1878 in poetry

Events

• July – Notorious Scottish poetaster William McGonagall journeys on foot from Dundee to Balmoral Castle over mountainous terrain and through a violent thunderstorm in a fruitless attempt to perform his verse before Queen Victoria.
• July 26 – In California, the poet and American West outlaw calling himself "Black Bart" makes his last clean getaway when he steals a safe box from a Wells Fargo stagecoach. The empty box is found later with a taunting poem inside.
• Notorious American poetaster Julia A. Moore publishes her second collection, A Few Choice Words to the Public, but unlike her bestseller of 1876, The Sweet Singer of Michigan Salutes the Public, it finds few buyers. Moore gives her second public reading and singing performance late this year at a Grand Rapids opera house. She begins by admitting her poetry is "partly full of mistakes" and that "literary is a work very hard to do". After the poetry and the laughter and jeering in response is over, Moore ends the show by telling the audience:

Works published in English

United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Proteus and Amadeus
• Robert Browning, La Saisiaz; The Two Poets of Croisic
• Robert Buchanan, Poetical Works
• Coventry Patmore:
• * Amelia; Tamerton Church-Tower
• * The Unknown Eros, and Other Odes, first, shorter edition was published anonymously in 1877
• Mary F. Robinson, A Handful of Honeysuckle
• Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and Ballads, Second Series
• John Addington Symonds:
• * Many Moods
• * Shelley, biography
• Oscar Wilde, ''Ravenna''

United States">American poetry">United States

• Charles Follen Adams, Leedle Yawcob Strauss, and Other Poems
• William Cullen Bryant, The Flood of Years
• Henry James, French Poets and Novelists, criticism
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kéramos and Other Poems
• John Greenleaf Whittier, The Vision of Echard, United States
• A Masque of Poets, an anonymous compilation edited by George Parsons Lathrop that included works by Emily Dickinson and John Townsend Trowbridge, among others

Other

• Chilichutnee, Social Scraps and Satires, Bombay; India, Indian poetry in English
• Toru Dutt, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields: Verse Translations and Poems, Bhowanipur: Saptahik Sambad Press, second, enlarged edition ; India, Indian poetry in English

Works published in other languages

• William Chapman, Les Québecquoises; French language; Quebec, Canada
• Joseph-Eudore Eventurel, Premières poésies; French language; Quebec, Canada
• Stéphane Mallarmé, Les Mots anglais, France
• Jan Neruda, Písně kosmické, Czech
• Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, The Dream of Councillor Popov, Russian satire published in Berlin

Births

• January 4 – A. E. Coppard, English poet and short story writer
• January 6 – Carl Sandburg, American poet and historian
• January 14 – Victor Segalen, French naval doctor, professor of medicine in China, ethnographer, archeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art-theorist, linguist and literary critic
• January 21 – H. W. Garrod, English literary scholar
• March 3 – Edward Thomas one of the best-known English poets of World War I, died in action at Arras
• April 3 – Hiraide Shū 平出修, Japanese, late Meiji period novelist, poet and lawyer; represented defendant in the High Treason Incident; a co-founder of the literary journal Subaru
• April 11 – Frank Oliver Call, Canadian
• May 24 – Mary Grant Bruce, Australian
• June 1 – John Edward Masefield, English poet and writer, Poet Laureate, 1930–1967
• June 8 – William Stanley Braithwaite, American
• July 6 – Eino Leino, Finnish poet and journalist
• July 29 – Don Marquis, American poet, artist, newspaper columnist, humorist, playwright and author best known for creating the characters "Archy" and "Mehitabel"
• August 10 – Louis Esson, Scottish-born Australian
• August 17 – Oliver St. John Gogarty, Irish poet, writer, physician and ear surgeon, one of the most prominent Dublin wits, political figure of the Irish Free State, later best known as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's novel Ulysses
• September 9 – Adelaide Crapsey, American
• October 2 – Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, British poet, associated with World War I but also the author of much later work
• October 13 – Patrick Joseph Hartigan, Australian Roman Catholic priest and poet
• October 16 – Vallathol Narayana Menon, Indian, Malayalam-language poet
• November 27 – Jatindramohan Bagchi, Bengali poet
• December 7 – Akiko Yosano 与謝野 晶子 pen-name of Yosano Shiyo, late Meiji period, Taishō period and early Shōwa period poet, pioneering feminist, pacifist and social reformer; one of the most famous, and most controversial, post-classical woman poets of Japan
• December 18 – Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, Georgian poet and Soviet dictator

Deaths

• January 8 – Nikolay Nekrasov, Никола́й Некра́сов, Russian poet, writer, critic and publisher
• June 12 – William Cullen Bryant, American romantic poet, journalist and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post
• June 27 – Sarah Helen Whitman, American poet, essayist, transcendentalist, Spiritualist and a romantic interest of Edgar Allan Poe
• October 5 – George Boyer Vashon, African-American attorney, educationalist, abolitionist, essayist and poet
• December 19 – Bayard Taylor, American poet, literary critic, translator and travel author