1872 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1872.

Events

*March
**The Federation of Madrid expels Paul Lafargue and all other signatories to an ostensibly subversive article in ''La Emancipación''.
**Serialisation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Gothic vampire novella ''Carmilla'' ends in the monthly '' The Dark Blue''. Later this year it appears in his collection '' In a Glass Darkly''. Set in the Duchy of Styria, it helps to introduce the lesbian vampire genre.
* June 19 – The Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire is founded in Strasbourg as the ''Kaiserliche Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek zu Straßburg'', a public regional and academic library for the new German territory of Alsace-Lorraine (''Reichsland Elsass-Lothringen'') after destruction of its predecessors in the Siege of Strasbourg in the Franco-Prussian War.
*July – Rose la Touche rejects a proposal from John Ruskin for the last time.
* July 7 – Paul Verlaine abandons his family for London with Arthur Rimbaud.
* September 13 ( O. S.: September 1) – Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu first attends the literary club '' Junimea'' of Iași and reads out his fantasy story ''Poor Dionis (Sărmanul Dionis)''. It is poorly received by the ''Junimists''.
* September 30 – George MacDonald arrives in Boston for a lecture tour of the United States.
*November (approximate date) – Lafcadio Hearn becomes a reporter on the '' Cincinnati Daily Enquirer''.
* December 3 – George Smith presents the first translation of the '' Epic of Gilgamesh'' to a meeting of the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London.
* December 22 – Jules Verne's novel ''Around the World in Eighty Days (Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours)'' finishes serialisation (since November 2) in the daily '' Le Temps'', the day after the concluding date of the narrative.
*''unknown dates''
**Benito Pérez Galdós begins ''Trafalgar'', the first in the series of historical novels known as '' Episodios Nacionales''.
**The first university course in American Literature is held at Princeton University by John Seely Hart.
**The Scottish Gaelic magazine ''Féillire'' first appears as ''Almanac Gàilig air son 1872'' in Inverness.

New books

Fiction

* Machado de Assis – ''Ressurreição''
*Mary Elizabeth Braddon – ''To the Bitter End''
*Rhoda Broughton
**''Good-bye, Sweetheart!''
**''Poor Pretty Bobby''
* Samuel Butler – '' Erewhon''
*Edward Bulwer-Lytton – ''The Parisians''
* Wilkie Collins – ''Poor Miss Finch''
*Annie Hall Cudlip – ''A Passion in Tatters''
* Alphonse Daudet – ''Tartarin de Tarascon''
*Fyodor Dostoevsky – ''Demons'' (Бесы, ''Bésy'')
*Alexandre Dumas, père – ''Création et rédemption''
* George Eliot – '' Middlemarch'' (serial publication concluded)
* Mihai Eminescu – ''Poor Dionis'' (''Sărmanul Dionis'')
*Thomas Hardy (by the author of ''Desperate Remedies'') – '' Under the Greenwood Tree''
* Mór Jókai
**''Eppur si muove – És mégis mozog a Föld'' (And yet the Earth moves)
**''The Man with the Golden Touch (Az arany ember)''
* Sheridan Le Fanu
**'' In a Glass Darkly''
**''Willing to Die''
* Nikolai Leskov – ''The Cathedral Folk'' (Соборяне, ''Soboryane'')
* Eliza Lynn Linton – ''The True History of Joshua Davidson, Christian and Communist''
* Margaret Oliphant – ''At His Gates''
*Bayard Taylor – ''Beauty and The Beast, and Tales of Home''
*Anthony Trollope – ''The Golden Lion of Granpere''
*Jules Verne
**''The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa (Aventures de trois Russes et de trois Anglais dans l'Afrique australe)''
**'' The Fur Country (Le Pays des fourrures)''
* Émile Zola – '' La Curée''

Children and young adults

*R. D. Blackmore – ''The Maid of Sker''
*Frances Freeling Broderip – ''Tiny Tadpoles, and Other Tales''
* Juliana Horatia Ewing – '' A Flat Iron for a Farthing''
* George MacDonald – '' The Princess and the Goblin''
* Susan Coolidge – '' What Katy Did'' (first in the ''What Katy Did'' series of five books)
* Ouida – ''A Dog of Flanders''

