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

Events

• June 5 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, living at Nether Stowey in the Quantock Hills, renews his friendship with William Wordsworth and Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy, who take a house nearby.^[1]
• August – The British Home Office sends an agent to Nether Stowey to investigate Coleridge and Wordsworth who are suspected of being French spies.^[2]
• October – Coleridge composes Kubla Khan in an opium-induced dream and writes down only a fragment of it on waking.
• November – Wordsworth suggests to Coleridge the theme of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner on a walk in the Quantocks.^[3]
• William Blake illustrates Edward Young's Night-Thoughts.

Works published

United Kingdom

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poems ... Second Edition^[4]
• William Drennan, The Wake of William Orr^[5]
• George Dyer, The Poet's Fate^[4]
• Alexander Pope, The Works of Alexander Pope, edited by Joseph Warton, posthumous^[4]
• Charlotte Smith, Elegaic Sonnets, and Other Poems, Volume 2, sequel to Elegaic Sonnets 1784^[4]
• Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins and Sir Thomas Edlyne Tomlins, Tributes of Affection by a Lady and her Brother
• Mary Wollstonecraft, "On Poetry, and Our Relish for the Beauties of Nature", Monthly Magazine (April 1797), criticism

United States

• Sarah Wentworth Morton, publishing under the name "Philenia", Beacon Hill: A Local Poem, Historic and Descriptive, on the American Revolution; conventional verse in neoclassical form^[6]
• Robert Treat Paine Jr. "The Ruling Passion", the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa poem for this year^[7]

Works wrongly dated this year

• Robert Southey, Poems, actually published in 1796, although the title page states "1797"^[4]

Births

Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• January 10 – Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (died 1848), German
• March 27 – Alfred de Vigny (died 1863), French poet, playwright and novelist
• August 30 – Mary Shelley, née Godwin (died 1851), English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, travel writer and poet
• October 13 – William Motherwell (died 1835), Scottish
• December 13 – Heinrich Heine (died 1856), German
• December 27 – Mirza Ghalib (died 1869), Indian classical Urdu and Persian poet
• Also:
  • James Wallis Eastburn (died 1819), American^[7]
  • George Moses Horton (died 1883), African-American

Deaths

Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• March 18 – Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter (born 1746), German poet and dramatist
• April 7 – William Mason (born 1724), English poet, editor and gardener
• June 28 – George Keate (born 1729), English poet and writer
• Also:
  • Joseph Friedrich Engelschall (born 1739), German poet
  • Wang Zhenyi (born 1768), Chinese Qing dynasty female poet and astronomer
  • Yuan Mei (born 1716), Chinese Qing dynasty poet, scholar, artist and gastronome
  • Molla Panah Vagif (born 1717), Azerbaijani poet