1883 in literature

The Adventures of Pinocchio, illustration from the first Italian edition

• January 13 – Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People (En folkefiende, 1882) gains its first performance at the Christiania Theatre.[1]
• February – Carlo Collodi's children's story The Adventures of Pinocchio appears first in Italy complete in book form as Le avventure di Pinocchio.
• May 23 – Robert Louis Stevenson's children's pirate adventure novel Treasure Island first appears in book form from Cassell in London.
• June – Footlights, the Cambridge University drama club, gives its first performance.
• June 4 – Mihai Eminescu reads his nationalist poem Doina to an enthusiastic crowd at Junimea in Iași.[2] It is sometimes described as his last work before a mental breakdown later this year. Eminescu's host Ion Creangă recalls it being composed on the spot,[3] but some researchers date it back to 1870.[4]
• June 30–October 20 – Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is serialized in the British magazine Young Folks as by "Captain George North". Stevenson completes writing it at the end of the summer in France.
• July – The first issue of Fiamuri Arbërit, an Albanian literary and political magazine, is published from Cosenza. Managed by Girolamo de Rada, it promotes Ottomanism against Philhellenism.[5]
• August 29 – Dunfermline Carnegie Library, the first Carnegie library, opens in Andrew Carnegie's home town, Dunfermline, Scotland.
• December 27 – 28 – The Modern Language Association of America holds its first meeting.

Uncertain dates

• Mark Twain's memoirs Life on the Mississippi are published simultaneously in Boston (Massachusetts) and London, as the first major book submitted to a publisher in typescript.[6]
• Kisari Mohan Ganguli begins publication of the first English-language translation of the Mahabharata.
• The Deutsches Theater company is formed in Berlin.

• January 1 – Alberto Gerchunoff, Argentine writer (died 1949)
• January 6 – Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-born poet and novelist writing in Arabic and English (died 1931)
• January 10 – Aleksei Tolstoy, Russian writer (died 1945)
• January 20 – Forrest Wilson, American journalist and author (died 1942)
• January 21 – Olav Aukrust, Norwegian poet and teacher (died 1929)
• February 15 – Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Ward), English novelist (died 1959)
• February 20 – Naoya Shiga, Japanese novelist (died 1971)
• March 9 – Umberto Saba, Italian poet and novelist (died 1957)
• March 17 – Urmuz, Romanian short prose writer (died 1923)
• April 30 – Jaroslav Hašek, Czech novelist (died 1923)
• June 3 – Franz Kafka, Czech novelist writing in German (died 1924)
• June 4 – Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, English crime writer (died 1955)
• December 13 – Belle da Costa Greene, American librarian (died 1950)
• December 23 – Yoshishige Abe, Japanese philosopher and politician (died 1966)
• December 30 – Marie Gevers, Belgian novelist writing in French (died 1975)

• January 21 – Anna Eliza Bray, English novelist and travel writer (born 1790)
• March 14 – Karl Marx, German philosopher (born 1818)
• April 24 – Jules Sandeau, French novelist (born 1811)
• May 15 – Mary Elizabeth Mohl ("Clarkey"), English-born literary salonnière (born 1793)
• May 23 – Cyprian Norwid, Polish poet, dramatist and artist (born 1821)
• June 20 – Gustave Aimard, French novelist (born 1818)
• July 16 – Edward Backhouse Eastwick, Anglo-Indian orientalist and translator (born 1814)
• August 31 – Levin Schücking, German novelist (born 1814)
• September 2 – Léon Halévy, French historian and dramatist (born 1802)
• September 3 – Ivan Turgenev, Russian novelist (born 1818)
• September 25 – George Ayliffe Poole, English writer and cleric (born 1809)
• November 26 – Sojourner Truth, African-American abolitionist, women's rights activist, and author (born 1797)
• December 13 – Victor de Laprade, French poet and critic (born 1812)