan (Romania); (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US) Amy Clampitt (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Alex Comfort; Rosemary
Dobson (Australia); Keith Castellain Douglas; Dennis Joseph Enright; Barbara Guest (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US) Edwin Morgan (Scotland); Howard Nemerov (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Alexander
Scott (Scotland)
Deaths
Charles Edward Carryl; Louise Imogen Guiney; William Dean Howells; Dollie Radford
1921
Mrs. Dawson-Scott founds PEN, an international Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and
Novelists
T. S. Eliot's describes "dissociation of sensibility" as a poetic splitting of emotion from reason
D. H. Lawrence's Tortoises
Marianne Moore's Poems
John Collings Squire's Collected Parodies
Births
George Mackay Brown; Hayden Carruth (Academy of American Poets Web site; US), James A. Emanuel (US),
Chester Kallman (US); Marie Ponsot (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Raymond Souster (Canada);
Mona Van Duyn (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Richard Wilbur (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US);
Deaths
Francis William Bourdillon; Austin Dobson; Ernest Myers
1922
T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land
Thomas Hardy's Late Lyrics and Earlier
James Weldon Johnson's Book of American Negro Poetry
Claude McKay's Harlem Shadows
Marjorie Pickthall's The Wood Carver's Wife, including "Marching Men"
Carl Sandburg's Slabs of the Sunburnt West
Sir William Walton's composition, Faade, a musical setting of 21 poems by Edith Sitwell
W. B. Yeats' Later Poems
Awards
Edwin Arlington Robinson's Collected Poems (1921) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Kingsley Amis (April 16); Elizabeth Brewster (Canada); John Bruce (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Donald
Davie; Douglas Grant Lochhead (Canada); A. L. Hendricks (Jamaica); Jack Kerouac (US); Sidney Arthur Kilworth
Keyes; Philip Larkin (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Gillespie Magee Jr. (US); Jackson Mac Low
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Eli Mandel (Canada); Vernon Scannell
Deaths
John Kendrick Bangs; Wilfred Scawen Blunt; Henry Lawson (Australia); Alice Meynell, ne Thompson; Josephine
Peabody; Marjorie Pickthall; Walter Alexander Raleigh
1923
e. e. cummings' Tulips and Chimneys
Walter De La Mare's anthology Come Hither: A Collection of Rhymes and Poems for the Young of all Ages
D. H. Lawrence's Birds, Beasts, and Flowers, including "Snake"
John Masefield's Collected Poems
Wallace Steven's Harmonium, including "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" and "The Emperor of IceCream"
Jean Toomer's Cane
W. B. Yeats' The Cat and the Moon, including "Leda and the Swan"

Awards
Edna St. Vincent Millay's The Ballad of the Harp-weaver, A Few Figs (2nd edn.), and Eight Sonnets, all published
in 1922, awarded the Pulitzer Prize this year
Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to W. B. Yeats
Births
Dannie Abse; Milton Acorn (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Ivor Cutler (UK); James Dickey (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US) Alan Dugan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Mari Evans (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US) Cola Franzen (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Anthony Hecht (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US); Daniel Hoffman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Richard Hugo
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Denise Levertov (UK); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
John Logan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); James Schuyler (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US); Louis Simpson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Wislawa Szymborska (Poland); (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Maurice Henry Hewlett; Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand)
1924
John Masefield's Sard Harker
A. A. Milne's When We Were Very Young, for children
Marianne Moore's Observations
Awards
Robert Frost's New Hampshire (1923) awarded the Pulitzer Prize
Vita Sackville-West's The Land, winner of the Hawthornden Prize
Births
Claribel Alegra (Nicaragua); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Yehuda Amichai (Germany); (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US) Elizabeth Bartlett; Patricia Beer; Edgar Bowers (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US) Dennis Brutus (South Africa); Jane Cooper (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Lauris Edmond
(New Zealand); Nissim Ezekiel (India); David Ferry (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Edward Field
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Janet Frame (New Zealand); Michael Hamburger John Haines
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Zbigniew Herbert (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lisel
Mueller (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Sabine Baring-Gould; William Herbert Carruth (US); Thomas William Hodgson Crosland; Kingsley Fairbridge
(South Africa); Edith Nesbit; Woodrow Wilson (US)
1925
T. S. Eliot's Poems 1909-25, including "The Hollow Men"
Thomas Hardy's Human Shows
Ezra Pound's A Draft of XVI Cantos
W. B. Yeats' A Vision
Awards
Edwin Arlington Robinson's The Man Who Died Twice (1924), awarded the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Philip Booth (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Theodore Enslim (US); Ian Hamilton Finlay (Scotland);
Donald Justice (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bob Kaufman (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US); Carolyn Kizer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kenneth Koch (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US); Maxine Kumin (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Gerald Stern (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US); John Wain (March 14); Francis Webb (Australia)
Deaths
Arthur Christopher Benson; Alfred Denis Godley; Amy Lowell (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); George
Washington Cable
1926
Langston Hughes' The Weary Blues, including "The Weary Blues"
Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle
Archibald MacLeish's Streets in the Moon, including "The End of the World"
Dorothy Parker's Enough Rope
Ezra Pound's Personae

Awards
Amy Lowell's What's O'Clock (1925) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
A. R. Ammons (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) James K. Baxter (New Zealand); Robert Bly (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US) Robert Creeley (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Marya Fiamengo
(Canada); Allen Ginsberg (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Phyllis Gotlieb (Canada); Elizabeth Jennings;
Christopher Logue (UK); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); James Merrill (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US); Frank O'Hara (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); James Reaney (Canada); W. D. Snodgrass
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Francis Edward Sparshott (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); David
Wagoner (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Ada Cambridge; Charles Montagu Doughty; Perceval Gibbon (South Africa); Eva Selena Gore-Booth; Rainer Maria
Rilke, (Dec. 29), of leukemia; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Francis Joseph Sherman
1927
Gilbert Keith Chesterton's Collected Poems
T. S. Eliot's "The Journey of the Magi"
James Weldon Johnson's God's Promises
James Joyce's Pomes Penyeach
J. L. Lowes' The Road to Xanadu, a book on the composition of S. T. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"
Don Marquis' archie and mehitabel, a collection of vers libre poems typed by a former-poet-turned-cockroach by
jumping on the keys of a typewriter
A. A. Milne's Now We are Six
W. B. Yeats' October Blast, including "Among School Children"
Awards
Leonora Speyer's Fiddler's Farewell (1926) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
John Ashbery (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Martin Carter (Guyana); Henry Coulette (US); David
Diop (France); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Larry Eigner (US); Galway Kinnell (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); W. S. Merwin (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Richard Murphy
(Ireland); Charles Tomlinson; Phyllis Webb (Canada); James Wright (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Emma Marie Caillard; Charles Mair
1928
T. S. Eliot's For Lancelot Andrewes
Thomas Hardy's Winter Words
Carl Sandburg's Good Morning America
Allen Tate's Mr. Pope and Other Poems, including "Ode to the Confederate Dead"
W. B. Yeats' The Tower
Awards
Edwin Arlington Robinson's Tristram (1927) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Maya Angelou, aka Marguerite Annie Johnson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Bruce Beaver
(Australia); Carol Berg (US); R. F. Brissenden (Australia); Don Coles (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Peter
Davison (US); Irving Feldman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Donald Hall (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Thomas Kinsella (Ireland); Philip Levine (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anne
Sexton (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Alan Sillitoe; Iain Crichton Smith (Scotland); James Wright
(US)
Deaths
Edmund Gosse; Thomas Hardy; Charlotte Mary Mew, by suicide; David McKee Wright (New Zealand) Elinor
Morton Hoyt Wylie
1929
Robert Bridges' The Testament of Beauty
Cecil Day-Lewis' Transitional Poem
D. H. Lawrence's Pansies
I. A. Richards' Practical Criticism: A Study in Literary Judgement
W. B. Yeats' The Winding Stair

Awards
Stephen Vincent Bent's John Brown's Body (1928) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Anne Ellen Beresford; Edward Dorn (US); Ursula A. Fanthorpe; Thom Gunn (UK); (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US); John Hollander (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Richard Howard (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US) X. J. Kennedy (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Patrick Montague; Ned
O'Gorman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Porter; Adrienne Rich (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US); Peter Dale Scott (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Katharine Lee Bates; Bliss Carman; Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy
1930
W. H. Auden's Poems
Samuel Beckett's Whoroscope
Hart Crane's The Bridge
T. S. Eliot's "Ash-Wednesday"
William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity, a book of criticism
John Masefield made British Poet Laureate
Awards
Conrad Aitken's Selected Poems (1929) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Chinua Achebe (Nigeria); Adonis (Academy of American Poets; Syria); Edward Brathwaite (Barbados); (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US) Gregory N. Corso (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Roy Fisher; Ted
Hughes (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Mazisi Kunene (South Africa); Jon Silkin; Gary Snyder
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anthony Thwaite; Derek Walcott (West Indies); (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Robert Bridges (April 21); D. H. Lawrence (March 2), of tuberculosis
1931
John Betjeman's Mount Zion
Edmund Blunden publishes Wilfred Owen's poems
Awards
Robert Frost's Collected Poems (1930) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
P'Bitek (East Africa); Alan Charles Brownjohn; Sonja Dunn (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Ruth Fainlight;
Etheridge Knight (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Levi; Jay Macpherson (Canada); Adrienne Rich
(US); Peter Chad Tigar Tomas Transtrmer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Judith Viorst (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Katharine Hinkson, aka Katharine Tynan (Ireland); Vachel Lindsay, by suicide
1932
W. H. Auden's The Orators
Sterling Brown's Southern Road
T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes and Selected Essays
Thomas Hardy's Collected Poems
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley's The Captive Shrew and other Poems of a Biologist
F. R. Leavis' New Bearings in English Poetry attacks late Victorian and Georgian poetry and praises Ezra Pound, T.
S. Eliot, and other modernists
W. B. Yeats' Words for Music Perhaps
Awards
George Dillon's The Flowering Stone (1931) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Patrick Cullinan (South Africa); Geoffrey Hill (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jenny Joseph; Douglas
Livingstone (South Africa); George Mann MacBeth (Jan. 19); Michael McClure (US); Adrian Mitchell; Christopher
Okigbo (Nigeria); Linda Pastan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sylvia Plath (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Peter William Redgrove John Updike (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Linda M.
Stitt (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)

