1866 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Events
- Charles Baudelaire's collection Les Épaves is published in Belgium containing poems suppressed from Les Fleurs du mal for outraging public morality. His poems also appear in the first anthology by the "Parnassians", Le Parnasse contemporain, published this year.
- Giuseppe Gioachino Belli's sonnets in the Romanesco dialect of Rome are first published, posthumously in an expurgated selection by his son Ciro.
- First publications by the Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu, aged 16: In January Romanian teacher Aron Pumnul dies and his students in Cernăuţi publish a pamphlet, Lăcrămioarele învățăceilor gimnaziaști in which a poem entitled "La mormântul lui Aron Pumnul" appears, signed "M. Eminovici"; on 25 February his poem "De-aș avea" is published in Iosif Vulcan's literary magazine Familia in Pest.
- Algernon Charles Swinburne's first collection Poems and Ballads causes a sensation on publication in London, especially the poems written in homage to Sappho and the sadomasochistic "Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)", and, under threat of prosecution, his original publisher, Moxon and Co., transfer publication rights to the more liberal John Camden Hotten.
Ode on the Mammoth Cheese
In this year a masterpiece of cheese-making, a 7,000-pound Canadian behemoth produced in Perth, Ontario, and sent to exhibitions in Toronto, New York and Britain, is given its appropriate due in poetry by one James McIntyre, a Canadian known as "The Cheese Poet", whose work outlasts his subject and might even make its fame immortal. Herewith, an excerpt of his "Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing Over 7,000 Pounds":McIntyre's poetry is the subject of books in the twentieth century, however, the greatest boost to his fame probably comes from a number of his poems being anthologized in the collection Very Bad Poetry, edited by Ross and Kathryn Petras.
Works published in English
United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom
Don Leon, falsely attributed to Lord Byron- Sarah Elizabeth Carmichael, Poems
- Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, The Return of the Guards, and Other Poems
- John Henry Newman, The Dream of Gerontius
- Christina Rossetti, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems
- Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and Ballads, first series, including "Dolores"
- Benjamin Thorpe, assisted by Elise Otté, translation of the Poetic Edda as Edda Sæmundar Hinns Frôða: the Edda of Sæmund the Learned, from the old Norse or Icelandic
- George Yeld, ''Virgil reading his Æneid to Augustus and Octavia''
United States">American poetry">United States
- Elizabeth Akers, Poems
- George Arnold, Drift: A Sea-Shore Idyl
- Fitz-Greene Halleck, Lines to the Recorder
- Herman Melville, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War
- George Henry Miles, Christine
- John Greenleaf Whittier:
- * Snow-Bound, United States
- * "Abraham Davenport", poem published in The Atlantic Monthly in May, about an incident involving Abraham Davenport
Works published in other languages
French
France
- Théodore de Banville, Les Exilés
- François Coppée, Le Reliquaire
- Paul Verlaine, Poèmes saturniens, including "Chanson d'automne" Le Parnasse contemporain, first of three volumes, including poems by Théophile Gautier, Théodore de Banville, Leconte de Lisle, Baudelaire, José-Maria de Heredia, François Coppée, Catulle Mendès, Sully Prudhomme, Paul Verlaine and Mallarmé
Belgium
- Baudelaire, Les Épaves, French poet published in Belgium
Other languages
- Girolamo de Rada, Rapsodi të një poeme arbëreshe, Arbëresh
- Estanislao del Campo, Fausto, satirical poem describing the impressions of a gaucho who attends Charles Gounod's opera Faust, and believes the events on stage to be happening in reality; Spanish-language, Argentina; an example of Gaucho literature
Births
Death years link to the corresponding " in poetry" article:- 20 January - Richard Le Gallienne, English poet
- 30 January - Gelett Burgess, American humorist and poet
- 2 March - John Gray, English aesthetic poet
- 26 March - Barcroft Boake, Australian bush poet
- 11 April - Bernard O'Dowd, Australian poet and co-founder of paper Tocsin
- 5 June - Edmund Vance Cooke, Canadian-born American poet
- 16 August - Dora Sigerson, Irish poet
- 12 November -, Italian poet and children's writer
- 3 December - Ethna Carbery, born Anna Johnston, Irish poet
- 12 December - Edwin Greenslade Murphy, Australian poet
Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding " in poetry" article:- 23 January - Thomas Love Peacock, English satirical novelist and poet
- 31 January - Friedrich Rückert, German poet, translator and professor of Oriental languages
- 29 March - John Keble, English poet and cleric
- 18 May - Francis Sylvester Mahony, Irish humorist and poet
- 12 August - Philip Stanhope Worsley, English poet and translator