1821 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1821.

Events

August 4 – Atkinson & Alexander publish The Saturday Evening Post for the first time as a weekly newspaper in the United States.
James Ballantyne begins publishing his Novelist's Library in Edinburgh edited by Sir Walter Scott.^[1]
Percy Bysshe Shelley's Queen Mab: a philosophical poem (1813) is distributed by an unauthorized publisher in London leading to prosecution by the Society for the Prevention of Vice.
In the first known obscenity case in the United States, a Massachusetts court outlaws the John Cleland novel Fanny Hill (1748). The publisher, Peter Holmes, is convicted for printing a "lewd and obscene" novel.
At about this date Sunthorn Phu is imprisoned and begins his epic poem Phra Aphai Mani.

Lord Byron
- Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice (published & performed)
- Sardanapalus: a tragedy; The Two Foscari: a tragedy; Cain: a mystery (published together)
Alexandre-Vincent Pineux Duval – Le Faux Bonhomme
Aleksander Fredro – Pan Geldhab ("Mr. Gelhab")
Franz Grillparzer – Das goldene Vliess ("The Golden Fleece", trilogy)
Heinrich von Kleist (died 1811) – The Prince of Homburg (Prinz Friedrich von Homburg oder die Schlacht bei Fehrbellin, first performance; completed 1810)

Owen Chase – Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex
George Grote – Statement of the Question of Parliamentary Reform
William Hazlitt – Table-Talk
Georg Konrad Horst – Zauber-Bibliothek (1821-1826)
James Mill – Elements of Political Economy
John Roberton – Kalogynomia, or the Laws of Female Beauty
Robert Southey – Life of Cromwell

March 19 – Richard Francis Burton, English polymath (died 1890)
April 9 – Charles Baudelaire, French poet (died 1867)
May 8 – Charlotte Maria Tucker, English children's writer (died 1893)
June 30 – William Hepworth Dixon, English historian, traveler and journal editor (died 1879)
October 30 – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist (died 1881)
November 28 – Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, Russian poet, writer and critic (died 1877)
September 21– Aurora Ljungstedt, horror writer (died 1908)
December 6 – Dora Greenwell, English poet (died 1882)
December 12 – Gustave Flaubert, French novelist (died 1880)

Keats's grave in Rome