1899 in poetry

— Opening lines of Rudyard Kipling's White Man's Burden, first published this year

Take up the White Man's burden,

Send forth the best ye breed —

Go, bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

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

Events

• February 4 – Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" is first published in The Times. A response to the United States occupation of the Philippine Islands, and exhorting members of the White race to be responsible for benevolent civilising of the world's "non-white" people, the poem is reprinted in The New York Sun the next day.^[1]
• March 20 – Welsh "tramp-poet" W. H. Davies loses his foot trying to jump a freight train at Renfrew, Ontario.^[2]
• William Hughes Mearns writes "Antigonish" this year; it won't be published until 1922.
• Romesh Chunder Dutt's translation of the Ramayana into English verse is first published, in London.
• Shinshisha ("New Poetry Society") founded by Yosano Tekkan in Japan.

Works published

Australia

• W. T. Goodge, Hits! Skits! and Jingles!

Canada

• Frances Jones Bannerman, Milestones. London.^[3]
• William Wilfred Campbell, Beyond the Hills of Dream. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin.^[4]
• Fidelis, Lays of the "True North," and Other Canadian Poems.^[3]
• John Frederic Herbin, The Marshlands^[5]
• Archibald Lampman, Alcyone, including "City of the End of Things",^[6] the author died while the book was being printed.^[7]
• Thomas O'Hagan, Songs of the Settlement^[7]
• Frederick George Scott, Poems Old and New (Toronto: William Briggs).^[8]
• Francis Sherman, 'The Deserted City: Stray Sonnets. Boston: Copeland and Day.^[9]
• Arthur Stringer, The Loom of Destiny.

Anthologies

• Northland Lyrics, William Carman Roberts, Theodore Roberts & Elizabeth Roberts Macdonald; selected and arranged with a prologue by Charles G.D. Roberts and an epilogue by Bliss Carman. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. ISBN 0-665-12501-1

United Kingdom

• Hilaire Belloc, A Moral Alphabet^[10]
• Laurence Binyon, Second Book of London Visions (see also First Book of London Visions 1896)^[10]
• Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Satan Absolved^[10]
• Gordon Bottomley, Poems at White-Nights^[10]
• Robert Buchanan, The New Rome: Poems and ballads of our empire^[10]
• John Davidson, The Last Ballad, and Other Poems^[10]
• Lord Alfred Douglas (anonymously in 1st edition), The City of the Soul^[10]
• Ernest Dowson, Decorations: in Verse and Prose^[10]
• Rudyard Kipling:
  • "The Absent-Minded Beggar"
  • "The White Man's Burden", appears first in McClure's Magazine in the United States; it is parodied this same year in "The Brown Man's Burden", by Henry Labouchère in Truth, a publication in London; the parody is reprinted in the United States in Literary Digest 18 (February 25)^[11]
• Dora Sigerson, Ballads and Poems^[10]
• Arthur Symons:
  • Images of Good and Evil^[10]
  • The Symbolist Movement in Literature, first collected edition of essays
• W. B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds^[10] including "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"; Irish poet published in the United Kingdom, (John Lane/Bodley Head)

United States

• Stephen Crane, War is Kind^[12]
• Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of the Hearthside,^[12] which included his poem "Sympathy"
• Hamlin Gillette, The Trail of the Goldseekers^[12]
• Louise Imogen Guiney, The Martyrs' Idyl^[12]
• Rudyard Kipling, "The White Man's Burden", appears first in McClure's; it is parodied this same year in "The Brown Man's Burden", by Henry Labouchère in Truth, a publication in London; the parody is reprinted in the United States in Literary Digest 18 (February 25)^[11]
• Edwin Markham, The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems^[12]
• Howard Llewellyn Swisher, Briar Blossoms: Being a Collection of a Few Verses and Some Prose
• Henry Timrod (died 1867), Complete Poems^[12]

Other in English

• John Le Gay Brereton, Landlopers, mostly prose, based on a walking tour with Dowell Philip O'Reilly; Australia
• W. B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds^[10] including "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"; Irish poet published in the United Kingdom, The Wind Among the Reeds,^[10] (John Lane/Bodley Head)

