1882 in poetry

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

Events

 * F.J. Child begins publishing ``English and Scottish Popular Ballads``.

Great scientist this year a published poet
James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), whose contributions to science were profound (including formulation of Maxwell's equations which for the first time expressed the basic laws of electricity and magnetism in a unified fashion, and other discoveries that helped usher in modern physics), this year became a published poet when a collection of his poems was published by his friend Lewis Campbell, two years after Maxwell's death.

As a great lover of British poetry, Maxwell memorized poems and wrote his own. The best known is Rigid Body Sings closely based on Comin' Through the Rye by Robert Burns, which he apparently used to sing while accompanying himself on a guitar. It has the immortal opening lines :


 * Gin a body meet a body
 * Flyin' through the air.
 * Gin a body hit a body,
 * Will it fly? And where?

(Maxwell is also known for creating the first true-colour photograph in 1861.)

United Kingdom

 * William Allingham, Evil May-Day
 * George Robert Sims, The Dagonet Ballads
 * Algernon Charles Swinburne, Tristram of Lyonesse, and Other Poems
 * Anthologies
 * F.J. Child's edition of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, in 5 volumes (1882–98), including multiple versions of 305 ballads
 * Toru Dutt, Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hidnustan, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. (fifth edition, 1927; reprinted several times by various publishers since then); Indian poet, writing in English, published in the United Kingdom

United States

 * Bronson Alcott, Sonnets and Canzonets
 * Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Poems
 * George Henry Boker, The Book of the Dead
 * Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, Idyls of Norway
 * Paul Hamilton Hayne, Collected Poems
 * Emma Lazarus, Songs of a Semite
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, In the Harbor: Ultima Thule, Part II
 * William Gilmore Simms, Works, 10 volumes, including poetry, New York; posthumous
 * Mary Ashley Townsend, Down the Bayou and Other Poems

Other

 * Toru Dutt, Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hidnustan, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. (fifth edition, 1927; reprinted several times by various publishers since then); Indian poet, writing in English, published in the United Kingdom

Other languages

 * Kalidasa, Sakuntalam translated from the original Sanskrit into Malayalam by Kerala Varma Valia Koyittampuran, India

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 15 – Jun Kawada 川田 順 (died 1966), Japanese, Showa period tanka poet and entrepreneur
 * January 18 – A. A. Milne (died 1956), British author, playwright and writer of children's poetry best known for his books about the teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, and for various children's poems
 * February 2 – James Joyce (died 1941), Irish writer and poet, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the Twentieth century
 * February 4 – E.J. Pratt (died 1964), Canadian poet
 * February 9 – James Stephens (died 1950), Irish novelist and poet said he was born on this date, although some think it may have been two years earlier (1880)
 * March 24 – Enid Derham, (died 1941), Australian poet and academic
 * May 5 – Kyōsuke Kindaichi 金田一 京助 (died 1971), Japanese linguist and poet; his son is linguist Haruhiko Kindaichi
 * June 1 – John Drinkwater (died 1937) English poet and dramatist
 * July 22 – Frederic Manning, (died 1935), Australian poet and novelist
 * November 26 – Ikuma Arishima, 有島生馬 pen-name (together with Utosei and then Jugatsutei) of Arishima Mibuma (died 1974), Japanese novelist, poet and painter; member of the Shirakaba literary circle
 * December 27 – Mina Loy (died 1966) English artist, poet, Futurist, actor, Christian Scientist, designer of lamps and bohemian
 * Also:
 * Martin Armstrong, English writer and poet
 * C. Subrahamania Bharati (died 1921), Indian, Tamil-language poet who also wrote Indian poetry in English
 * Wallace Gould (died 1940), American
 * Mokichi Saitō (died 1953), Japanese, Taishō period poet of the Araragi school, and a psychiatrist; father of novelist Kita Morio
 * Taneda Santōka 種田 山頭火 pen name of Taneda Shōichi 種田 正一 (died 1940), author and haiku poet
 * Anne Spencer (died 1975), American Black poet and active participant in the New Negro Movement
 * Brian Vrepont, (died 1955), Australian

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * February 8 – Berthold Auerbach (born (1812), German-Jewish poet and novelist
 * April 10 – Dante Gabriel Rossetti 63, English poet, illustrator, painter and translator
 * April 27 – Ralph Waldo Emerson, 78, American author, poet, and philosopher
 * March 24 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 75, American poet
 * June 3 – James Thomson, 48, British poet whose fame rests primarily upon the reputation of his long poem of 1874, The City of Dreadful Night
 * August 1 – Henry Kendall, (born 1839), Australian
 * October 30 – William Forster (born 1818) Australian politician, Premier of New South Wales and poet
 * Also:
 * William Brighty Rands
 * Charles R. Thatcher, (born 1831 uncertain), Australian