1772 in poetry

Events

• February 29, March 14 and April 18 - Susanna Wheatley attempts to get subscribers for a book of poems by her slave, Phillis Wheatley, by advertising in the Boston Censor, but the effort fails, largely because not enough readers believe that a black person has enough talent to write poetry.
• September 12 - The Göttinger Hainbund of German poets is formed at a midnight ritual in an oaken grove.
• October 4 - Because many white people in colonial Massachusetts find it hard to believe that a black woman could have enough talent to write poetry, Phillis Wheatley is brought before a panel of eminent intellectuals in Boston who are gathered together to question her. The group includes John Erving, Reverend Charles Chauncey, John Hancock, Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, his lieutenant governor, Andrew Oliver, the Rev. Mather Byles, Joseph Green, the Rev. Samuel Cooper, James Bowdoin and Samuel Mather. They conclude she has in fact written the poems ascribed to her and sign an ation which is added to the preface to her book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral published in Aldgate, London in 1773 after printers in Boston refuse to publish the text.

  Works published

Colonial America">American poetry">Colonial America

• Hugh Henry Brackenridge, with Philip Freneau, "A Poem on the Rising Glory of America"
• Timothy Dwight IV, "A Dissertation on the History, Eloquence, and Poetry of the Bible", criticism
• Nathaniel Evans, Poems on Several Occasions, with Some Other Compositions
• Philip Freneau, The American Village. To Which Are Added Several Other Original Pieces in Verse
• Francis Hopkinson, "Dirtilla"
• John Trumbull, The Progress of Dulness, published in three parts from this year to 1773

  United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• Mark Akenside, The Poems of Mark Akenside, posthumous
• Thomas Chatterton, The Execution of Sir Charles Bawdin, posthumously and anonymously published; attributed in another 1772 edition to "Thomas Rowlie", a fictional author invented by Chatterton
• Charles Jenner, Town Eclogues
• Sir William Jones, Poems from Asiatic Languages, published anonymously
• William Kenrick, Love in the Suds: A Town Eclogue
• William Mason, The English Garden, Volume 1
• Musae Seatonianae: A complete collection of the Cambridge prize poems, from the first institution of that premium by the Rev. Mr. Tho. Seaton, in 1750, to the present time. To which are added two poems, likewise written for the prize, Mr. Bally and Mr Scott, anthology of poems that won the annual Seatonian Prize at Cambridge University
• Christopher Smart, Hymns, for the Amusement of Children, published anonymously
• George Alexander Stevens, Songs, Comic and Satyrical

  Other

• Solomon Gessner, Idyllen, a second volume, Switzerland, German-language
• Martin Wieland, Golden Mirror, Germany

  Births

• March 10 - Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, German poet, literary critic, philosopher and philologist
• May 2 - Novalis , German Romantic writer, poet, philosopher, mystic and civil engineer
• September 27 - Sándor Kisfaludy, Hungarian Romantic lyric poet
• October 21 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English Romantic poet, literary critic and philosopher, a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets
• William Cliffton, American
• Hồ Xuân Hương, Vietnamese woman poet born at the end of the Lê Dynasty

  Deaths

• March 31 - Johann Jakob Thill, German poet
• July 26 - James Graeme, Scottish poet
• October 10 - William Wilkie, Scottish poet