Works published in other languages

France

• Francis Jammes:
  • Le Poète et l'oiseau ("The Poet and the Bird")^[13]
  • La Jeune Fille nue, France^[13]
• Stéphane Mallarmé (died 1898), Poésies, originally published 1877, new edn with commentary by the poet^[14]
• Oscar Milosz, also known as O. V. de L. Milosz, Le Poème des décadences^[15]

Other languages

• José Santos Chocano, La epopeya del Morro, Peru^[16]
• Stefan George, Teppich des Lebens ("The Carpet of Life"); German^[17]
• Gregorio Martínez Sierra, Diálogos fantásticos ("Fantastic Dialogues"), Spain

Awards and honors

Births

Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• January 23 – Carlo Betocchi (died 1986), Italian poet
• January 26 – May Miller (died 1995) African American poet, playwright and educator
• February 17 – Jibanananda Das (died 1954), popular Bengali poet
• March 7 – Jun Ishikawa 石川淳 pen name of Ishikawa Kiyoshi, Ishikawa (died 1987), Japanese, Shōwa period modernist author, translator and literary critic
• March 25 – Jacques Audiberti (died 1965), French playwright, poet, novelist and exponent of the Theatre of the Absurd
• March 27 – Francis Ponge (died 1988), French academic, journalist and poet
• May 18 – D. Gwenallt Jones (died 1968), Welsh poet
• May 24
  • Kazi Nazrul Islam (died 1976), Bengali poet and composer best known as the Bidrohi Kobi ("Rebel Poet"), popular among Bengalis and considered the national poet of Bangladesh
  • Henri Michaux (died 1984), Belgian, French-language artist, writer and poet who became a French citizen
• May 27 – Raymond Knister died (1932), Canadian poet, novelist and short story writer
• June 6 – Hildegarde Flanner (died 1987), American poet, author and activist
• June 8 – Kaoru Maruyama 丸山 薫 (died 1974), Japanese
• July 4 – Benjamin Péret (died 1959), French poet and writer
• July 7 – Margaret Larkin (died 1967), American poet
• July 21 – Hart Crane (died 1932), American poet
• August 1 – F. R. Scott (died 1985), Canadian poet, intellectual and constitutional expert
• September 30 – Hendrik Marsman (died 1940), Dutch poet
• August 5 – Sakae Tsuboi 壺井栄 (died 1967), Japanese novelist and poet
• November 19 – Allen Tate (died 1979), American poet and member of the Fugitives and later the Southern Agrarians.
• December 9 – Léonie Adams (died 1988), American poet and Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress
• Date not known:
  • Jammuneshwar Khataniyar (died 1920), Indian, Assamese-language poet; a woman^[18]
  • Dimbeshwar Neog (died 1966), Indian, Assamese-language poet^[18]
  • Constance Woodrow (died 1937), English-born Canadian poet

Deaths

Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• February 10 – Archibald Lampman, 37 (born 1861), Canadian poet who dies while his book, Alcyone, is being printed (see "Works", above)
• April 16 – Emilio Jacinto, 23 (born 1875) Filipino revolutionary general and poet, of malaria
• April 26 – Dragotin Kette, 23 (born 1876), Slovene poet, of TB
• July 20 – Frances Laughton Mace, 63 (born 1836) American poet^[19]
• November 16 – Vincas Kudirka, 40 (born 1858), Lithuanian physician, poet and national hero, of TB
• November 25 – Robert Lowry, 73 (born 1826), American hymnodist
• December 1 – Dolores Cabrera y Heredia, 71 (born 1828), Spanish Romantic poet and novelist, member of Hermandad Lírica

See also

• Poetry portal

• 19th century in poetry
• 19th century in literature
• List of years in poetry
• List of years in literature
• Victorian literature
• French literature of the 19th century
• Symbolist poetry
• Young Poland (Młoda Polska) a modernist period in Polish arts and literature, roughly from 1890 to 1918
• Poetry
• Fin de siècle