Deaths
Gamaliel Bradford (US); Christopher Brennan; Hubert N. W. Church; Edmund Vance Cooke (US); Hart Crane, by
suicide; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Raymond Knister, by drowning; Harold Edward Monro;
Clinton Scollard
1933
W. H. Auden's The Dance of Death
Cecil Day-Lewis' The Magnetic Mountain
T. S. Eliot's The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
Gregory Grigson founds New Verse (1933-39)
A. E. Housman's Leslie Stephen Lecture at Cambridge, "The Name and Nature of Poetry"
D. H. Lawrence's Last Poems
Stephen Spender's Poems
W. B. Yeats' Collected Poems
Awards
Archibald MacLeish's Conquistador (1932) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Gerald William Barrax (US); Maureen Duffy; Kevin Ireland (New Zealand); John Edward Mackenzie Lucie-Smith
(Jamaica); Alden Nowlan (Canada); Joe Rosenblatt (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Anne Stevenson; Robert
Sward (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
C. P. Cavafy (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) John Jay Chapman; Henry Van Dyke
1934
The Barretts of Wimpole Street, a film directed by Sidney Franklin, with Norman Shearer as Elizabeth Barrett and
Fredric March as Robert Browning; redone in 1957, less successfully
T. S. Eliot's The Rock
Dylan Thomas' Eighteen Poems, including "The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower"
William Carlos Williams' Collected Poems
W. B. Yeats' The King of the Great Clock Tower
Awards
Robert Hillyer's Collected Verse (1933) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Laurence Whistler wins the King's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Births
Fleur Adock; Jack Ageros (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Amiri Baraka (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US) Ted Berrigan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Wendell Berry (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US) Leonard Cohen (Canada); Kamala Das (India); Diane Di Prima (US); Henry Dumas (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US); M. Travis Lane (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Everett Le Roi Jones, aka
Amiri Baraka; Hettie Jones (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Audre Lorde (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US); David Malouf (Australia); Walt McDonald (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); N. Scott
Momaday (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sonia Sanchez (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Wole Soyinka (Nigeria); Mark Strand (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Jean Blewett; John Henry Gray
1935
T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral
William Empson's Some Versions of Pastoral
George Gershwin's musical Porgy and Bess
Louis MacNeice's Poems
John Masefield's Box of Delights
Wallace Stevens' Ideas of Order
W. B. Yeats' A Full Moon in March
Awards
Audrey Wurdemann's Bright Ambush (1934) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Kofi Awoonor (Ghana); Michael Benedikt (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) George Bowering (Canada);
Richard Brautigan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Roque Dalton (El Salvador); (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US) Clayton Eshleman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Joy Kogawa (Canada;

Canadian Poetry Web site); Pat Lowther (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Mary Oliver (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); David R. Slavitt (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Donald Michael Thomas;
Charles Wright (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jay Wright (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US);
Deaths
Alice Dunbar-Nelson; Helena Mabel Forrest; Fernando Pessoa, (Nov. 30), of cirrhosis of the liver; (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); Lizette Woodworth Reese; Edwin Arlington Robinson; George William Russell; Sir
William Watson
1936
EDWARD VIII (-1936); GEORGE VI (-1952)
W. H. Auden's Look, Stranger!
T. S. Eliot's Collected Poems 1909-35, including Burnet Norton
James Laughlin founds New Directions Press New York), which published many modern poets for the first time
F. R. Leavis's Revaluation rejects Milton, Spenser, and Shelley and praises Donne, Pope, Hopkins, Eliot, and
others
Dorothy Parker's Not So Deep as a Well
Michael Roberts edits The Faber Book of Modern Verse, which praises poets such as W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot
and ignores poets like Robert Frost and Thomas Hardy
Dylan Thomas' Twenty-Five Poems, including "And Death Shall have No Dominion"
W. B. Yeats edits The Oxford Book of Modern Verse
Awards
W. H. Auden wins the King's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Robert Coffin's Strange Holiness (1935) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
George Bowering (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); John Pepper Clark (Nigeria); Lucille Clifton (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); John Robert Colombo (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Jayne Cortez (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US) Sandra M. Gilbert (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Elisabeth Harvor
(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); June Jordan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Clarence Major
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Marge Piercy (US) C. K. Williams (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US); Christopher Wiseman (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); David Young (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US);
Deaths
G. K. Chesterton; Govinda Kristna Chettur; John Cornford, in the Spanish Civil War; Miguel de Unamuno
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US) A. E. Housman; Rudyard Kipling, (Jan. 18); (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Federico Garca Lorca (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Harriet Monroe, of a
cerebral haemorrhage
1937
John Betjeman's Continual Dew, including "The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel"
Iowa Writers' Workshop founded by Paul Engle at the University of Iowa
David Jones' In Parenthesis
Isaac Rosenberg's Collected Works, posthumously published
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit
the United States unofficially appoints Poet Laureates (as Poetry Consultants to the Library of Congress)
Awards
Robert Frost's A Further Range (1936) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Edwin Markham wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Births
Marvin Bell (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) John Fuller (US); Tony Harrison (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Susan Howe (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Glen Sorestad (Canada; Canadian
Poetry Web site); Diane Wakoski (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Eleanor Wilner (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Julian Bell, in the Spanish Civil War; Anna Branch; Ivor Gurney; Don Marquis; Edith Wharton; Constance
Woodrow
1938

 Louis MacNeice's The Earth Compels

Understanding Poetry, edited by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren (appearing thereafter in revised editions
to 1976)
W. B. Yeats' New Poems, including "Lapis Lazuli"
Awards
Marya Zaturenska's Cold Morning Sky (1937) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Michael Harper (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Tony Harrison; Frances Horovitz; Keroapetse
Kgositsile (South Africa); Deena Linett (US); Leslie Allan Murray (Academy of American Poets Web site;
Australia); John Newlove (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Ishmael Reed (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US); Charles Simic (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); George Thaniel (Canada; Canadian Poetry
Web site)
Deaths
Lascelles Abercrombie; James Weldon Johnson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Osip Mandelstam,
(Dec. 7); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sir Henry John Newbolt Csar Vallejo, (April 15); (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US);
1939
AUSTRALIA, GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND NEW ZEALAND DECLARE WAR ON GERMANY (SEPT. 3)
T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Gunga Din, a film directed by George Stevens, based loosely on Rudyard Kipling's poem of the same name
Poetry London, a magazine founded by Dylan Thomas, its editor James Meary Tambimuttu, and others
Dylan Thomas's The Map of Love
Christopher Smart's Rejoice in the Lamb: A Song from Bedlam, posthumously edited by W. F. Stead
W. B. Yeats' Last Poems and Two Plays
Awards
John Gould Fletcher's Selected Poems (1938) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Dick Allen (US); Paula Gunn Allen (US); Margaret Atwood (Academy of American Poets Web site and Canadian
Poetry site; Canada); Frank Bidart (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); bill bissett (Canada; Canadian
Poetry Web site); Siv Cedering (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Stephen Dunn (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US) Seamus Heaney (Ireland); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Michael Longley
(Ireland); Patrick Lane (Canada) Dennis Lee (Academy of American Poets Web site; US; and Canadian Poetry Web
site); Jos Emilio Pacheco (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Stanley Plumly (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Primus St. John (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Quincy Troupe (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); Fred Wah (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Al Young (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Rose Hartwick Thorpe; William Butler Yeats, at 73; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1940
W. H. Auden's Another Time
Sir John Betjeman's Old Lights for New Chancels
T. S. Eliot's East Coker, published in New English Weekly
Dylan Thomas' Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
Awards
Michael Thwaites wins the King's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Mark Van Doren's Collected Poems (1939) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Douglas Barbour (Canada); Joseph Brodsky (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Martha Collins (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US) Fanny Howe (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Angela De Hoyos (US);
Gary Hyland (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Paul Mariani (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David
W. McFadden (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Robert Pinsky (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jack
Prelutsky (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
William Henry Davies; Hamlin Garland; Edwin Markham (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Ernest
Lawrence Thayer
1941

JAPAN ATTACKS PEARL HARBOR (NOV. 27)

W. H. Auden's New Year Letters (or The Double Man)
T. S. Eliot's The Dry Salvages, published in New English Weekly
On September 3, 19-year-old John Gillespie Magee, Jr., flew a high-altitude test flight in a Spitfire V and
afterwards wrote "High Flight" about the experience
John Crowe Ransom's The New Criticism
Awards
Leonard Bacon's Sunderland Capture (1940) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 5)
Births
Billy Collins (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Toi Derricotte (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Stephen Dobyns (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Robert Hass (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US); Lyn Hejinian (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Gwendolyn MacEwen (Canada; Canadian Poetry
web site); Derek Mahon (Ireland), (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Dave Margoshes (Canada; Canadian
Poetry Web site); Simon J. Ortiz (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Rosenfield (Canada; Canadian
Poetry Web site); Lloyd Schwartz (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Stephen Yenser (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); Robert Allen Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan
Deaths
Frederick Robert Higgins; Aline Kilmer; James Joyce; John Gillespie Magee Jr. (US); Jiri Orten (Aug. 30; Academy
of American Poets Web site; US); A. B. (`Banjo') Paterson; Rabindranath Tagore (India)
1942
Earle Birney's David and Other Poems
Walter De la Mare's Collected Poems
T. S. Eliot's Little Gidding, published in New English Weekly
Patrick Kavanagh's The Great Hunger
Alun Lewis' Raiders' Dawn, on a soldier's life in the World War II
Awards
William Rose Bent's The Dust Which is God (1941) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 4)
Births
Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana); Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Mark DeFoe
(US); Douglas Eaglesham Dunn (Scotland); Jennifer Footman (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Marilyn Hacker
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Henderson (US); Haki Madhubuti (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US); William Matthews (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Pat Mora (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Arthur Nortje (South Africa); Sharon Olds (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Henry
Taylor (US); Hugo Williams
Deaths
William Baylebridge; Miguel Hernndez (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lucy Maud Montgomery;
John Straw Nielson
1943
Rodgers and Hammerstein's US musical Oklahoma
Dylan Thomas's New Poems
Awards
Robert Frost's A Witness Tree (1942) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 3)
Births
Bert Almon (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Alfred Corn (US); Emanuel di Pasquale (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US) Tess Gallagher (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Sarah Getty (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US) Louise Glck (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Maureen Harris (Canada; Canadian
Poetry Web site); Michael Ondaatje (Canada); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Michael Palmer
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); James Tate (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bill Zavatsky
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Stephen Vincent Bent, at 44 (March 13) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Laurence Binyon; Sidney A.
K. Keyes, killed in Tunisia in WW2; Radclyffe Hall; Charles G. D. Roberts; William Soutar; Bertram Warr
1944
W. H. Auden's For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio
Sir John Betjeman's New Bats in Old Belfries
Walter De la Mare's Collected Rhymes and Verses

