Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
February 24 – Première of first stage production of the poetic drama Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (published 1867) with incidental music by Edvard Grieg, in Christiania, Norway.
Robert Bridges, The Growth of Love (revised and expanded in 1889)
Robert Browning, Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper; with Other Poems
Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark
Edward Dowden, Poems
Toru Dutt, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields: Verse Translations and Poems, Bhowanipur, Calcutta: B. M. Bose (expanded edition, Bhowanipur: Saptahik Sambad Press 1878; London: Kegan Paul 1880); Indian poet, writing in English, published in the United Kingdom
Dora Greenwell, Camera Obscura
Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland, submitted for publication but not in fact published until 1918
Edward Lear, Laughable Lyrics: Fourth Book of Nonsense Poems, Songs, Botany, Music, &c., including "The Dong with a Luminous Nose", "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò", "The Pobble Who Has No Toes", "The Quangle Wangle's Hat" and "The Akond of Swat", published December 1876, dated 1877
William Morris, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs
Emily Pfeiffer, Poems
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Harry Buxton Forman, eight volumes published from this year through 1880
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Poems
Herman Melville, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land
Julia A. Moore, The Sweet Singer of Michigan Salutes the Public (see subsection below; republished as The Sentimental Song Book)
Bayard Taylor, The Echo Club and Other Literary Diversions
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, sixth edition
John Greenleaf Whittier, Mabel Martin
This year Poetaster Julia A. Moore's first book of verse, The Sentimental Song Book, was published in Grand Rapids, and quickly went into a second printing. A copy fell into the hands of one James F.