1861 in poetry

Events

• June 29 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning dies in the arms of her husband and fellow poet Robert Browning in Florence; on July 1 she is buried in the Protestant cemetery there. Robert leaves the city soon afterwards
• November 19 - Julia Ward Howe composes "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"

Works published in English

United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• Matthew Arnold, On Translating Homer, criticism
• Richard Watson Dixon, Christ's Company, and Other Poems
• Edward Lear, A Book of Nonsense
• Alexander McLachlan, The Emigrant and Other Poems, Toronto, Canada
• Francis William Newman, Homeric Translation in Theory and Practice, a reply to Matthew Arnold's On Translating Homer, above; Arnold replied with On Translating Homer: Last Words in 1862, criticism
• Francis Turner Palgrave, The Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Early Italian Poets
• Annie Louisa Walker, ''Leaves from the Backwoods''

United States">American poetry">United States

• Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Pampinea and Other Poems
• Lucius Manlius, The Ballad of the Abolition Blunderbuss
• Edmund Clarence Stedman, The Battle of Bull Run about the First Battle of Bull Run

Works published in other languages

• Aleardo Aleardi, I sette soldati, Italy
• Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Meghnad Badh Kabya, Bengali
• Joseph Fiset, Jude et Grazia; ou, Les malheurs de l'émigration; French language; a long narrative poem; Quebec, Canada
• Imre Madách, The Tragedy of Man, Hungary; poetic drama
• Nikolai Nekrasov, Korobeiniki, Russian
• Frederik Paludan-Müller, Denmark:
• * Paradiset
• * ''Benedikt fra Nurcia''

Births

• January 7 - Louise Imogen Guiney, American poet and essayist
• January 12 – Jack Moses, Australian poet
• January 15 - Saint-Pol-Roux, pen name of Paul Roux, French
• January 22 - Maurice Hewlett, English historical novelist, poet and essayist
• January 23 - Katharine Tynan, Irish-born novelist, poet and writer who, after her marriage in 1898, usually wrote under the names "Katharine Tynan Hinkson", "Katharine Tynan-Hinkson" or "Katharine Hinkson-Tynan"
• March 10 - Pauline Johnson, also known as "E. Pauline Johnson" and "Tekahionwake", Canadian known for her poems and performances that celebrate her aboriginal heritage, including the frequently anthologized "The Song My Paddle Sings"
• April 7 - Frederick George Scott, Canadian
• April 15 - Bliss Carman, Canadian poet
• May 7 - Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet in India, Brahmo Samaj philosopher, visual artist, playwright, composer and novelist whose works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; 1913 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
• July 26 - Vazha-Pshavela, Georgian poet
• September 5 - Walter Alexander Raleigh, Scottish scholar, poet and author
• September 23 - Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, English novelist, poet and teacher writing poetry under the pseudonym Anodos ; great-grandniece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and great niece of Sara Coleridge
• October 16 - Arthur Alfred Lynch, Australian-born, Irish and British civil engineer, physician, journalist, author, soldier, anti-imperialist and polymath serving as a member of the House of Commons after being convicted of treason, sentenced to death, having his sentence reduced and then being released, later raising his own Irish battalion towards the end of World War I
• October 21 - Charles Van Lerberghe, French
• November 10 - Amy Levy, English poet and novelist
• November 17 - Archibald Lampman, Canadian

Deaths

• March 10 - Taras Shevchenko, 47, Ukrainian poet and artist
• June 29 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 56, English poet and poet and wife of Robert Browning
• November 13 - Arthur Hugh Clough, 42, English poet and brother of suffragist Anne Jemima Clough