— Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
January 10—Robert Browning, 32, and Elizabeth Barrett, 38, begin their correspondence when she receives a note declaring "I love you" from Browning, a little-known poet whose verses she had praised in her poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship"; on May 20 they meet for the first time. She begins writing her Sonnets from the Portuguese.
April - Nathaniel Hawthorne first publishes "P.'s Correspondence", a short story and example of alternative history in which many poets and other writers and political figures who have died in real life (such as John Keats, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron) are described as still living, and vice versa. The story, which appears in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, is later included in Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse (1846).
W. E. Aytoun, writing under the pen name "Bon Gaultier", and Theodore Martin, The Book of Ballads, parodies
Philip James Bailey, Festus (2nd, enlarged, edn, with authorship acknowledged)
Bernard Barton, Household Verses
Horatius Bonar, The Bible Hymn-Book
Robert Browning, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, (Volume 7 of Bells and Pomegranates) including "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix", "The Lost Leader", and "The Flight of the Duchess"; reprinted in Poems 1849; see also Bells and Pomegranates 1841, 1842, 1843, 1844, and 1846
Thomas Cooper, The Purgatory of Suicides, written in Stafford Gaol
Louisa Costello, editor, The Rose Garden of Persia, translations from Persian, anthology
Frederick William Faber, The Rosary, and Other Poems
George Gilfillan, A Gallery of Literary Portraits, first series, including biographical sketches of William Hazlitt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas De Quincey, Walter Savage Landor, Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and Robert Southey; second series 1850, third series 1854
Robert Southey, Oliver Newman: A New-England tale, unfinished, also includes other poems; published posthumously
William Wordsworth, The Poems of William Wordsworth, Poet Laureate, has further revisions to poems and some published for the first time; see also Miscellaneous Poems 1820, Poetical Works 1827, Poetical Works 1857, and Poetical Works, Centenary Edition, 1870
Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney, "Little Things", first published in a Sunday school paper, Gospel Teacher (renamed, Myrtle)
Thomas Holley Chivers, The Lost Pleiad, and Other Poems
Rufus Wilmot Griswold, The Poets and Poetry of England, anthology
Henry Beck Hirst, The Coming of the Mammoth
George Moses Horton, The Poetical Works of George M.