Drama

* François Coppée – ''Les Bijoux de la Délivrance''
* Franz Grillparzer – '' The Jewess of Toledo'' (''Die Jüdin von Toledo'', first performed posthumously, written 1851)
* Prosper Mérimée – ''La Chambre bleue'' (published posthumously)
* August Strindberg – '' Master Olof''
* Ivan Turgenev – '' A Month in the Country'' («Месяц в деревне», ''Mesiats v derevne'', first performed)

Poetry

*José Hernández – '' Martín Fierro'' (first part)

Non-fiction

*'' Chambers's English Dictionary''
* William Cullen Bryant – '' Picturesque America'', vol. 1
* John Evans – ''The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain''
*Warren Felt Evans – ''Mental Medicine''
* Sophia Jex-Blake – ''Medical Women: A Thesis and a History''
* Friedrich Nietzsche – '' The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik)''
* Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah – ''Scrieri vechi perdute atingetóre de Dacia'' (Old Lost Writings Relating to Dacia; first installments)
* Henry Wilson – ''History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America'', vols. 1 & 2

Births

* January 31 – Zane Grey, American Western novelist (died 1939)
*March 31 – Mary Lewis Langworthy, American pageant writer (died 1949)
*April 4 – Frida Uhl, Austrian writer (died 1943)
* May 2 – Ichiyō Higuchi, Japanese writer (died 1896)
* May 21 (May 9 O.S.) – Teffi, born Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya, Russian-born humorist (died 1952)
* May 31 – W. Heath Robinson, English cartoonist and illustrator (died 1944)
* June 27 – Paul Laurence Dunbar, African American poet, novelist and playwright (died 1906)
* August 24 – Max Beerbohm, English essayist and parodist (died 1956)
* September 15 – Frances Garnet Wolseley, English horticulturist and garden writer (died 1936)
* September 22 – Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, American fiction writer and poet (died 1958)
* October 8 – John Cowper Powys, Anglo-Welsh novelist (died 1963)
* October 10 – Arthur Talmage Abernethy, American theologian and poet (died 1956)
* October 18 (October 6 O.S.) – Mikhail Kuzmin, Russian poet, novelist and composer (died 1936)
* October 20 – F. M. Mayor, English novelist (died 1932)
* December 28 – Pío Baroja, Spanish novelist (died 1956)

Deaths

* January 21 – Franz Grillparzer, Austrian poet and dramatist (born 1791)
*February 6 – Sir Thomas Phillipps, English book collector (born 1792)
* March 4 – Carsten Hauch, Danish poet (born 1790)
* March 10 – Giuseppe Mazzini, Italian philosopher, journalist and politician (born 1805)
* March 11 – Emily Taylor, English author, poet and hymn writer (born 1795)
* April 1 – Frederick Denison Maurice, English theologian (born 1805)
*April 13 – Samuel Bamford, English essayist and poet (born 1788)
* April 20 – Ljudevit Gaj, Croatian linguist and journalist (born 1809)
* May 13 – Moritz Hartmann, German poet (born 1821)
* May 29 – Frank Key Howard, American journalist and memoirist (born 1826)
* June 1 – Charles Lever, Irish novelist (born 1806)
* July 25 – Gregorio Gutiérrez González, Colombian poet (born 1826)
* August 8 – Heinrich Abeken, German theologian (born 1809)
* September 22 – Vladimir Dal, Russian lexicographer (born 1801)
* September 18 – Herbert Haines, English historian and Anglican theologian (born 1826)
* October 10 – Fanny Fern, American journalist, novelist and children's writer (born 1811)
* October 21 – Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné, Swiss historian (born 1794)
* November 16 – William Gilham, American military writer (born 1818)
* December 23 – Théophile Gautier, French poet and novelist (born 1811)

References

{{Year in literature article categories

Years of the 19th century in literature