 H. D.'s (Hilda Dolittle's) Trilogy (1944-46), on war-time London

T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets
Awards
Stephen Vincent Bent's Western Star posthumously (1943) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 1)
Edith Henrich of Williams Bay, Wisconsin, wins the first prize of the Poetry Society of America (Jan. 2)
Births
Sandra Alcosser (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Eavan Boland (Ireland); John Donlan (Canada;
Canadian Poetry Web site); Paul Duncan; Susan Ioannou (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Penn Kemp (Canada;
Canadian Poetry Web site); Mary Kinzie (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); BP Nichol (Canada); Pedro
Pietri (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Craig Anthony Raine; John Reibetanz (Canada; Canadian Poetry
Web site); Linda Rogers (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Alice Walker (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US);
Deaths
John Peale Bishop; A. H. Reginald Buller; Olivia Bush; Joseph Campbell; Keith Castellain Douglas, killed in WW2
at Normandy; Stephen Leacock; Alun Lewis, killed in WW2 in Burma; Thomas Sturge Moore; Robert Malise
Bowyer Nichols; Frederick George Scott
1945
THE UNITED STATES DROPS ATOMIC BOMBS ON HIROSHIMA (AUG. 6) AND NAGASAKI (AUG. 9)
Louise Bogen holds the Library of Congress Chair of Poetry (1945-46)
Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes, based on George Crabbe's The Borough
Randall Jarrell's Little Friend, Little Friend, including "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"
Alun Lewis's Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets, posthumously published
Ezra Pound is arrested for treason at Genoa and imprisoned at Pisa by the US army
Awards
W. H. Auden wins the American Academy of Arts and Letters poetry prize (March 28)
Karl Shapiro's V-Letter and Other Poems (1944) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 7)
Births
Terry Blackhawk (US); Marianne Bluger (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Syl Cheyney-Coker (Sierra Leone);
Wendy Cope; W. S. Di Piero (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Annie Dillard (US); Norman Dubie
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Calvin Forbes (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Ellen Jaffe
(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Bernadette Mayer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); J.D.
McClatchy (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Carol Muske-Dukes (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US); Alice Notley (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anne Waldman (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US); Tom Wayman (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Adam Zagajewski (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US);
Deaths
Maurice Baring; Mary Ursula Bethell; Capel Boake; Robert Desnos (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas; Paul Valry (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Charles Williams
1946
W. H. Auden becomes a US citizen
Roy Campbell's Talking Bronco
Walter De la Mare's The Traveller
Henry Reed's A Map of Verona, including "Naming of Parts"
Dylan Thomas' Deaths and Entrances, including "Fern Hill" and "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a
Child in London"
William Carlos Williams' Paterson (1946-58)
Awards
Ralph Hodgson wins the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Achievement to a foreign
poet in the US (April 29)
Pulitzer Prize for poetry goes unawarded this year
Ridgely Torrance wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Births
Robert Bringhurst (Canada); Wanda Coleman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Patrick Friesen (Canada;
Canadian Poetry Web site); Alison Hawthorne Deming (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Larry Levis
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Thomas Lux (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Marilyn
Nelson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Minnie Bruce Pratt (Academy of American Poets Web site;

US); Janis Rapoport (Canada; Canadian Poetry web site); Libby Scheier (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Susan
Wood (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Countee Cullen (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Ernest Rhys; Gertrude Stein, (July 27), of cancer;
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1947
Richard Eberhart's Burr Oaks, including "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment"
Paul Hiebert's Sara Binks, "the sweet songstess of Saskatchewan"
Philip Larkin's A Girl in Winter
Louis MacNeice's The Dark Tower
Stephen Spender's Poems of Dedication
Awards
Robert Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle (1946) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 5)
Births
Ai (Academy of American Poets Web site; US; and Representative Poetry Online); Cheryl Clarke (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US) Jane Kenyon (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Yusef Komunyakaa
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Liz Lochhead (Scotland); Nathaniel Mackey (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Al Moritz (Canada; Representative Poetry Online); Molly Peacock (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US; Canadian Poetry Web site; and Representative Poetry Online); Charlie Smith (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); John Steffler (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Rosemary Sullivan (Canada;
Canadian Poetry Web site; and Representative Poetry Online)
Deaths
Richard Le Gallienne; Duncan Campbell Scott; Anna Wickham
1948
Sir John Betjeman's Selected Poems
Bollingen Prize for Poetry is established
Robert Graves' The White Goddess, a "historical grammar" of poetic myth and inspiration
Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos
Awards
W. H. Auden's The Age of Anxiety (1947) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 3)
Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to T. S. Eliot (Nov. 4)
Percy MacKaye wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Births
Diane Ackerman (US); Anna Couani (Australia); Lorna Crozier (Canada; Canadian Poetry website); R. S. Gwynn
(US); Lawrence Joseph (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Brian Henderson (Canada; Canadian Poetry
Web site); David Lehman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anna Mioduchowska (Canada; Canadian
Poetry Web site); John Oughton (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Sherod Santos (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US); Ntozake Shange, ne Paulette Williams (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Leslie Marmon
Silko (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Heather McHugh (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Frank Stanford (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Waltner-Toews (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web
site)
Deaths
Gordon Bottomley; Albert Goldbarth (US); Claude McKay; Michael William Edward Roberts
1949
Judith Wright's Woman to Man
Awards
Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos wins the Bollingen Prize (Feb. 19)
Peter Viereck's Terror and Decorum (1948) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 2)
Births
John Agard (Guyana); Agha Shahid Ali (India; Academy of American Poets Web site); Michael Blumenthal (US);
David Bottoms (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Marilyn Bowering (Canada); Olga Broumas (US);
Ralph Burns (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Pier Giorgio di Cicco (Canada; Representative Poetry
Online); Victor Hernandez Cruz (Puerto Rico; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bei Dao (China;
Academy of American Poets Web site); Lynn Emanuel (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Alice Major
(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Mary di Michele (Canada); Barbara Ras (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US); Liam Rector (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Christopher Reid (Ireland); David St. John

(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robyn Sarah (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Jane Urquhart
(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Eliot Weinberger (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); C. D. Wright
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
William Hervey Allen; Lilian Bowes-Lyon
The Beat Generation 1950-1970
1950
W. H. Auden's Collected Shorter Poems 1930-1944
Ezra Pound's Seventy Cantos
Awards
The Bollingen Prize for poetry is transferred to Yale University Library because of controversy over the award of
the prize last year to Ezra Pound
Gwendolyn Brooks' Annie Allen (1949) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 1)
e. e. cummings wins the annual Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (Dec. 7)
Wallace Stevens, at 70, wins the Bollingen Prize for his entire body of work (March 27)
William Carlos Williams wins the National Book Award for poetry for his Paterson, Book III, and Selected Poems
Births
Charles Bernstein (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Anne Carson (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US); Frances Chung (US); Theodore Deppe (US); Christopher Dewdney (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);
Carolyn Forch (US; Academy of American Poets Web site; and Representative Poetry Online); Dana Gioia
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Jorie Graham (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Susan L.
Helwig (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Edward Hirsch (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kim
Maltman (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Susan McMaster (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); E. Ethelbert
Miller (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Wayne Scott Ray (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Stan
Rogal (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Kenneth Sherman (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Sandy Shreve
(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Arthur Sze (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Chase Twichell
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Yau (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
William Rose Bent; John Gould Fletcher; Edgar Lee Masters (?); Edna St. Vincent Millay, at 58 (Oct. 19), of a
heart attack; James Stephens
1951
W. H. Auden's Nones
Bad Lord Byron, a film directed by David Macdonald about the Romantic poet
Peter Mason Opie and Iona Margaret Balfour Opie publish The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes
Awards
Carl Sandburg's Complete Poems (1950) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 7)
John Crowe Ransom wins the Bollingen Prize for his entire body of work (Jan. 22)
Wallace Stevens wins the National Book Award for poetry for The Auroras of Autumn (March 6)
Births
Ralph Angel (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Robin Becker (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US); Ron Charach (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Lesley Choyce (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Peter
Christensen (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); James Galvin (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Joy
Harjo (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Garrett Hongo (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Andrew Hudgins (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Johnson (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US); Brigit Pegeen Kelly (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Paul Muldoon (Ireland); Betsy Struthers
(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Robert Priest (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Afaa M. Weaver (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US); Susan Musgrave (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Robert Wrigley (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US); Eddy Yanofsky (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Ray A. Young Bear
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Gelett Burgess
1952
ELIZABETH I
"concrete poetry," a phrase invented in Brazil
David Jones' The Anathemata
Dylan Thomas' Collected Poems 1934-52, including "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night"

