1879 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1879.

Events

• January 1 – Benjamin Henry Blackwell opens the first Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford.^[1]
• January 11 – During the construction of an extension to Birmingham Central Library in England, a fire destroys 50,000 books.
• September 6 – First publication of a story by Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley" (anonymously) in Chambers's Journal.
• October 10 – American poet Ethel Lynn Beers' collected works All Quiet Along The Potomac and Other Poems (including her most well-known work "All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight") are published; the following day she dies aged 52 at Orange, New Jersey.
• December 21 – Henrik Ibsen's controversial "modern drama" A Doll's House premières at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen (having been first published on December 4 in the city).
• Publication of the first complete edition of Georg Büchner's works as Georg Büchner's sämmtliche Werke, edited by Karl Emil Franzos, is completed in Frankfurt, including the first printing of the play Wozzeck, left unfinished on the writer's death in 1837.
• English critic and poet Theodore Watts-Dunton takes the alcoholic poet Algernon Charles Swinburne into his permanent care at Watts' Putney home.
• The Rabelais Club is founded in London, holding a literary dinner once every two months. High-profile members include novelists Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Bret Harte, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Walter Besant, and George du Maurier.
• The Swiss publisher Birkhäuser is founded.

New books

Births

• January 1 – E. M. Forster, English novelist and critic (died 1970)
• January 26 – Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, German-born English historian and political scientist (died 1957)
• February 13 – Sarojini Naidu (née Chattopadhyay), Indian poet and politician (died 1949)
• February 17 – Dorothy Canfield Fisher, American activist and novelist (died 1958)
• March 14 – Harold Monro, English poet and promoter of poetry (died 1932)
• April 14 – James Branch Cabell, American novelist (died 1958)
• May 8 – Ioan C. Filitti, Romanian historian, political theorist and essayist (died 1945)
• June 4 – Percy Lubbock, English essayist, critic and biographer (died 1965)
• July 19 – Ferenc Móra, Hungarian children's writer and editor (died 1934)
• July 20 – Claude Scudamore Jarvis, English writer, Arabist and naturalist (died 1953)
• August 19 – Lascăr Vorel, Romanian visual artist and short story writer (died 1918)
• September 19 – Louis Joseph Vance, American novelist (died 1933)
• October 2 – Wallace Stevens, American poet (died 1955)
• December 3 – Kafū Nagai (永井 荷風), Japanese novelist (died 1959)
• December 24 – Émile Nelligan, French Canadian poet (died 1941)

Deaths

• January 16 – Octave Crémazie, "the father of French Canadian poetry" (born 1827)
• February 28 – Hortense Allart, French feminist novelist (born 1801)
• March 3
  • William Howitt, English historical writer and poet (born 1792)
  • Annie Keary, English novelist, poet and children's writer (born 1825)
• March 9 – Mark Prager Lindo, Dutch historian (born 1819)
• March 19 – Claire Clairmont, English-born diarist and correspondent (born 1798)
• April 8 – Anthony Panizzi, Italian-born English librarian (born 1797)
• April 21 – George Hadfield, English radical author and politician (born 1787)
• April 25 – Charles Tennyson Turner, English poet (born 1808)
• April 30 – Sarah Josepha Hale, American novelist and poet (born 1788)
• June 19 – George W. M. Reynolds, English popular novelist (born 1814)
• July 4 – Sarah Dorsey, American novelist and historian (born 1829)
• July 30 – Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, Norwegian poet and journalist (born 1818)
• September 20 – Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon, Canadian novelist and poet (born 1829)
• September 23 – Francis Kilvert, English diarist and cleric (born 1840)
• October 11 – Ethel Lynn Beers, American poet (born 1827)
• October 13 – Henry Charles Carey, American economist (born 1793)
• October 28 – Marie Roch Louis Reybaud, French political economist (born 1799)
• October 31
  • Jacob Abbott, American children's writer (born 1803)
  • John Baldwin Buckstone, English dramatist (born 1802)
• December 27 – William Hepworth Dixon, English historian, traveller and journal editor (born 1821)

Awards

• Newdigate Prize – Thomas Mosse Macdonald^[3]

References