1879 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Benjamin Disraeli
• Parliament – 21st

  Events

• 1 January – Benjamin Henry Blackwell opens the first Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford.
• 8 January – British army occupies Kandahar in Afghanistan.
• 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.
• March – the standard design of pillar box reverts to a cylindrical shape.
• 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.
• 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 June – William Denny and Brothers launch the world's first ocean-going ship to be built of mild steel, the SS Rotomahana, at Dumbarton.
• 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.
• 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.
• September – Doncaster Rovers F.C. formed by railway fitter Albert Jenkins.
• 18 September – Blackpool Illuminations lit for the first time.
• 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.
• 13 October – first female students admitted to study for degrees of Oxford University, at the new Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville Hall and with the Society of Oxford Home-Students.
• 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.
• November-March 1880 – probably the longest ever fog in the city's history engulfs London.
• 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.
• 30 December – the comic opera The Pirates of Penzance is first presented in Paignton, Devon 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, with an annual mean of.

  Undated

• Gabardine is invented by Thomas Burberry, founder of the Burberry fashion house in Basingstoke.
• 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.
• George Meredith's novel The Egoist.
• Anthony Trollope's last Palliser novel The Duke's Children.
• The Boy's Own Paper first published.

  Births

• 1 January
• * E. M. Forster, writer
• * Ernest Jones, psychoanalyst
• 13 January – William Reid Dick, sculptor
• 26 February – Frank Bridge, composer
• 5 March – William Beveridge, economist and social reformer
• 20 April – Robert Wilson Lynd, essayist and writer
• 26 April – Owen Willans Richardson, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 29 April – Thomas Beecham, conductor
• 19 May – Viscount Waldorf Astor, businessman and politician
• 25 May – Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, Canadian-British business tycoon, politician and writer
• 30 May – Colin Blythe, cricketer
• 4 June – Mabel Lucie Attwell, illustrator
• 6 June – Patrick Abercrombie, town planner
• 15 July – Joseph Campbell, poet and lyricist
• 7 August – James Peters, black rugby union international
• 13 August – John Ireland, composer
• 27 September – Cyril Scott, composer and writer
• 10 December – E. H. Shepard, artist and book illustrator
• 27 December – Sydney Greenstreet, actor

  Deaths

• 18 February – Rayner Stephens, radical reformer and Methodist minister
• 25 February – Charles Peace, criminal
• 10 August – George Long, classical scholar
• 5 November – James Clerk Maxwell, physicist
• 6 December – William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland
• 11 December – William Thomas, minister and poet
• 13 December – William Calcraft, hangman