1870 In Literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1870.

Events

*January 19 – Ivan Turgenev attends and writes about the public execution by guillotine of the spree killer Jean-Baptiste Troppmann outside the gates of La Roquette Prisons in Paris.
*March 7 – Thomas Hardy meets his first wife, Emma Gifford, in Cornwall.
*March 28 – Serialisation of Kenward Philp's ''The Bowery Detective'' in ''The Fireside Companion'' (New York) begins, the first known story to include the word ''detective'' in the title.
*April–September – The serialisation of Charles Dickens' last novel, ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'', is left unfinished on his death on June 9 at Gads Hill Place in Kent, from a stroke, aged 58.
*May – Karl May begins a second four-year prison sentence for thefts and frauds, at Waldheim, Saxony.
*Spring – Serial publication begins of Aleksis Kivi's only novel ''Seitsemän veljestä'' ("Seven Brothers"), the first notable novel in the Finnish language.
*August 24/ 25 – Libraries of the University of Strasbourg and the City of Strasbourg at Temple Neuf are destroyed by fire during the Siege of Strasbourg in the Franco-Prussian War, resulting in the loss of 3,446 medieval manuscripts, including the original 12th-century ''Hortus deliciarum'' compiled by Herrad of Landsberg, the Apologist codex containing the only text of the early ''Epistle to Diognetus'', and rare Renaissance books.
*September 17 – The first performance of Alexander Pushkin's play ''Boris Godunov'' (1825) is given at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg by members of the Alexandrinsky Theatre.
*c. September 20 – Friedrich Engels.
*December 18 – The Russian literary weekly '' Niva'' («Ни́ва», "Cornfield") is first published by Adolf Marks in Saint Petersburg.
*''unknown date'' – Construction of the David Sassoon Library in Bombay, India, is completed.

New books

Fiction

*William Harrison Ainsworth - ''Talbot Harland''
*Thomas Bailey Aldrich – ''The Story of a Bad Boy''
*Thomas Archer – ''The Terrible Sights of London''
*Rhoda Broughton – ''Red as a Rose is She''
*Wilkie Collins – '' Man and Wife''
*Annie Denton Cridge - ''Man's Rights; Or, How Would You Like It? Comprising Dreams''
* José Maria de Eça de Queiroz and Ramalho Ortigão – ' (The Mystery of the Sintra Road)
*Charles Dickens – ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood''
*Benjamin Disraeli – '' Lothair''
*Fyodor Dostoevsky – ''The Eternal Husband'' («Вечный муж», ''Vechny muzh'')
* Edward Jenkins – ''Ginx's Baby: his birth and other misfortunes''
*Mór Jókai – ''Fekete gyémántok'' (Black Diamonds, i. e. coal)
*Aleksis Kivi – ''Seitsemän veljestä'' (Seven Brothers)
* Jonas Lie – ''Den Fremsynte'' (The Visionary or Pictures From Nordland)
*George Meredith – ''The Adventures of Harry Richmond'' (begins serial publication)
*William Morris – ''The Earthly Paradise''
*Charles Reade - ''Put Yourself in His Place''
*Leopold von Sacher-Masoch – ''Venus in Furs (Venus im Pelz)''
*Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin – ''The History of a Town'' («История одного города», ''Istoriya odnogo goroda'')
*Bayard Taylor – '' Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania''
*Anthony Trollope
**''An Editor's Tales''
**''The Vicar of Bullhampton''
*Ivan Turgenev - ''Stepnoy korol Lir (Степной король Лир); novella, English translation: King Lear of the Steppes''
*Jules Verne
**''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers)''
**''Around the Moon (Autour de la Lune)''
*Charlotte M. Yonge – ''The Caged Lion''

Children and young people

* John Neal — ''Great Mysteries and Little Plagues''

Drama

*James Albery – ''Two Roses''
*Ludwig Anzengruber (as L. Gruber) – ''Der Pfarrer von Kirchfeld'' (The Priest of Kirchfeld)
*Henry James Byron – ''Uncle Dick's Darling''
*Pietro Cossa – ''Nero''
*Lydia Koidula
**''Maret ja Miina'' (or ''Kosjakased''; The Betrothal Birches)
**''Saaremaa Onupoeg'' (The Cousin from Saaremaa)
* Lord Newry – ''Ecarte''
*George Sand and Sarah Bernhardt – ''L'Autre''
*Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy – ''Tsar Boris'' («Царь Борис», published)

Poetry

*Bret Harte – ''The Heathen Chinee''
*Edward Lear – ''Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets'' (dated 1871), including "The Owl and the Pussycat"
*Giovanni Marradi – ''Canzone moderne''
*Dante Gabriel Rossetti – ''Poems,'' including "Jenny" and a fragment of "The House of Life"

Non-fiction

*J. E. Austen-Leigh – ''A Memoir of Jane Austen''
*''Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable'' (1st edition)
*Richard William Church – ''Life of St. Anselm''
*Thomas Wentworth Higginson - ''Army Life in a Black Regiment''
*Hargrave Jennings – ''The Rosicrucians, their Rites and Mysteries''
*Henry Maudsley – ''Body and Mind''
* William Robinson – ''The Wild Garden''
*Charles Dudley Warner - ''My Summer in a Garden and Calvin, A Study of Character''

Births

*January 3 – Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson), Australian novelist (died 1946)
*March 5 – Frank Norris, American novelist (died 1902)
*April 7 – Gustav Landauer, German philosopher and revolutionary (murdered 1919)
*June 25 – Erskine Childers, Irish novelist (executed 1922)
*July 27 – Hilaire Belloc, French-born English writer, poet and satirist (died 1953)
*October 18 – Petre P. Negulescu, Romanian philosopher (died 1951)
*October 22 (October 10 OS) – Ivan Bunin, Russian-born writer, recipient of Nobel Prize in Literature (died 1953)
*October 29 – Gerald Duckworth, English publisher (died 1937)
*December 17 – Ioan A. Bassarabescu, Romanian short story writer and politician (died 1952)
*December 18 – Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), English short story writer and dramatist (killed in action 1916)

Deaths

*February 25 – Henrik Hertz, Danish poet (born 1797)
*April 24 – Louisa Stuart Costello, Irish writer on history and travel (born 1799)
*June 9 – Charles Dickens, English novelist (born 1812)
*June 11 – William Gilmore Simms, American poet, novelist and historian (born 1806)
*June 24 – Adam Lindsay Gordon, Australian poet (born 1833)
*July 19 – Benjamin Thorpe, scholar of Old English (born c. 1782)
*July 20 – Jules de Goncourt, French novelist and critic (syphilis, born 1830)
*July 24 – Anders Abraham Grafström, Swedish poet and historian (born 1790)
*July 30 – Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, Norwegian journalist and poet (born 1818)
*September 12 – Fitz Hugh Ludlow, American author and explorer (born 1836)
*September 23 – Prosper Mérimée, French writer (b. 1803)
*November 4 – Comte de Lautreamont (Isidore Lucien Ducasse), French poet and writer (born 1846)
*December 5 – Alexandre Dumas, père, French novelist (born 1802)

References

{{Year in literature article categories

Years of the 19th century in literature