This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1820.
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. unknown dates More than 20 years after the poet's death, Robert Chambers edits and 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. The first translation of the Old English epic poem Beowulf into a modern language, Danish, Bjovulfs Drape, by N. F. S. Grundtvig, is published. 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 (anonymously) – Melmoth the Wanderer
Regina Marie Roche – The Munster Cottage Boy
Sir Walter Scott (anonymously) Ivanhoe (published 1819, dated 1820) 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 (written 1820 then lost, published 1997)
Drama
James Sheridan Knowles – Virginius
William Thomas Moncrieff – The Lear of Private Life
Percy Bysshe Shelley – Prometheus Unbound
Charles Edward Walker – Wallace
Poetry
Robert Burns (died 1796) – 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 (Oda do młodości) Nguyễn Du – The Tale of Kieu (斷腸新聲, Truyện Kiều) Aleksandr Pushkin – Ruslan and Ludmila (Руслан и Людмила) 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 (to 1832) 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