Awards
Padraic Colum wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Marianne Moore's Collected Poems (1951) wins the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 11) and the National Book Award for
poetry (Jan. 29)
Andrew Young wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Births
Jimmy Santiago Baca (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Roo Borson (Canada); Judith Ortiz Cofer
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Barry Dempster (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Rita Dove
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sky Gilbert (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Jan Horner (Canada;
Canadian Poetry Web site); Mark Jarman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Carole Langille (Canada;
Canadian Poetry Web site); Dorianne Laux (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Malca Litovitz (Canada;
Canadian Poetry Web site); Andrew Motion (UK); D. C. Reid (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Alberto R?os
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Naomi Shihab Nye (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Carolyn Smart (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Gary Soto (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Susan
Stewart (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Arthur Sheerly Cripps; Paul Eluard, at 56; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) George Santayana
1953
FRANCIS CRICK AND JAMES D. WATSON DISCOVER THE STRUCTURE OF DNA
Sir John Betjeman's A Few Late Chrysanthemums
Louis MacNeice's Autumn Sequel
Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring and The Lord of the Rings
Melvin Tolson's Libretto for the Republic of Liberia
Awards
Elizabeth Bishop wins the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America (Jan. 5)
Padraic Colum wins the Gregory Medal of the Irish Academy of Letters (May 23)
Robert Frost wins the fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (March 3)
Oliver St. John Gogarty, of Ireland, wins the Gold Medal for Service to Poetry from the Poetry Society of America
(Jan. 13)
Archibald MacLeish's Collected Poems (1952) wins the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 10), the National Book Award for
poetry (Jan. 27), and the Pulitzer Prize (May 4)
Marianne Moore wins the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (May 27)
Carl Sandburg wins the Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement from the Poetry Society of America (Jan. 13)
Arthur Waley wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Births
Dionne Brand (Trinidad and Canada); Mark Doty (USA); Rudyard Fearon (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);
Susan Glickman (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Jane Hirshfield (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Phil Hall (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Tony Hoagland (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David
Rivard (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Andrew Schelling (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Tom Sleigh (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Terpstra (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Rhea
Tregebov (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Rosanna Warren (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Franz
Wright (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Hilaire Belloc, at 82 (July 6); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) from burns resulting from a fall into a
fireplace; Helena Jane Coleman; George Herbert Clarke; Idris Davies; Eugene O'Neill; Dylan Thomas, at 39 (Nov.
9), from a cerebral incident; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1954
W. H. Auden's The Shield of Achilles
Sir John Betjeman's A Few Late Chrysanthemums
Robert Creeley founds and edits the Black Mountain Review
Philip Larkin's The Less Deceived
Frank Prince's Soldiers Bathing and Other Poems
Jon Silkin's The Peaceable Kingdom, including "Death of a Son (who died in a mental hospital aged one)"
Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood is broadcast on radio on January 25
Tolkien's The Return of the King

Awards
Oliver St. John Gogarty and Louise Townsend Nicholl win the fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (Jan.
28)
W. H. Auden wins the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 10)
Ernest Hemingway wins the Nobel Prize (Oct. 28)
Theodore Roethke's The Waking: Poems, 1933-53 (1953) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 3)
Births
Kim Addonizio (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Catherine Anderson (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US); Robert Boates (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Lorna Dee Cervantes (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US) Sandra Cisneros (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Cornelius Eady (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US) Linda Hull (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jan Heller Levi (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Thylias Moss (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Erin Mour (Canada) Luis J. Rodr?
guez (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Stephen Sartarelli (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Vijay Seshadri (India); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Leonard Bacon, at 66 (Jan. 1); Maxwell Bodenheim; Francis Brett Young
1955
William Sydney Graham's The Nightfishing
Awards
Leonie Adams, for Poems; a Selection, and Louise Bogen, for Collected Poems 1922-53, jointly win the Bollingen
Prize
e. e. cummings wins the National Book Award for poetry for Poems: 1923-1954
Robert Fitzgerald wins the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America (May 16)
Rolfe Humphries wins the American Academy of Poets fellowship (Dec. 29)
Ruth Pitter wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems (1954) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Marilyn Chin (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Carol Ann Duffy; Margaret Lindsay Holton (Canada;
Canadian Poetry Web site); Kim Morrissey (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Erin Mour (Canada; Canadian
Poetry Web site); Patricia Smith (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Dean Young (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Robert P. Coffin, 62 (Jan. 20); Weldon Kees (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Wallace Stevens
1956
John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet
Alan Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems, a signature of the Beat Generation
Ted Hughes and Silvia Plath marry
Anne Lindbergh's The Unicorn, and Other Poems
Rock and roll music begins
Awards
Edmund Blunden wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Elizabeth Bishop's Poems -- North & South / A Cold Spring (1955) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 7)
William Carlos Williams wins the Fellowship of the American Academy of Poets (Dec. 28)
Births
Henri Cole (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Annie Finch (US; Representative Poetry Online); Forrest
Gander (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Edmund Clerihew Bentley, at 80 (Mar. 30); Walter De la Mare, at 83 (June 22); A. A. Milne, at 74 (Jan. 31); Percy
MacKaye, at 81 (Aug. 31); Dorothy Wellesley
1957
T. S. Eliot's On Poetry and Poets
Ted Hughes' The Hawk in the Rain, including "The Thought Fox"
Jay Macpherson's The Boatman
Ogden Nash's You Can't Get There from Here
Stevie Smith's Not Waving but Drowning

Awards
Conrad Aiken wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Siegfried Sassoon wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Allen Tate wins the Bollingen Prize for his life works (Jan. 13)
Richard Wilbur's Things of this World wins the Pulitzer Prize for 1957 (May 6) as well as the National Book Award
(March 13)
Births
Cyrus Cassells (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Afua Cooper (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);
Martn Espada (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Essex Hemphill (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US); Li-Young Lee (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bruce Meyer (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);
Anthony Molino (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Joseph Warren Beach; Ignatius Roy D. Campbell (South Africa); Charles Badger Clark; Arthur R. D. Fairburn;
Merrill Moore, at 54 (Sept. 20); Christopher Morley, at 66 (March 28); Oliver Joseph St John Gogarty, at 79 (Sept.
22), of a heart attack
1958
Chief Justice Bolitha J. Laws in the U.S. District Court, Washington, D.C., dismisses treason charges against Ezra
Pound (April 18) after psychologists declare him insane
John Betjeman's Collected Poems
Brazilian manifesto for concrete poetry, which focuses on visual and other sensory qualities
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind
Awards
Robinson Jeffers wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
James Reaney's A Suit of Nettles, imitating Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calendar, wins the Governor General's
award in Canada
Robert Penn Warren's Promises: Poems 1954-1956 (1956) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 5)
Births
Jill Battson (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Anne Michaels (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Harold
Rhenisch (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Andrew Waterhouse (Nov. 27)
Deaths
Zo Rumbold Akins, at 72 (Oct. 29); Gerald William Bullett, at 64 (Jan. 3); James Branch Cabell, at 79 (May 5);
Roy Campbell; Alfred Noyes, (June 25); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert W. Service, at 84
(Sept. 11); John Collings Squire
1959
John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet
Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish, written about his mentally-ill mother
Kenneth Koch's Ko, or a Season on Earth
Irving Layton's A Red Carpet for the Sun
Robert Lowell's Life Studies
Awards
Louise Bogan and Leonie Adams wins the Fellowship of the American Academy of Poets (Nov. 4)
Frances Cornford wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Donald B. Justice wins the Lamont Poetry Selection (Nov. 4)
Stanley Kunitz's Selected Poems 1918-1958 (1958) wins the Pulitzer Prize for 1959 (May 4)
Theodore Roethke wins the National Book Award for Words for the Wind (March 3)
Births
Brian P. Cleary (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Laura Lush (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Sarah Cleghorn, at 83 (April 4); Dennis Devlin; Edgar Albert Guest, at 77 (Aug. 5), known as the "poet of the
people"; Luis Pals Matos, of a heart attack; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edwin Muir, at 70 (Jan.
3); Alfred Noyes Carl Phillips (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
The Movement 1960-1980
1960
W. H. Auden's Homage to Clio
Sir John Betjeman's Summoned by Bells

 Ted Hughes' Lupercal

Sylvia Plath's The Colossus
Awards
John Betjeman wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Delmore Schwartz wins the Bollingen Prize for Summer Knowledge (Jan. 10)
W. D. Snodgrass's Heart's Needle (1959) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 2)
Jesse Stuart wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship Demetria Martinez (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US);
Births
George Elliott Clarke (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site; and Representative Poetry Online); Jeffery Donaldson
(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Franklin Pierce Adams (Representative Poetry Online); Frances Cornford; David Diop (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US) Frank S. Flint; Harry Kemp, at 76 (Aug. 8) Boris Pasternak, (May 30), of lung cancer; (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US);
1961
Thom Gunn's My Sad Captains
LeRoi Jones' Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
Awards
Robert Fitzgerald wins the Bollingen Translation Prize for his Homer's Odyssey (Oct. 31), the first time it is
awarded
Horace V. Gregory wins the Fellowship of the American Academy of Poets (Nov. 15)
Randall Jarrell wins the National Book Award for The Woman at the Washington Zoo (March 14)
Phyllis McGinley's Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades (1960) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 1)
Yvor Winters wins the Bollingen Prize for his Collected Poems (Jan. 8)
Births
Gitaujali Badruddin (India); Denise Duhamel (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Steven Heighton
(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Hilda Doolittle ("H.D."), at 75 (Sept. 27), of a heart attack; Kenneth Fearing; Robert Hillyer; Ernest Miller
Hemingway, at 61 (July 2), suicide by gunshot
1962
the Beatles (1962-70)
Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, including settings for Wilfred Owen's poems
Robert Frost's In the Clearing
Thom Gunn's My Sad Captains
Kenneth Koch's Thank You
Anne Sexton's All my Pretty Ones, including "The Truth the Dead Know"
Awards
Alan Dugan's Poems (1961) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 7) and the National Book Award (March 13)
Richard Eberhart, for his life work, and John Hall Wheelock, for The Garden and Other Poems, jointly win the
Bollingen Prize (Jan. 7)
Edward Field wins the American Academy of Poets Lamont Poetry Selection for "Stand Up Friend, with me"
(Nov. 13)
Christopher Fry wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Richard Lattimore's The Frogs, from Aristophanes, and Robert Lowell's Imitations, jointly win the Bollingen
Translation Prize (Nov. 13)
John Crowe Ransom wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Births
Elizabeth Alexander (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Paul Beatty (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US) Stacy Doris (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Julia Kasdorf (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US); Virgil Surez (Cuba); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Richard Aldington; e. e. cummings, at 67 (Sept. 3), of a stroke; William Faulkner, at 64 (July 6), of a heart attack;
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson; Mary Gilmore; Ralph Edwin Hodgson; John Robinson Jeffers (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US);

