1882 in poetry.html



Events

Awards

Works published

• F. J. Child's edition of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, in 5 volumes (1882-98), including multiple versions of 305 ballads
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, In the Harbor
• George Robert Sims, The Dagonet 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[1]:

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.)

Births

• 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 (Ireland) (died 1950), Irish novelist and poet said he was born on this date, although some think it may have been two years earlier (1880)
• June 1 — John Drinkwater (died 1937) English poet and dramatist
• December 27 — Mina Loy (died 1966) English artist, poet, Futurist, actor, Christian Scientist, designer of lamps and bohemian
• date not known:
  • Martin Armstrong, English writer and poet
  • Anne Spencer, American Black poet and active participant in the New Negro Movement

Deaths

• 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
• date not known — William Brighty Rands

See also

Poetry portal

• Poetry
• List of years in poetry

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