Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
October 10 – American poet Ethel Lynn Beers' collected works "All Quiet Along The Potomac" and Other Poems (including her most well-known work "All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight") are published; the following day she dies aged 52 at Orange, New Jersey.
Critic and poet Theodore Watts-Dunton takes the alcoholic poet Algernon Charles Swinburne into his permanent care at Watts' Putney home.
Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia; or, The Great Renunciation (see also The Light of the World 1891)
Louisa Sarah Bevington, Key-Notes
Robert Bridges, Poems (see also Poems 1873, 1880)
Robert Browning, Dramatic Idyls, including "Ivàn Ivànovitch" (see also dramatic Idyls 1880)
Edmund Gosse, New Poems
Kate Greenaway, Under the Window: Pictures & Rhymes for Children
Emily Pfeiffer, Quarterman's Grace, and Other Poems
Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Lover's Tale
Ethel Lynn Beers, All Quiet Along the Potomac and Other Poems
Oliver Wendell Holmes, The School-Boy
Edmund Clarence Stedman, Lyrics and Idylls, with Other Poems
Celia Thaxter, Drift-Weed
Marcellus Emants, "Lilith", Netherlands
Louis-Honoré Fréchette, Fleurs boréales, winner of the Prix Montyon of the French Academy; French language; Quebec, Canada
José Hernández, Martin Fierro, the second part of an epic Spanish-language Argentine poem in which the hero defends his way of life against encroaching socialization and civilization; an example of the Gaucho poetry literary movement in Argentina (see also first part 1872)
Victor Hugo, L'Art d'être grand-père, France
Stéphane Mallarmé, Les Dieux antiques, France
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
February 13 – Sarojini Naidu (died 1949) also known by the sobriquet Bharatiya Kokila ("The Nightingale of India"), poet (in English) and elected official who was president of the Indian National Congress and the first woman governor of Uttar Pradesh
March 14 – Harold Monro (died 1932), English poet, proprietor of the Poetry Bookshop in London
March 26 – Joseph Campbell (died 1987), Irish
April 3 – Takashi Nagatsuka 長塚 節 (died 1915), Japanese poet and novelist
April 14 – James Branch Cabell (died 1958), American writer
May 10 – James Alexander Allan (died 1967), Australian poet and local historian
June 21 – Leslie Holdsworth Allen (died 1964), Australian
September 13 – James Larkin Pearson (died 1981), American poet, newspaper publisher; North Carolina Poet Laureate, 1953–1981
October 2 – Wallace Stevens (died 1955), American
October 13 – Patrick Joseph Hartigan (died 1952), Australian
November 10 – Vachel Lindsay (died 1931), American
December 18 – Paul Klee (died 1940), Swiss painter and poet of German nationality
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
February 2 – Richard Henry Dana Sr.