1896 in poetry

Events

• July 7 – Charles Thomas Wooldridge is hanged at Reading Gaol in England for uxoricide, inspiring fellow-prisoner C.3.3. Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
• William Morris publishes the Kelmscott Press edition of Chaucer's works

  Works published in English

Australia">Australian poetry">Australia

• John Le Gay Brereton:
• * Perdita, A Sonnet Record
• * The Song of Brotherhood and Other Verses
• Edward Dyson, Rhymes from the Mines and Other Lines
• Henry Lawson:
• * In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses
• * "The Teams"
• Banjo Paterson:
• * The Man from Snowy River
• * "Mulga Bill's Bicycle"

  Canada">Canadian poetry">Canada

• Bliss Carman, with Richard Hovey, More Songs from Vagabondia, Canadian author published in the United States
• Charles G. D. Roberts, The Book of the Native
• Charles Sangster, Our Norland. Toronto: Copp Clark, n.d.
• Duncan Campbell Scott, In the Village of Viger, Canada
• Francis Sherman
• * In Memorabilia Mortis. Boston: Copeland and Day.
• * Matins. Boston: Copeland and Day.

  United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• Hilaire Belloc:
• * The Bad Child's Book of Beasts
• * Verses and Sonnets
• Laurence Binyon, First Book of London Visions
• Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, publishing under the pen name "Anodos", Fancy's Following
• Ernest Christopher Dowson, Verses, including "Non Sum Qualis Eram"
• A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, including "To an Athlete Dying Young", "Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now" and "When I Was One-and-Twenty"
• Laurence Houseman, Green Arras
• Rudyard Kipling, The Seven Seas
• Alice Meynell, Other Poems
• Henry Newbolt, "Drake's Drum", published in the St. John's Gazette
• John Cowper Powys, Odes, and Other Poems
• Arthur Quiller-Couch, Poems and Ballads
• Christina Rossetti, New Poems, edited by W. M. Rossetti
• Robert Louis Stevenson, Songs of Travel, and Other Verses
• Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Tale of Balen
• William Watson, The Purple East

  United States">American poetry">United States

• Thomas Bailey Aldrich:
• * Judith and Holofernes
• * Later Lyrics
• Bliss Carman, with Richard Hovey, More Songs from Vagabondia, Canadian author published in the United States
• Emily Dickinson, Poems: Third Series
• Paul Laurence Dunbar
• * Lyrics of Lowly Life
• * Majors and Minors
• * "We Wear the Mask"
• Lizette Woodworth Reese, A Quiet Road
• Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Torrent and the Night Before

  Works published in other languages

• Nérée Beauchemin, Les floraisons matutinales; the author's first published collection; French language; Trois-Rivières, Canada
• José Santos Chocano, Azahares, Peru
• Richard Dehmel, Weib und Welt, German
• Narasinghrao, Hridayaveena containing khandakavyas, garbis, and poems about nature and women
• Tekkan Yosano, Tozai namboku, tanka poetry, Japan

  Awards and honors

• Alfred Austin made Poet Laureate

  Births

• January 26 – Walter D'Arcy Cresswell, New Zealand
• February 26 – Andrei Zhdanov, a Soviet official who persecuted poets, writers and artists under the Zhdanov doctrine
• May 9 – Austin Clarke, Irish poet, playwright and judge
• August 27 – Kenji Miyazawa 宮沢 賢治, Japanese, early Shōwa period poet and author of children's literature
• September 22 – Uri Zvi Grinberg, Jewish
• October 12 – Eugenio Montale, Italian
• October 30 – Kostas Karyotakis, Greek
• December 1 – Teiko Tomita, Japanese-born American poet who wrote in Japanese

  Deaths

• January 8 – Paul Verlaine, French
• March 20 – Alexander McLachlan, Scottish-born Canadian
• May 11 – Henry Cuyler Bunner, American novelist and poet
• October 3 – William Morris, English poet, writer, designer and socialist
• October 29 – Thomas Edward Brown, Manx poet writing in English
• November 26
• * Mathilde Blind, German-born British poet writing in English
• * Coventry Patmore, English