Events from the year 1879 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Benjamin Disraeli (Conservative)
• Parliament – 21st

Events

• 1 January – Benjamin Henry Blackwell opens the first Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford.^[1]
• 8 January – British army occupies Kandahar in Afghanistan.^[2]
• 11 January – Anglo-Zulu War begins.
• 22 January – Zulu troops led by King Cetshwayo massacre British troops at the Battle of Isandlwana. At Rorke's Drift, outnumbered British soldiers drive the attackers away after hours of fighting.^[3]
• 3 February – Mosley Street in Newcastle upon Tyne becomes the world's first public highway to be lit by the electric incandescent light bulb, invented by Joseph Swan.^[4]
• March – the standard design of pillar box reverts to a cylindrical shape (the "anonymous" style cast by Andrew Handyside and Company).^[5]
• 2 March – murder of Julia Martha Thomas at Richmond upon Thames.
• 12 March – Anglo-Zulu War: At the Battle of Intombe, a British force over one-hundred strong is ambushed and destroyed by Zulu forces.
• 13 March – marriage of The Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, third son of Queen Victoria, to Princess Louise Marguerite of Prussia.
• 28 March – Anglo-Zulu War: British forces suffer a defeat at the Battle of Hlobane.^[3]
• 29 March – Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Kambula – British forces defeat 20,000 Zulus.
• 3 April – Anglo-Zulu War: British forces successfully lift the two-month Siege of Eshowe.
• 12 May – John Henry Newman elevated to Cardinal.
• 26 May – Russia and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Gandamak establishing an Afghan state.
• June–August – the wettest summer in England and Wales since records began in 1766, and the equal seventh-coolest since the CET series begins in 1659.^[6]
• 6 June – William Denny and Brothers launch the world's first ocean-going ship to be built of mild steel, the SS Rotomahana, at Dumbarton.^[7]
• 14 June – Sidney Faithorn Green, an Anglican priest in the Church of England, is tried and convicted for using Ritualist practices.
• 4 July – the Anglo-Zulu War effectively ends with British victory at the Battle of Ulundi.^[2]
• 16 August – Fulham F.C. founded in London as the Fulham St Andrew's Church Sunday School football club.
• 19 August – the foundation stone of the fourth Eddystone Lighthouse is laid by The Prince of Wales and The Duke of Edinburgh.^[3]
• September – Doncaster Rovers F.C. formed by railway fitter Albert Jenkins.
• 18 September – Blackpool Illuminations lit for the first time.^[3]
• 2 October – William Denny and Brothers launch the world's first transatlantic steamer to be built of mild steel, the SS Buenos Ayrean, at Dumbarton for Liverpool owners. On 1 December she makes her maiden voyage out of Glasgow for South America.^[8]
• 13 October – first female students admitted to study for degrees at the University of Oxford, at the new Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville Hall and with the Society of Oxford Home-Students.^[2]
• 17 October – Sunderland A.F.C. is formed as 'Sunderland and District Teachers A.F.C.' in the North East.
• 27 October – Liverpool Echo newspaper first published.^[3]
• November–March 1880 – probably the longest ever fog in the city's history engulfs London.^[9]
• December – the world's first Christmas grotto opens in Lewis's Liverpool department store as 'Christmas Fairyland'.
• 15–23 December – Second Anglo-Afghan War: British victory at the Siege of the Sherpur Cantonment.
• 28 December – the Tay Bridge Disaster: The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee, Scotland collapses in a storm as a train passes over it, killing 78.^[2]
• 30 December – the comic opera The Pirates of Penzance is first presented in Paignton, Devon^[3] in a token performance for U.K. copyright reasons; the world première is given the following day in New York City, the only Gilbert and Sullivan work to have its official debut outside England.
• 1 January to 31 December – the combination of the severest winter since 1814, a late spring, an exceptionally cool summer and a cold dry autumn produces the third-coldest year in the CET series and the coldest since 1740,^[10] with an annual mean of 7.44 °C or 45.39 °F.

