1790 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or French).

Events

 * March - Jens Baggesen returns to Denmark. After ridiculing his fellow Danes in his poem, Holger the Dane and leaving the country for Germany, Baggensen proceeded to Switzerland and became a good friend of the Swiss poet Johan Kaspar Lavater and a leader in the Sturm und Drang movement.
 * May 21 - Thomas Warton dies. He is succeeded as Poet Laureate of Great Britain by writer and police magistrate Henry James Pye (who has just retired as a Member of Parliament) following William Hayley's refusal of the office.

United Kingdom

 * Joanna Baillie, published anonymously, Poems
 * William Blake, published anonymously, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, illuminated book with 27 relief-etched plates
 * Robert Burns, "Tam o' Shanter" Scottish, written
 * Thomas Edwards (Twm o'r Nant), Gardd o Gerddi, Welsh
 * George Ellis, ed., Specimens of the Early English Poets
 * Anne Francis, anonymously published "by a lady", then reissued this year under the author's name, Miscellaneous Poems
 * Robert Merry, The Laurel of Liberty
 * William Sotheby, Poems
 * Ann Yearsley, Stanzas of Woe

United States

 * Peter Markoe, the Reconciliation; or, The Triumph of Nature, an unproduced opera in verse
 * Sarah Wentworth Morton, published under the name "Philenia, a Lady of Boston", Ouabi; or, The Virtues of Nature: An Indian Tale in Four Cantos, narrative poem portraying a love triangle between an Indian chief, his wife and an aristocrat from Europe; set to music in 1793 by Hans Graham; the poem inspired Louis James Bacon to write the play The American Indian in 1795
 * Mercy Otis Warren, Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous, the first work printed under the author's own name; includes verse tragedies; many of the poems promote republican virtues and show women as moral authorities

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 1 – James Wills (died 1868), Irish writer and poet
 * January 10 – Anders Abraham Grafström (died 1870), Swedish historian, priest and poet
 * July 8 – Fitz-Greene Halleck (died 1867), American
 * October 21 – Alphonse de Lamartine (died 1869), French writer, poet and politician
 * date unknown – Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq (died 1854), Urdu poet

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * May 21 – Thomas Warton (born 1728), English literary historian, critic and Poet Laureate of Great Britain
 * July 25 – William Livingston (born 1723), English Colonial American public official, poet and writer
 * August 22 – Andrew Macdonald (born 1757), Scottish clergyman, poet and playwright