1963
Philip Hobsbaum and Edward Lucie-Smith edit A Group Anthology
Silvia Plath's The Bell Jar, an autobiographical novel published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas
The Raven, a film directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, and loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's poem
of the same name
Awards
William C. Plomer wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Ezra Pound and Allen Tate win the American Academy of Poets Fellowship (Sept. 4)
William Stafford wins the National Book Award for Traveling through the Dark (March 12)
William Carlos Williams' Pictures from Brueghel (1962) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 6), and he wins the
American Academy of Arts and Letters gold medal (May 22)
Births
Lynn Crosbie (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Claudia Rankine (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Richard Sanger (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Robert Frost, at 88 (Jan. 29); Christopher Vernon Hassall; Louis MacNeice, at 55 (Sept.3), of pneumonia; (Academy
of American Poets Web site; US); Sylvia Plath, by suicide; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Theodore
Roethke (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); William Carlos Williams, at 79 (March 4)
1964
Sir John Betjeman's Ring of Bells
Leonard Cohen's Flowers for Hitler, including "The Only Tourist in Havana Turns his Thoughts Homeward"
Philip Larkin's Whitsun Weddings
Robert Lowell's For the Union Dead
Awards
Elizabeth Bishop wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
John Crowe Ransom wins the National Book Award for Selected Poems (March 10)
Louis Simpson's At the End of the Open Road (1963) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 4)
Rev. Ronald S. Thomas wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Births
Rafael Campo (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Catherine Graham (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);
Kathy Shaidle (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Clive Bell; Zora Cross; E.J. Pratt (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site), at 81 (April 26); Edith Sitwell, at 77 (Dec. 9),
of a heart attack
1965
Bob Dylan's album Highway 61 Revisited
Seamus Heaney's Death of a Naturalist
Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings
Sylvia Plath's Ariel, including "Daddy," published posthumously
Jon Silkin's Nature with Man
Meic Stephens founds Poetry Wales
Melvin Tolson's Harlem Gallery
Awards
John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs (1964) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 3)
Richard Dickey's Buckdancer's Choice wins the National Book Award for Poetry
Philip Larkin wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Marianne Moore wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Theodore Roethke posthumously wins the National Book Award for The Far Field (March 9)
Births
Michael Crummey (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Adeena Karasick (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Jay
Ruzesky (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); R. M. Vaughan (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Joseph Auslander, at 67 (June 22), of a heart attack; Richard Blackmur, at 61 (Feb. 2); Nancy Cunard; T. S. Eliot, at
76 (Jan. 4); Eleanor Farjeon; Randall Jarrell, at 51 (Oct. 14), in a highway accident; (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US) Timothy Liu (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1966

 Basil Bunting's Briggflatts

James Dickey serves as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, 1966-68
Josephine Jacobsen's The Animal Inside
LeRoi Jones' Black Art
Raymond Souster founds the League of Canadian Poets
Anthony Thwaite and John Hollander publish the first anthology of double dactyls, Jiggery Pokery
Awards
Richard Eberhart's Selected Poems 1930-65 (1965) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 2)
Archibald MacLeish and John Berryman win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
William Meredith wins the National Institute of Arts and Letters Loines Award for poetry (March 23)
Births
http://utl2.library.utoronto.ca/www/canpoetry/redhill/index.htmSherman Alexie (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US) Maurice Manning (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Michael Redhill (Canada; Canadian Poetry
Web site); Natasha Trethewey (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Berton Braley, at 83 (Jan. 23);
Raymond Duncan, at 91 (Aug. 14); Georgia Douglas Johnson, at 86 (May 14), of a stroke; Alfred Kreymborg, at 82
(Aug. 14); Mina Loy; Frank O'Hara (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); W. W. E. Ross; Delmore Schwartz,
at 52 (July 11), of a heart attack; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Melvin Tolson; Henry Treese, at 55
(June 10); Arthur David Waley
1967
Margaret Atwood's The Circle Game
the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band (recording)
C. Day-Lewis made British Poet Laureate
Ted Hughes' Wodwo
the Liverpool poets: Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten
Wole Soyinka's Idanre, and Other Poems
Awards
A. R. Ammons wins the Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (May 24)
Charles Causley wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
James Merrill wins the National Book Award for Nights and Days (March 8)
Anne Sexton's Live or Die, to win the Pulitzer Prize for 1967 (May 1)
Mark Van Doren wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Robert Penn Warren wins the Bollingen Prize for his Selected Poems (Feb. 5)
Births
Saskia Hamilton (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Karen Volkman (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US);
Deaths
David C. DeJong, at 62 (Sept. 5); Langston Hughes, at 65 (May 22), of heart failure; Patrick Kavanagh, at 62 (Nov.
30), of pneumonia; Margaret Larkin, at 67 (May 8); John Masefield, at 88 (May 12); Thomas MacGreevy;
Christopher Okigko; Dorothy Parker, at 73 (June 7), of a heart attack; V. Penelope Pelizzon (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Carl Sandburg, at 89 (July 22), of a heart attack; Siegfried Sassoon, at 80 (Sept. 1); Odel
Shepard, at 82 (July 19); Jean Toomer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Vernon Watkins
1968
Cecil Day-Lewis is named British Poet Laureate (Jan. 1)
LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal co-edit Black Fire, an anthology of African-American poetry
Awards
W. H. Auden wins the gold medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (May 28)
Robert Bly's The Light around my Body wins the National Book Award (March 6)
Gwendolyn Brooks succeeds Carl Sandburg as Poet Laureate of Illinois
Robert Graves wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Anthony Hecht's The Hard Hours (1967) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 6) and he also wins the Loines Award (May
28)
Stanley Kunitz wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Births
Nan Cohen (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Michael Teig (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);

Deaths
Witter Bynner, at 86 (June 1); Donald Davidson, at 74 (April 26); George Hill Dillon, at 62 (May 9); Mervyn
Laurence Peake; Salvatore Quasimodo, (June 14); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sir Herbert Edward
Read, at 74 (June 12); Winfield Townley Scott, at 58 (April 28); David Stacton, at 42 (Jan. 20); Yvor Winters, at 67
(Jan. 25); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1969
MOON-WALK and the ARPANET
W. H. Auden's City without Walls
Sir Arthur Bliss' cantata The world is charged with the grandeur of God, from Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnet of
the same first line
Louise Bogan publishes The Blue Estuaries and retires after 38 years as poetry critic for The New Yorker (Dec.)
Lucille Clifton's Good Times, selected as one of the year's best books by The New York Times
Donald Davies' Essex Poems
Seamus Heaney's Door into the Dark
LeRoi Jones's Black Magic: Poetry, 1961-1967
Wole Soyinka's Poems from Prison
Awards
Samuel Beckett awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
Richard Eberhart and Anthony Hecht win the fellowship of the American Academy of Poets (Feb. 13)
George Oppen's Of Being Numerous (1968) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 5)
Karl Shapiro's Selected Poems and John Berryman's His Toy, His Dream, His Rest win the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 5),
and Berryman also wins the National Book Award for his book (March 10)
Stevie Smith wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Births
Stephanie Bolster (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Natalie Wilson (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Davis
McCombs (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Floyd Bell, at 82 (July 23), of a heart ailment; Charles Edison, aka Tom Sleeper, at 78 (July 31), of heart failure;
Rolfe Humphries, at 74 (April 22), of emphysema; Sir Osbert Sitwell, at 76 (May 4), of a heart attack
1970
Margaret Atwood's The Journals of Susanna Moodie
Nol Coward knighted
Ted Hughes' Crow
LeRoi Jones' It's Nation Time
Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
Ezra Pound's Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX to CXVII
Henry Reed's "The Naiming of Parts," published in his The Lessons of War
Tomfoolery, an animated film directed by Joy Batchelor and John Halas, based on the nonsense verse of Edward
Lear (especially "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo") and Lewis Carroll
Awards
Elizabeth Bishop's Complete Poems wins the National Book Award (March 2)
Roy Fuller wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Richard Howard's Untitled Subjects (1969) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 4)
Howard Nemerov wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Births
Brenda Shaughnessy (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); nathalie stephens (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web
site); Kevin Young (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Louise Bogan, at 72 (Feb. 4); Paul Celan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Mary Phelps Crosby; Edsel
Ford, at 41 (Feb. 19); Lorine Niedecker (Dec 31); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Arthur Nortje;
Charles Olson, of cancer; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Dos Passos
1971
Dick Allen's Anon and Various Time Machine Poems
Maya Angelou's Just Give Me a Cool Glass of Water 'Fore I Diie
The Canterbury Tales, a film directed by Pier Paulo Pasolini, providing a soft-pornographic, controversial version
of four tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

 Josephine Jacobsen is named Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress

Right On!, a film directed by Herbert Danska, of poetry recitations with bongo accompaniments on New York city
streets (April 8)
Awards
Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns wins a Whitbread Literary award
W. S. Merwin's The Carrier of Ladders (1970) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 3)
Stephen Spender wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Richard P. Wilbur's Walking to Sleep and Mona Van Duyn's To See, To Take win the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 10); and
Van Duyn also wins the National Book Award for her book (March 2)
James Wright wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Deaths
Clifford Dyment; Lenore G. Marshall, at 72 (Sept. 9); Ogden Nash, at 68 (May 19); Giorgos Seferis (Sept. 21);
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Stevie Smith, of a brain tumor; (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US); Alexander Young
1972
Sir John Betjeman made British Poet Laureate (Oct. 10)
LeRoi Jones' Spirit Reach (as Amiri Imamu Baraka, a Black Muslim)
Mervyn Laurence Peake's A Book of Nonsense
Wole Soyinka's A Shuttle in the Crypt
Awards
Frank O'Hara's Collected Poems and Howard Moss's Selected Poems win the National Book Award (April 11)
W. D. Snodgrass wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
James Wright's Collected Poems (1971) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 1)
Deaths
James K. Baxter; John Berryman, at 57 (Jan. 7), of suicide (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Padraic
Colum, at 90 (Jan. 11); Cecil Day-Lewis, at 68 (May 22); Eileen Duggan; Robert Fletcher, at 87 (Nov. 20), poet of
"Don't Fence Me In"; Paul Goodman, of a heart attack (US); A.M. Klein (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site), at 63
(Aug. 21); Marianne Craig Moore, at 84 (Feb. 5); Kenneth Patchen, at 60 (Jan. 8), of a heart attack; (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); Ezra Pound, at 87 (Nov. 1), of an intestinal blockage; Gladys Schmitt, 63 (Oct. 3);
Mark Van Doren, 78 (Dec. 10); Andrew John Young
1973
Derek Walcott's Another Life
Awards
A. R. Ammons's Collected Poems wins the National Book Award (April 10)
John Heath-Stubbs wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Maxine Kumin's Up Country: Poems of New England (1972) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 7)
James Merrill wins the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 7)
W. S. Merwin wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Births
Ben Doyle (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sonnet L'Abb (Canada; Representative Poetry Online);
Paul Vermeersch (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Conrad Aiken (Academy of American Poets Web site; US), at 84 (Aug. 17), of a heart attack; Kenneth Allott; W. H.
Auden, at 66 (Sept. 28); Arna Bontemps, at 70 (June 4), of a heart attack (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US) Charles Brasch; Nol Coward, at 73 (March 26), of a heart attack; Ramon Guthrie, at 77 (Nov. 22); Pablo
Neruda, (Sept 23), of leukemia; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); J. R. R. Tolkien, at 81 (Sept. 2);
Francis Webb
1974
David Jones' The Sleeping Lord
Philip Larkin's High Windows
Bruce Springsteen's song "Born to Run"
Awards
Lonie Adams wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Allen Ginsberg's The Fall of America and Adrienne Rich's Diving into the Wreck win the National Book Award
(April 18)

