1811 in poetry

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

Events

 * March 25 &mdash; The University of Oxford expels the first-year undergraduate Percy Bysshe Shelley after he and Thomas Jefferson Hogg refuse to answer questions about The Necessity of Atheism, a pamphlet they published anonymously. Earlier this year, Shelley, as "A Gentleman of the University of Oxford", published in London Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things, containing a 172-line anti-monarchical and anti-war poem dedicated to Harriet Westbrook, a work subsequently lost until 2006.
 * November 21 &mdash; German poet Heinrich von Kleist shoots his terminally-ill lover Henriette Vogel and then himself, on the shore of the Kleiner Wannsee near Potsdam.

Lord Byron

 * July 14–17 &mdash; Lord Byron arrives in London after an absence from England of a little more than two years on his Continental tour.
 * October 16 &mdash; Byron receives a challenge from the poet Thomas Moore who had been offended by parts of English Bards.
 * November 4 &mdash; Byron meets Thomas Campbell and Moore at the home of Samuel Rogers, where the company discusses literary topics.

United Kingdom

 * Robert Bloomfield, The Banks of Wye
 * Richard Cumberland, Retrospection
 * Charles Lamb, Prince Dorus; or, Flattery Put Out of Countenance, published anonymously; for children
 * Mary Russell Mitford, Christina, the Maid of the South Seas
 * William Peebles, Burnomania: the celebrity of Robert Burns considered in a Discourse addressed to all real Christians of every Denomination
 * Anna Maria Porter, Ballad Romances, and Other Poems
 * Sir Walter Scott, The Vision of Don Roderick
 * Mary Tighe, Psyche, with Other Poems
 * John Wolcot, Carlton House Fete; or, The Disappointed Bard

United States

 * Hugh Henry Brackenridge, An Epistle to Walter Scott, Pittsburgh: Franklin Head Printing-office
 * William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis
 * John Cole, editor, The Minstrel: A Collection of Celebrated Songs Set to Music
 * Sumner Lincoln Fairfield, The Poems and Prose Writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield, two volumes, Philadelphia: Printed for the Proprietor
 * Susanna Haswell Rowson, editor, A Present For Young Ladies; Containing Poems, Dialogues, Addresses, &c. &c. &c, As Recited by the Pupils of Mrs. Rowson's Academy, at the Annual Exhibitions, (Boston: Published by John West & Co.
 * Samuel Woodworth, 1785-1842 [1811], Beasts at Law, or Zoologian Jurisprudence; A Poem, Satirical, Allegorical, and Moral, In Three Cantos, Translated from the Arabic of Sampfilius Philoerin, Z. Y. X. W. &c. &c. Whose Fables Have Made So Much Noise in the East, and Whose Fame Has Eclipsed That of Aesop. With Notes and Annotations New York: J. Harmer & Co.

Other

 * Bernhard Severin Ingemann, Digte ("Poems"), Denmark

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * February 1 – Arthur Hallam (died 1833), English poet, best known as the subject of In Memoriam A.H.H. a long poem by his best friend, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
 * October 19 – Andreas Munch (died 1884), Norwegian poet
 * date not known – Andreas Laskaratos Ανδρέας Λασκαράτος (died 1901), Greek satirical poet and writer

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 8 – Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (born 1733), German writer, publisher, critic, author of satirical novels, regional historian, and a key figure of the Enlightenment in Berlin
 * March 12 – Judah Leib Ben-Ze'ev (born 1764), Galician Hebrew philologist, lexicographer, Biblical scholar and poet
 * April 7 – Dositej Obradović (born 1742), Serbian author, philosopher, linguist, polyglot and the first minister of education of Serbia
 * August 28 – John Leyden (born 1775), Scottish indologist and poet
 * September 14 – James Grahame (born 1765), Scottish poet, lawyer and clergyman
 * September 30 – Thomas Percy (born 1729), English bishop of Dromore, ballad collector and poet
 * November 13 – Robert Treat Paine, Jr. (born 1773), American poet and editor; son of Robert Treat Paine, signer of the Declaration of Independence