Undated

• Gabardine is invented by Thomas Burberry, founder of the Burberry fashion house in Basingstoke.^[11]
• School meals provided for destitute and poorly nourished children in Manchester.

Publications

• Kate Greenaway's first book, with her own colour illustrations, Under the Window: Pictures & Rhymes for Children.
• Silas Hocking's novel Her Benny.^[12]
• George Meredith's novel The Egoist.
• Anthony Trollope's last Palliser novel The Duke's Children (serialised in All the Year Round).
• The Boy's Own Paper first published (19 January).

Births

• 1 January
  • E. M. Forster, novelist (died 1970)
  • Ernest Jones, psychoanalyst (died 1958)
• 8 January – Charles Bryant, actor and director (died 1948)
• 10 January – Bobby Walker, Scottish footballer (died 1930)
• 13 January – William Reid Dick, sculptor (died 1961)
• 26 February – Frank Bridge, composer (died 1941)
• 5 March – William Beveridge, economist and social reformer (died 1963)
• 20 April – Robert Wilson Lynd, essayist and writer (died 1949)
• 26 April – Owen Willans Richardson, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1959)
• 29 April – Thomas Beecham, conductor (died 1961)
• 19 May – Viscount Waldorf Astor, businessman and politician (died 1952)
• 25 May – Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, Canadian-British business tycoon, politician and writer (died 1964)
• 30 May –
  • Colin Blythe, bowler (cricket) (killed on active service 1917)
  • Vanessa Bell, painter (died 1961)
• 4 June – Mabel Lucie Attwell, illustrator (died 1964)
• 6 June – Patrick Abercrombie, town planner (died 1957)
• 15 July – Joseph Campbell, poet and lyricist (died 1944)
• 1 August – William Percival Crozier, editor of The Manchester Guardian (died 1944)
• 7 August – James Peters, black rugby union international (died 1954)
• 13 August – John Ireland, composer (died 1962)
• 27 September – Cyril Scott, composer and writer (died 1970)
• 10 December – E. H. Shepard, artist and book illustrator (died 1976)
• 27 December – Sydney Greenstreet, actor (died 1954)

Deaths

• 22 January – John Vivian, Liberal MP, member of the Vivian family, 60^[13]
• 18 February – Rayner Stephens, radical reformer and Methodist minister (born 1805)
• 25 February – Charles Peace, criminal (executed) (born 1832)^[14]
• 3 March
  • William Kingdon Clifford, geometer and philosopher (born 1845)
  • William Howitt, historical writer and poet (born 1792)
  • Annie Keary, novelist, poet and children's writer (born 1825)
• 22 March – Sir John Woodford, general and archaeologist (born 1785)
• 23 March – Sir Walter Trevelyan, naturalist and geologist (born 1797)
• 8 April – Sir Anthony Panizzi, librarian (born 1797 in Italy)
• 21 April – George Hadfield, radical politician (born 1787)
• 25 April – Charles Tennyson Turner, poet (born 1808)
• 4 May – William Froude, hydrodynamicist (born 1810)
• 8 May – Henry Collen, royal miniature portrait painter (born 1797)
• 10 May – Robert Thompson Crawshay, ironmaster (born 1817)^[15]
• 3 June – Frances Ridley Havergal, religious poet (born 1836)^[16]
• 7 June – William Tilbury Fox, dermatologist (born 1836)^[17]
• 3 August – Joseph Severn, painter (born 1793)
• 10 August – George Long, classical scholar (born 1800)
• 20 August – Sir John Shaw-Lebevre, barrister, Whig politician and civil servant (born 1797)
• 19 September – Clara Rousby, actress (born 1848)^[18]
• 23 September – Francis Kilvert, diarist (peritonitis) (born 1840)^[19]
• 26 September – Sir William Rowan, field marshal (born 1789)
• 5 November – James Clerk Maxwell, physicist (born 1831)^[20]
• 6 December – John Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland (born 1800)
• 11 December – William Thomas (Gwilym Marles), minister and poet (born 1834)^[21]
• 13 December – William Calcraft, hangman (born 1800)