 Ted Hughes wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Robert T. S. Lowell Jr.'s The Dolphin (1973) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 7)
Deaths
Edmund Clarke Blunden; Jacob Bronowski, at 66 (Aug. 22); Austin Clarke; Julian Davis, at 72 (Sept. 6), the goldminer poet of "Cripple Creek Poem Poke" David Jones, at 78 (Oct. 28); Ogden Nash, (May 19); (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); Tyler Parker, 70 (July 24); John Crowe Ransom, at 86 (July 5); (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); Eric Roach; Anne Sexton, at 45 (Oct. 4), of suicide; (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US);
1975
Maya Angelou's Oh Pray My Wings are Gonna Fit Me Well
Kenneth Koch's The Art of Love
Stevie Smith's Collected Poems
Awards
Robert Hayden wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Gary Snyder's Turtle Island wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 5)
Births
Tony Tost (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Deaths
Roque Dalton, executed; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Lloyd Frankenberg, at 67 (March 12); Sir
Julian Sorell Huxley; Chester Kallman, at 53 (Jan. 18); Pat Lowther (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site), murdered
by her husband, Roy Lowther; Sir Francis Meynell, at 84 (July 10); Sydney Goodsir Smith; Stanley Young, at 69
(March 22)
1976
Marya Fiamengo's In Praise of Older Women
Thom Gunn's Jack Straw's Castle
Two poems written in 1965 by Mao Tse-tung just before the cultural revolution, including "Two Birds: A
Dialogue," are published on Jan. 1 (Facts on File 36 [1976]: 9)
Derek Walcott's Sea Grapes
Awards
John Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 3) and the National Book
Award (April 19)
Alex Derwent Hope wins the Robert Frost Award for Poetry
J. V. Cunningham wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Deaths
Benjamin Britten; Anne Elder; Richard A. W. Hughes; James McAuley; Charles Reznikoff, (Jan. 22); (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); Louis Sissman, at 48 (March 10), of Hodgkin's disease (March 10)
1977
Samuel Beckett's Collected Poems in English and French
Joseph Brodsky's A Part of Speech
Donald Davies' To Scorch or Freeze
Gay News is successfully prosecuted for blasphemy and libel for publishing James Kirkup's "The love that dares to
speak its name"
Ted Hughes' Gaudete
Awards
Louise Coxe wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Richard Eberhardt's Collected Poems wins the National Book Award (April 11)
James Merrill's Divine Comedies (1976) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 18)
Norman Nicholson wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Deaths
Gitaujali Badruddin; Katherine C. Biddle, at 87 (Dec. 30); Elizabeth Daryush; Robert Lowell, at 60 (Sept. 12), of a
heart attack; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Louis Untermeyer, at 92 (Dec. 18)
1978
Maya Angelou's And Still I Rise
Craig Raine's The Onion, Memory
Stevie, a film directed by Robert Enders, based on Hugh Whitemore's play about the poet Stevie Smith, played here
by Glenda Jackson

Awards
Josephine Miles wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Howard Nemerov's Collected Poems (1977) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 17) and the National Book Award (April
10)
Deaths
Faith Baldwin, at 84 (March 19); Martin Bell; Gilbert Highet, at 71 (Jan. 20), of cancer; Hugh MacDiarmid; Phyllis
McGinley, at 72 (Feb. 22) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Frank Stanford, at 29 (June 3), by suicide;
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sylvia Townsend Warner; John Hall Wheelock, at 91 (March 22);
Louis Zukofsky, at 74 (May 12)
1979
one copy of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789) fetches 70,000 in London
Ted Hughes' Moor Town
Craig Raine's A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
Derek Walcott's The Star-Apple Kingdom
Awards
James Merrill's Mirabell: Books of Numbers wins the National Book Award (April 23)
Mark Strand and May Swenson win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Robert Penn Warren's Now and Then wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 16)
Deaths
Elizabeth Bishop, at 68 (Oct. 6), from an aneurism; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) I. A. Richards;
Allen Tate, at 79 (Feb. 9), of emphysema; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
Postmoderns 19801980
Derek Walcott's The Star-Apple Kingdom
Awards
Donald Justice's Selected Poems wins the Pulitzer Prize for 1980 (April 14)
Mona Van Duyn wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Deaths
Robert Hayden, at 66 (Feb. 25), of a heart ailment; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Julia Reynolds, at
98 (Nov. 28); Muriel Rukeyser, at 66 (Feb. 12), of a heart attack; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); A. J.
M. Smith; James Wright, at 52 (March 25), of cancer; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1981
Awards
Kenneth Burke wins the National Medal for Literature (April 30)
Dennis J. Enright wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Richard Hugo wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Howard Nemerov and May Swenson win the Pulitzer Prize
James Schuyler's The Morning of the Poem wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 13)
Deaths
Isabella Stewart Gardner; John Glassco; Robert Garioch; Eugenio Montale, at 85; (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US); Helen Steiner Rice, at 80 (April 23), greeting-card poet
1982
Margaret Avison's Winter Sun / The Dumbfounding: Poems 1940-66
Gitaujali Badruddin's Poems of Gitaujali, posthumously published
Louise Simone Bennett's Selected Poems
Dylan Thomas was posthumously honoured by a floor plaque in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey (March 1)
Awards
John Ashbery and John Frederick Nims win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
William Bronk receives the American Book Award for Life Supports (April 27)
Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems (1981), introduced by Ted Hughes, wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 12)
Deaths
Dyuna Barnes, at 90 (June 18); P'Bitek; Babette Deutsch, at 87 (Nov. 13); Horace Gregory, at 83 (March 11);
Richard Hugo, at 58 (Oct. 22), of leukemia; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Archibald MacLeish, at 89
(April 20); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kenneth Rexroth, at 76 (June 6), of a heart ailment; Edgell
Rickword; Maria Zaturenska, at 80 (Jan. 19), of heart failure
1983

 Maya Angelou's Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?

Elizabeth Bishop's Collected Poems 1927-1979, published posthumously
Amy Clampitt's Kingfisher
Awards
Philip Booth and James Schuyler win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Anthony E. Hecht and John Hollander win the Bollingen Prize
Galway Kinnell's Selected Poems wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 18)
Kinnell's collection and Charles Wright's Country Music win the American Book Award (April 28)
Deaths
Ted Berrigan, at 48 (July 4) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Edwin Denby, at 80 (July 12), by suicide;
R. Buckminster Fuller, at 87 (July 1), of a heart attack; Frances Horovitz; Alden Nolan; Robert Payne, at 71 (Feb.
18)
1984
Seamus Heaney's Station Island
Philip Larkin turns down the British Poet Laureateship, and Ted Hughes becomes Poet Laureate (Dec. 19)
Craig Raine's Rich
Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" and "Glory Days"
Awards
Robert Francis and Richard Lattimore win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Mary Oliver's American Primitive wins the Pulitzer Prize for 1984 (April 16)
Deaths
Sir John Betjeman, at 77 (May 19), of Parkinson's disease; Richard Brautigan (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US) Sir William Empson, at 77 (April 15); Jorge Guilln (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Richard
Lattimore, at 77 (Feb. 26), of cancer; George Oppen, at 76 (July 2), of Alzheimer's disease; (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Hal Porter, at 73 (Sept. 29); Jesse Stewart, at 76 (Feb. 17), of a stroke
1985
Amy Clampitt's What the Light was Like
Douglas Eaglesham Dunn's Elegies
Robert Hayden's Collected Poems, posthumously published
Stephen Spender's Collected Poems 1947-80
Awards
John Ashbury and Fred Chappell win the Bollingen Prize for their life's works (Jan. 15)
Amy Clampitt and Maxime Kumin win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Douglas Dunn's Elegies wins a Whitbread literary award (Jan. 28)
Carolyn Kizer's Yin wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 24)
Norman MacCaig wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Sharon Olds's The Dead and the Living wins the National Book Critics Circle award (Jan. 14)
Deaths
Basil Bunting, at 85 (April 17); J. V. Cunningham (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Robert Graves, at 90;
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Stuart Fitzgerald, at 74 (Jan. 16); Robert Graves, at 90 (Dec. 7);
Geoffrey Grigson, at 80 (Nov. 25); Alfred Hayes, at 74 (Aug. 14), of menengitis, poet of the labor song "Joe Hill";
Philip Larkin, at 63 (Dec. 2), of throat cancer; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Josephine Miles, of
pneumonia; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Nathan, at 91 (May 25), of kidney failure; F. R.
Scott (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site), at 85 (Jan. 31);
1986
Wendy Cope's Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis becomes a best-seller
the Pforzheimer Collection of the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his circle is donated to the New York Public
Library (Dec. 18)
US President Ronald Reagan demonstrates the educational value of memorization by reciting lines from Robert
Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee" (March 4)
Robert Penn Warren, first US Poet Laureate, 1986-87 (Jan. 26)
Awards
Afrikaner poet Breten Breytenbach wins the Rapport Prize in South Africa (April 12)
Irving Feldman and Howard Moss win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Louise Gluck's The Triumph of Achilles wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (Feb. 17)
Peter Reading's Stet wins the Whitbread Poetry Award

