1861 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

Events

 * Julia Ward Howe composes Battle Hymn of the Republic

Canada

 * Alexander McLachlan, The Emigrant and Other Poems, Toronto.

United Kingdom

 * Matthew Arnold, On Translating Homer (see also F. W. Newman's response, Homeric Translation, below), criticism
 * Richard Watson Dixon, Christ's Company, and Other Poems
 * 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 (a poetic anthology revised and enlarged in 1891; second series published in 1897)
 * Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Early Italian Poets (reissued in 1874 under the title Dante and his Circle)
 * Annie Louisa Walker, Leaves from the Backwoods

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 ("The Seven Soldiers"), Italy
 * Joseph Fiset, Jude et Grazia; ou, Les malheurs de l'émigration; French language; a long narrative poem; Quebec, Canada
 * Frederik Paludan-Müller, Denmark:
 * Paradiset ("Paradise")
 * Benedikt fra Nurcia ("Benedict of Nurcia")

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 15 – Saint-Pol-Roux, pen name of Paul Roux (died 1940), French
 * January 23 – Katharine Tynan (died 1931), 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" (died 1913), Canadian known for her poems and performances that celebrated her aboriginal heritage, including the frequently anthologized "The Song My Paddle Sings"
 * April 15 – Bliss Carman died 1929), Canadian poet
 * May 7 – Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet in India, Brahmo Samaj (syncretic Hindu monotheist) 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
 * September 5 – Walter Alexander Raleigh (died 1922), Scottish scholar, poet and author
 * September 23 – Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, (died 1907), English novelist, poet and teacher who wrote poetry under the pseudonym Anodos, taken from George MacDonald; great-grandniece niece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the great niece of Sara Coleridge
 * October 16 – Arthur Alfred Lynch (died 1934), Australian-born, Irish and British civil engineer, physician, journalist, author, soldier, anti-imperialist and polymath who served as a member of the House of Commons after being convicted of treason, sentenced to death, having his sentence reduced and then being released (for having recruited volunteers for the Boer side during the Boer War, in South Africa). He later raised his own Irish battalion towards the end of World War I.
 * October 21 – Charles Van Lerberghe (died 1907), French
 * November 17 – Archibald Lampman, (died 1899), Canadian
 * Also:
 * Louise Imogen Guiney, (died 1920), American poet and essayist
 * Maurice Henry Hewlett (died 1923), English historical novelist, poet and essayist
 * Amy Levy, English poet and novelist
 * Frederick George Scott, Canadian

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * June 29 – Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 56 (born 1806), English; wife of Robert Browning
 * November 13 – A. H. Clough (born 1819), English poet and brother of suffragist Anne Jemima Clough