1868 in poetry

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

Events

 * Frederick James Furnivall founds the Chaucer Society

Canada

 * James Anderson. Sawney's Letters, or Cariboo Rhymes.
 * Charles Mair, Dreamland and Other Poems, Canada

United Kingdom

 * William Barnes, Poems of Rural Life in Common English
 * Robert Browning:
 * Poetical Works, six volumes
 * The Ring and the Book, Volumes 1 and 2 this year; a total of 12 books and over 21,000 lines published this year and in 1869
 * George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans), The Spanish Gypsy
 * William Morris, The Earthly Paradise, Parts 1 and 2 (Part 3 1869 [although dated 1870], Part 4 1870; complete work in 10 volumes 1872)
 * Richard Lewis Nettleship, City of Pygmies (in Greek) (awarded Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse, 1868)
 * Menella Bute Smedley and Fanny Hart, published anonymously "By two friends", Poems Written for a Child
 * Algernon Charles Swinburne, Siena

United States

 * Benjamin Paul Blood, The Colonnades
 * Phoebe Cary, Poems of Faith, Hope, and Love
 * Adah Isaacs Menken, Infelicia
 * Joaquin Miller, Specimens
 * John Rollin Ridge, Poems
 * Edward Rowland Sill, The Hermitage and Other Poems
 * William Wetmore Story, Graffiti d'Italia

Other

 * Charles Baudelaire, Curiosités esthétiques, posthumously published, France
 * Comte de Lautréamont, pen name of Isidore Lucien Ducasse, first "chant" of Les Chants de Maldoror, a set of prose poems full of Gothic horror (reprinted in a book of miscellaneous poems, Parfums de l'áme 1869; first published in full in 1874); France

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 10 – Ozaki Kōyō 尾崎 紅葉, pen name of Ozaki Tokutaro 尾崎 徳太郎 (died 1903), novelist, essayist and haiku poet (surname: Ozaki)
 * May 14 – Mary Eliza Fullerton (died 1946), Australian
 * August 6 - Paul Claudel (died 1955), French
 * August 23 – Edgar Lee Masters (died 1950), American poet, biographer, dramatist and lawyer
 * October 29 – Robert Crawford (died 1930), Australian
 * December 25 – Ahmed Shawqi أحمد شوقي (died 1932), Egyptian poet and playwright
 * December 29 – Kitamura Tokoku 北村透谷, pen-name of Kitamura Montaro (died 1894), Japanese, late Meiji period poet, essayist and a founder of the modern Japanese romantic literary movement (surname: Kitamura)
 * Also:
 * Mohammed Abdullah Hassan (died 1920), poet and leader of the Dervish movement
 * Kavi Kant (died 1923), Indian, Gujarati-language writer and poet, writer of khandakavyas (narrative poems) and ghazals
 * K. C. Kesava Pillai (died 1914), Indian, Malayalam-language musician and poet

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * March 29 – Susanna Hawkins (born 1787), Scottish
 * April 26 – James Lionel Michael (born 1824), Australian
 * June 10 – Charles Harpur (born 1813), Australian
 * August 10 – Adah Isaacs Menken (born 1835), American actress, painter and poet
 * September 11 – Maria James (born 1793), American poet and domestic servant
 * October 13 – Tachibana Akemi, 橘曙覧 (born 1812), Japanese poet and classical scholar (surname: Tachibana)