 Adrienne Rich wins the Lilly Prize (June 6);

Wole Soyinka wins the Nobel Prize (Oct. 16)
Henry Taylor's The Flying Change wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 17)
Deaths
Milton Acorn, at 63 (Aug. 20), of heart disease and diabetes (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); John Ciardi, at 69
(March 30), of a heart attack; Elizabeth Coatsworth, at 93 (Aug. 31); William Sydney Graham; Brion Gysin, at 70
(July 13); Bob Kaufman, at 60 (Jan. 12), of emphysema; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Henry Reed,
at 72 (Dec. 8); Elizabeth Smart, at 72 (March); Rex Warner
1987
Maya Angelou's Now Sheba Sings the Song
U.S. Supreme Court Justices William J. Brennan, Jr., Harry A. Blackman, and John Paul Stevens rule unanimously
that Shakespeare's sonnets were written by Shakespeare, not by Edward de Vere, earl of Oxford (Sept. 25)
Richard Wilbur, US Poet Laureate, 1987-88 (April 17)
Jay Wright's Selected Poems
Awards
Joseph Brodsky (a US citizen from 1972) wins the Nobel Prize for literature (Oct. 22)
Alfred Corn and Josephine Jacobsen win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry (April 16)
Seamus Heaney's The Haw Lantern wins the Whitbread literary award
Edward Hirsch's Wild Gratitude wins the National Book Critics Circle award (Jan. 12)
Stanley Kunitz wins the Bollingen Prize (Feb. 10)
Philip Levine wins the Lilly Prize (July 4)
Deaths
Richard Lehmann; John Logan, (Nov. 6); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Gwendolyn MacEwen
(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Howard Moss, poetry editor of The New Yorker, at 65 (Sept. 16), from a heart
attack; Glenway Wescott, at 85 (Feb. 22), from a stroke
1988
Joseph Brodsky's To Urania
Philip Larkin's Collected Poems
Howard Nemerov becomes US Poet Laureate (May 16)
Awards
Anthony Hecht wins the Lilly Prize (June 3)
Donald Justice wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
William Meredith's Partial Accounts wins the Pulitzer Prize (March 31)
Peter Porter's The Automatic Oracle wins a Whitbread literary award
Derek Walcott wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
C. K. Williams' Flesh and Blood wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (Jan. 11)
Deaths
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Sterling Brown; Henry
Coulette; Robert Duncan, at 69 (Feb. 3), of a heart attack; John Clellon Holmes, at 62 (March 30), of cancer; Miguel
Pinero, at 41 (June 16), of cirrhosis of the liver; Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, at 90 (Oct. 1)
1989
The Dead Poets Society, a film directed by Peter Weir, with a screenplay by Tom Schulman and excerpts from
many traditional poets, ending with the title and opening line of Walt Whitman's lament on the death of Abraham
Lincoln, "O Captain! My Captain!"
Edward Dorn's The Gunslinger
Rita Dove's Grace Notes
My Left Foot, a film directed by Jim Sheridan about Christy Brown, the Irish poet, and based on his autobiography
Howard Nemerov, US Poet Laureate, 1988-90
Awards
Edgar Bowers is awarded the Bollingen Prize for For Louis Pasteur
Allen Curnow wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Michael Donaghy's Shibboleth wins the Whitbread Poetry Award
Donald Hall's The One Day wins the National Book Critics Circle award (July 9)
Richard Howard wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship

 Mona Van Duyn wins the Lilly Prize (June 2)

Richard Wilbur's New and Collected Poems wins the Pulitzer Prize (March 30)
Deaths
Richard Willard Armour, at 82 (Feb. 28), of Parkinson's disease; Sterling Allen Brown, at 87 (Jan. 13), of leukemia;
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US) May Swenson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert
Penn Warren, at 84 (Sept. 15), of cancer; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1990
Maya Angelou's I Shall Not be Moved
Allen Ginsberg is crowned Majelis King in Prague on May Day
Mark Strand, US Poet Laureate, 1990-91 (May 25)
Awards
Hayden Carruth wins the Lilly Prize (June 1)
Paul Durcan's Daddy, Daddy wins the Whitbread Poetry Prize
Rodney Jones' Transparent Gestures wins the National Book Critics Circle award (Feb. 12)
Sorley Maclean wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
William Meredith wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
James Merrill's The Inner Room wins the Library of Congress Bobbitt National Prize (Oct. 26)
Charles Simic's The World Doesn't End wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 12)
Deaths
Frances Chung (US); Lawrence George Durrell
1991
W. H. Auden's Collected Poems
Joseph Brodsky, US Poet Laureate, 1991-92 (May 10)
Wendy Cope's best-selling Serious Concerns
Awards
Amy Gerstler wins the National Book Critics Circle Award
Laura Riding Jackson's The Word "Women" and other Related Writings and Donald Justice's New and Selected
Poems win the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 30)
Philip Levine's What Work Is wins the National Book Award (Nov. 20)
Michael Longley's Gorse Fires wins the Whitbread Poetry Prize
J. D. McClatchy wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Mona Van Duyn's Near Changes wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 9)
David Wagoner wins the Lilly Prize
Judith Wright wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Deaths
George Barker; R. F. Brissenden; Paul Engle; Roy Fuller; Etheridge Knight (Academy of American Poets Web site;
US); Howard Nemerov, at 71 (July 5), of cancer; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Laura Riding
Jackson, at 90 (Sept. 2), of a heart attack; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); James Schuyler, at 67 (April
12), of a stroke (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); George Thaniel (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
1992
Mona Van Duyn, US Poet Laureate, 1992-93 (June 14)
Awards
John Ashbery wins the Lilly Prize
Albert Goldbarth's Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (Feb. 14)
Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats, about AIDS, wins the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection (UK
and Eire)
Tony Harrison's The Gaze of the Gorgon wins the Whitbread Poetry Prize
Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems wins the National Book Award for poetry (Nov. 18)
Adrienne Rich wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
James Tate's Selected Poems (1991) wins the Pulitzer Prize for 1992 (April 7)
Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Derek Walcott (Oct. 8)
Deaths
Kenneth Burke; George MacBeth (Feb. 16), of motor neuron disease; Robert W. V. Gittings; Audre Lorde (aka
Gamba Adisa; Nov. 17), of liver cancer; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Eve Merriam, (ne
Moskowitz; April 11), of cancer; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1993

 Maya Angelou reads "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of President William Clinton (Jan. 20)
Bound by Honor, a film directed by Taylor Hackford, based on the life of poet Jimmy Santiaga Baca, who co-wrote
the screenplay
Geoffrey Dearmer's A Pilgrim's Song: Selected Poems
Rita Dove, 7th US Poet Laureate, 1993-95 (May 18)
Poetic Justice, a film directed by John Singleton: Maya Angelou's poetry is featured, and she appears as Aunt June
Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia"
Awards
A. R. Ammons' Garbage wins the National Book Award for poetry
Hayden Carruth's Collected Poems 1946-1991 wins the National Book Critics Circle poetry award (Feb. 28)
Ciaran Carson's First Language wins the T. S. Eliot Prize
Carol Ann Duffy's Mean Time wins the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection and the Whitbread Poetry Prize
Louise Glck's The Wild Iris (1992) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 13)
Stanley Kunitz wins the National Medal of Arts (Oct. 7)
Kathleen Raine wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Gerald Stern wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Mark Strand's Dark Harbor wins the Bollingen Prize
Charles Wright wins the Lilly Poetry Prize (May 4)
Deaths
William Stafford, (Aug. 28); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1994
Four Weddings and a Funeral, a film directed by Mike Newell in which W. H. Auden's "Stop all the clocks" is read
as a eulogy
Craig Raine's History: The Home Movie
John Wain's Hungry Generations
Awards
Gwendolyn Brooks wins the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American
Letters for her Annie Allen (Nov. 16)
Mark Doty's My Alexandria wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (Feb. 13)
James Fenton's Out of Danger wins the Whitbread Poetry Prize
David Ferry wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Donald Hall wins the Lilly Poetry Prize
Alan Jenkins' Harm wins the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection
Yusef Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular (1993) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 12)
W. S. Merwin wins the Academy of American Poets Tanning Prize (Sept. 29)
Paul Muldoon's The Annals of Chile wins the T. S. Eliot Prize
James Tate's Worshipful Company of Fletchers wins the National Book Award for poetry (Nov. 16)
Richard Wilbur wins the National Medal of Arts (Oct. 14)
Deaths
Charles Bukowski, of leukemia (March 9); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Amy Clampitt, (Sept. 10),
of ovarian cancer; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lynda Hull, in an automobile accident; (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); Peter Quennel; John Wain (May 24), of a stroke
1995
Robert Hass is named US Poet Laureate 1995-97 (May 7)
Jim Mays, head of English at University College, Dublin, announces that 300 poems by S. T. Coleridge have been
discovered (Feb. 16)
Sotheby's uncovers four Walt Whitman notebooks (Feb. 17)
Awards
A. R. Ammons wins the Lilly Poetry Prize (April 26)
Gwendolyn Brooks wins the National Medal of Arts (Oct. 5)
Mark Doty's My Alexandria wins the T. S. Eliot Prize
Seamus Heaney wins the Nobel Prize for Literature (Oct. 5)
Kenneth Koch's One Train wins the Bollingen Prize (Feb. 6)
Stanley Kunitz's Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected wins the National Book Award for poetry
Denise Levertov wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Philip Levine's Simple Truth (1994) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 18)

