1820 in literature

Events

• January 16 – Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery by "Northamptonshire peasant poet" John Clare is published in England by John Taylor.
• April 22 – Walter Scott is created 1st baronet of Abbotsford in the County of Roxburgh in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom.
• September – Poet John Keats, suffering from tuberculosis, leaves London to take up residence in the house on the Spanish Steps in Rome where he will die in 1821.
• November 20 – An 80-ton sperm whale attacks the Essex, a whaleship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, 2,000 miles off the western coast of South America. Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick is in part inspired by this story.

• Robert Chambers's publishing company publishes The Songs of Robert Burns.
• Thomas Kendall has the first book printed in the Māori language, A korao no New Zealand; or, the New Zealander's first book; being an attempt to compose some lessons for the instruction of the natives, published in Sydney, Australia.
• First translation of the Old English epic poem Beowulf into a modern language, Danish, Bjovulfs Drape, made by N. F. S. Grundtvig.
• The Cambridge Apostles, an intellectual discussion group, is established at the University of Cambridge in England.

  New books

Fiction

• James Fenimore Cooper – Precaution
• Thomas Gaspey – Forty Years Ago
• Robert Huish – Castle of Nielo
• Francis Lathom – Italian Mysteries
• Charles Maturin – Melmoth the Wanderer
• Regina Marie Roche – The Munster Cottage Boy
• Sir Walter Scott
• *Ivanhoe
• *The Abbot
• *The Monastery
• Louisa Stanhope – The Crusaders
• Rosalia St. Clair – The Highland Castle, and the Lowland Cottage

  Children

• Maria Hack
• *English Stories, illustrating some of the most interesting events and characters between the Accession of Alfred and the Death of John
• *English Stories. Second series, between the Accession of Henry the Third and the Death of Henry the Sixth
• Mary Shelley – Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot

  Drama

• William Thomas Moncrieff – The Lear of Private Life
• Percy Bysshe Shelley – Prometheus Unbound

  Poetry

• Robert Burns – The Songs of Robert Burns
• John Clare – Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery
• John Keats
• *The Eve of St. Agnes
• *Lamia and Other Poems
• Alphonse de Lamartine – Méditations poétiques
• Adam Mickiewicz – Ode to Youth
• Nguyễn Du – The Tale of Kieu
• Aleksandr Pushkin – Ruslan and Ludmila
• Percy Bysshe Shelley – To a Skylark

  Non-fiction

• Thomas Brown – Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind
• Howard Douglas – A Treatise on Naval Gunnery
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Elements of the Philosophy of Right
• John George Hoffman – Pow-Wows; or, Long Lost Friend
• Claude François Lallemand – Recherches anatomico-pathologiques sur l'encéphale et ses dépendances
• Charles Lamb – Essays of Elia
• Thomas Malthus – Principles of Political Economy
• Charles Mills – History of the Crusades for the Recovery and Possession of the Holy Land
• Robert Southey – Life of Wesley
• Mariana Starke – Travels on the Continent: written for the use and particular information of travellers

  Births

• January 17 – Anne Brontë, English novelist and poet
• February 28 – John Tenniel, English illustrator and cartoonist
• March 2 – Multatuli, Dutch writer
• March 17 – Jean Ingelow, English poet and novelist
• March 30 – Anna Sewell, English novelist
• April 4 – Mkrtich Khrimian, Armenian Catholicos, essayist and poet
• April 26 – Alice Cary, American poet and short-story writer
• June 21 – James Halliwell-Phillipps, English bibliophile
• August 13 – Sir George Grove, English writer and lexicographer on music
• September 17 – Émile Augier, French dramatist
• October 14 – John Harris, English poet
• November 23 – Afanasy Fet, Russian lyric poet, essayist and short-story writer
• November 28 – Friedrich Engels, German socialist writer

  Deaths

• February 5 – William Drennan, Irish poet, radical and educationalist
• February 23 – Alojzy Feliński, Polish poet
• March 20 – Eaton Stannard Barrett, Irish satirical poet and novelist
• April 2 – Thomas Brown, Scottish philosopher and poet
• May 1 – Richmal Mangnall, English schoolbook writer
• July 16 – William Hazlitt Sr., Irish writer, radical and Unitarian minister
• August 23 – Michel de Cubières, French poet, dramatist and historian
• September 16 – Nguyễn Du, Vietnamese poet
• October 5 – Augustin Barruel, French Jesuit priest and writer
• November 12 – William Hayley, English poet and biographer