1846 in poetry

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

Events

 * c. May 22 – The Brontë sisters' first published work, the collection Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, is issued in London. It sells just two copies in the first year.
 * September 12 – Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning marry privately in St Marylebone Parish Church, London, departing for the continent a week later.

United Kingdom

 * William Barnes, Poems, Partly of Rural Life
 * Robert Bell, ed., Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England
 * Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, and Anne Brontë, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell
 * Robert Browning, Luria: a Tragedy; a Soul's Tragedy, volume 8 of Bells and Pomegranates (see also Bells and Pomegranates 1841, 1842, 1843, 1844, and 1845)
 * John Burgon, Petra: a poem, to which a few short poems are now added
 * Henry Cary, Lives of English Poets, from Johnson to Kirke White, verse first published in the London Magazine from 1821 to 1824
 * Thomas Hood, Poems
 * John Keble, Lyra Innocentium: Thoughts in verse on Christian children
 * Edward Lear, writing under the pen name "Derry Down Derry", A Book of Nonsense, also illustrated by Lear; expanded in 1855, 1861, 1863 etc. (See also, Nonsense Songs 1870, dated 1871, More Nonsense 1872, Laughable Lyrics 1877
 * Carolina, Lady Nairne (died 1845), Lays from Strathern, Scottish

United States

 * Oliver Wendell Holmes:
 * Urania: A Rhymed Lesson
 * Poems
 * Elijah Kellogg, Spartacus to the Gladiators
 * Henry Morford, The Rest of Don Juan
 * John Godfrey Saxe, Progress: A Satirical Poem
 * William Gilmore Simms, Areytos, or Songs of the South
 * John Greenleaf Whittier, Voices of Freedom

Works published in other languages

 * Aleardo Aleardi, Lettere a Maria ("Letters to Mary"), Italy
 * Gottfried Keller, Gedichte

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * April 4 – Comte de Lautréamont, pen name of Isidore Lucien Ducasse (died 1870), French
 * April 24 – Marcus Clarke (died 1881), Australian novelist and poet
 * May 25 – Naim Frashëri (died 1900), Albanian
 * August 17 – Alexander MacGregor Rose (died 1898), Scottish-born Canadian
 * August 28 – G. H. Gibson, "Ironbark" (died 1921), Australian
 * September 26 – Mary Hannay Foott (died 1918), Australian
 * October 9 – Holger Drachmann (died 1908), Danish
 * October 27 – Katherine Harris Bradley, half of "Michael Field" (died 1914), English

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 7 – John Hookham Frere (born 1769), English
 * February 14 (probable date) – Standish O'Grady (born before 1793), Irish-Canadian poet and priest
 * April 11 – Barron Field (born 1786), Anglo-Australian
 * May 14 – Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton (born 1759), American
 * November 23 – George Darley (born 1795), Irish-born