 Sean O'Brien's Ghost Train wins the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection
Bernard O'Donoghue's Gunpowder wins the Whitbread Poetry Prize
Mark Rudman's Rider wins the National Book Critics Circle poetry award (Feb. 26)
James Tate wins the Academy of American Poets Tanning Prize (Sept. 19)
Deaths
Kingsley Amis, at 73 (Oct. 22), after an accidental fall; Earle Birney (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Donald
Davie, at 73 (Sept. 18), of cancer; Essex Hemphill, from complications relating to AIDS; (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Helene Johnson (July 7), after osteoporosis; Jane Kenyon, (April), of leukemia; (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US); James Merrill, at 68 (Feb. 6), of a heart attack; (Academy of American Poets Web
site; US); May Sarton, at 83 (July 16), of breast cancer; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sir Stephen
Spender, at 86 (July 16), of a heart ailment; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1996
Dead Man, a film directed by Jim Jarmusch about a man named William Blake who goes on a trek through the
western US and is taken by a character named Nobody as the resurrected Romantic poet
Awards
Hayden Carruth's Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey: Poems 1991-1995 wins the National Book Award (Nov. 6)
John Fuller's Stones and Fires wins the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection
Jorie Graham's The Dream of the Unified Field (1995) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 9)
Seamus Heaney's The Spirit Level wins the Whitbread Prize (Jan. 21, 1997)
William Matthews' Time & Money wins the National Book Critics Circle poetry award (March 21)
Sir Les Murray's Subhuman Redneck Poems wins the T. S. Eliot Prize
Peter Redgrove wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Adrienne Rich wins the Tanning Prize
Gerald Stern wins the Lilly Prize
Jay Wright wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Deaths
Joseph A. Brodsky (Jan. 28), of a heart attack; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) George M. Brown, at 74
(April 13); Geoffrey Dearmer, at 103 (Aug. 18); Larry Levis, at 49, of a heart attack; (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US); Mina Loy (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
1997
Miller Williams of Arkansas reads his poem, "Of History and Hope," at the inauguration of President Clinton (Jan.
20)
Regeneration, a film based on Pat Barker's novel of the same name, about the World War I poets Wilfred Owen and
Siegfried Sassoon
Wilde, a film directed by Brian Gilbert, on the life of Oscar Wilde
Robert Pinsky becomes new US Poet Laureate, 1997-2000
Awards
John Haines wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Robert Hass' Sun under Wood wins the Book Critics Circle Award (March 18)
Anthony Hecht wins the Tanning Prize
Ted Hughes wins the Whitbread Award for Tales from Ovid (Jan. 27, 1998)
William Matthew wins the Lilly Prize
William Meredith's Effort at Speech wins the National Book Award (Nov. 18)
Lisel Mueller's Alive Together: New and Selected Poems (1996) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 7)
Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers without End wins the Bollingen Prize
Deaths
James Dickey, at 73 (Jan. 19); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Allen Ginsberg, at 70, of liver cancer
(April 5); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) David Ignatow (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
James Laughlin, at 83 (Nov. 12); Laurie Lee, at 82 (May 15); Denise Levertov, at 74, of lymphoma (Dec. 20);
(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); William Matthews, at 55, (Nov. 12), of a heart attack; (Academy of
American Poets Web site; US);
1998
Awards
A. R. Ammons wins the Tanning Prize
Paul Farley's The Boy from the Chemist is here to see you, wins the Forward award for the best first collection of
poems

 Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters, a volume of poems addressed to his late first wife, Sylvia Plath, wins the Whitbread
Award (Jan. 27, 1999)
W. S. Merwin wins the Lilly Prize (July 8)
Sir Les Murray wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Charles Simic wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Gerald Stern's This Time wins the National Book Award (Nov. 18) and the National Book Critics Circle Award
Charles Wright wins the Pulitzer Prize for Black Zodiac (April 14)
Deaths
John Malcolm Brinnin; Aimee Joan Grunberger, of cancer, at 44; Zbigniew Herbert (Academy of American Poets
Web site; US); Ted Hughes, of cancer (Oct. 28); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Janet Lewis (Dec. 1);
Hilda Morley, at 81; Octavio Paz, Mexican poet (April 19); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Martin
Seymour-Smith (July 1)
1999
Ernest Hemingway's oldest son John donates his father's Three Stories and Ten Poems to the Library of Congress
Andrew Motion becomes British Poet Laureate (May 19)
Robert Pinsky becomes US Poet Laureate (April 27)
Scotland's Parliament opened with the singing of Robert Burns' "A Man's a Man For A'That," instead of "God Save
The Queen" (July 1)
Awards
Ai's Vice: New and Selected Poems wins the National Book Award (Nov. 17)
Gwendolyn Brooks wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Robert Creeley's So There and Life & Death win the Bollingen Prize (Feb. 9)
Seamus Heaney wins the Whitbread Prize for his translation of Beowulf (Jan. 2000)
Maxime Kumin wins the Lilly Prize
Jackson MacLow wins the Tanning Prize
Edwin Morgan wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Marie Ponsot wins the Book Critics Circle Award for The Bird Catcher (March 8)
Adrienne Rich wins the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award (Oct.)
Mark Strand wins the Pulitzer Prize for Blizzard of One (April 12)
Deaths
Patricia Beer, at 79; Edward Dorn, 70 (Dec.); Ida Affleck Graves, 97 (Dec.) Moondog, street poet (aka Louis T.
Hardin), 83 (Sept. 8); John Frederick Nims, (Jan. 13); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Shel Silverstein,
66 (May 9); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
2000
Stanley Kunitz is appointed US Poet Laureate (July 31)
Janice Mirikitani succeeds Lawrence Ferlinghetti as San Francisco's Poet Laureate (Feb.)
National Poetry Day in Great Britain (Oct. 4): 300 school children at the Royal Festival Hall and 4,000 persons
nationwide performed Patience Agbabi's "Word," a new Guinness World Record for simultaneous mass performance
of a poem
Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat" named Britain's favourite children's poem in a BBC Poll (Oct. 3)
Justin Trudeau quotes from Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods" at the funeral of his father, former Canadian Prime
Minister Pierre Trudeau (Oct. 3)
Spike Milligan is made an honorary knight
Awards
John Burnside's The Asylum Dance wins the Whitbread Poetry Award
Anne Carson and Lucia Perillo win MacArthur Fellowships (June 13)
Lucille Clifton's Blessing the Book wins the National Book Award
Carl Dennis wins the Lilly Prize (April 17)
Lyn Hejinian wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Ruth Stone's Ordinary Words wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (March 13)
Hugo Williams's Billy's Rain wins the T. S. Eliot Prize (Jan.)
C. K. Williams' Repair wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 10)
Maya Angelou wins the National Medal of Arts (Dec. 14)
Frank Bidart wins the Wallace Stevens Award, formerly the Tanning Prize (Dec. 15)
David Ferry's Of No Country I Know wins the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry (Dec. 18)

Deaths
Yehuda Amichai (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edgar Bowers, at 75, of non-Hodgkins' lymphoma;
Gwendolyn Brooks (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Bruce (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);
Roland Flint, at 66 (Jan. 2), of cancer; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Alex Derwent Hope (July 13); Al
Purdy (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site), at 81 (April 21), of lung cancer; Libby Scheier (Canada; Canadian
Poetry Web site); Karl Shapiro, at 86 (May 14); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); R. S. Thomas, 87
(Sept. 25); Judith Wright, 85, of a heart attack; William Scammell (Nov. 29); Gwendolyn Brooks, 83 (Dec. 3), of
cancer; Adrian Henry (Dec. 20)
2001
Billy Collins is named US Poet Laureate (June 20), starting October
(Canadian) P. K. Page's poem "Planet Earth" was selected by Marilyn Hacker to be read during the last week in
March as part of the United Nations project, "Dialogue among Civilizations through Poetry," at the U.N. building in
New York, Mount Everest, the West Philippines Sea, and Antarctica. Over 200 poetry readings in 150 cities
worldwide took place that week.
Professor John Basinger, 67, performed, from memory, John Milton's Paradise Lost at Three Rivers CommunityTechnical College in Norwich, Connecticutt, on Dec. 7-9, a feat that took 18 hours
Awards
Judy Jordan's Carolina Ghost Woods wins the Book Critics Circle Award (March 12)
Stephen Dunn's Different Hours wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (April 16)
Yusef Komunyakaa wins the Lilly Prize (April 26)
Alan Dugan's "Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry" wins the National Book Award for Poetry (Nov.)
Anne Carson's Men in the Off Hours wins the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Anne Carson's The Beauty of the Husband wins the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry Awarded by the Poetry Book
Society
Births
A. R. Ammons (Feb. 25; Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Gregory N. Corso, 70 (Jan. 17; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Agha Shahid Ali (Academy of American
Poets Web site; US); Louis Dudek (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Anne Ridler, 89 (Oct. 16) Andrew
Waterhouse (Oct. 20); Elizabeth Jennings (Oct. 26); Pamela Gillilan (Oct. 26); David Gascoyne (Nov. 25)
2002
Awards
Christian Bk's Eunoia wins the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Alice Notley's Disobedience wins the International Griffin Poetry Prize
Alice Oswald's Dart wins the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry awarded by the Poetry Book Society
Carl Dennis's Practical Gods wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry
Deaths
June Jordan, of breast cancer (June 14); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kenneth Koch, (July 6), of
leukemia; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);
2003
Awards
Paul Muldoon's Moy Sand and Gravel wins the International Griffin Poetry Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry
Margaret Avison's Concrete and Wild Carrot wins the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Don Paterson's Landing Light wins T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Book Society
Deaths
Alan Dugan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Newlove (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
2004
Ted Kooser is appointed US Poet Laureate on August 12
Awards
August Kleinzahler's The Strange Hours Travelers Keep wins the International Griffin Poetry Prize
Anne Simpson's Loop wins the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Franz Wright's Walking to Martha's Vineyard wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry
George Szirtes' Reel wins T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Book Society
Deaths
Pedro Pietri, March 3 (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
2005

Awards
Charles Simic's Selected Poems 1963-2003 wins the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize
Roo Borson's Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida wins the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Ted Kooser's Delights and Shadows wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry
Carol Ann Duffy's Rapture wins T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Book Society
Deaths
Stanley Kunitz, May 14, in Manhattan; Malca Litovitz (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
2006
Awards
Sylvia Legris's Nerve Squall wins the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize for 2006, and the 2006 Pat Lowther Memorial
Award
Kamau Brathwaite's Born to Slow Horses wins the 2006 International Griffin Poetry Prize
Claudia Emerson's Late Wife wins the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for poetry
Deaths
Louise Bennett-Coverley (Jamaica), "Miss Lou", folk poet, July 26; Ivor Cutler (UK), March 3; Patricia Goedicke
(US), of pneumonia, July 14; Irving Layton, Jan. 4, of Alzheimer's disease (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);
Trinidad Snchez Jr. (US); Muriel Spark (Scotland)
Your comments and questions are welcomed.
All contents copyright RPO Editors, Department of English, and University of Toronto Press 1994-2007
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