1839 in literature

List of years in literature (table)
… 1829 ^. 1830 ^. 1831 ^. 1832 ^. 1833 ^. 1834 ^. 1835 … 1836 1837 1838 -1839- 1840 1841 1842 … 1843 ^. 1844 ^. 1845 ^. 1846 ^. 1847 ^. 1848 ^. 1849 … In poetry: 1836 1837 1838 -1839- 1840 1841 1842
Related time period or subjects
… 1836 ^. 1837 ^. 1838 - 1839 - 1840 ^. 1841 ^. 1842 … … 1800s ^. 1810s ^. 1820s -1830s- 1840s ^. 1850s ^. 1860s … 18th century ^. 19th century ^. 20th century …
Art ^. Archaeology ^. Architecture ^. Literature ^. Music ^. Science +...

The year 1839 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

Washington Irving begins contributing regularly to The Knickerbocker, and will publish thirty new pieces in the magazine — including "The Creole Village," in which he will coin the phrase "the almighty dollar" — through March 1841.
John Roberton's pseudo-medical work On Diseases of the Generative System (1811) is declared to be indecent and becomes the centre of the important British constitutional case of Stockdale v. Hansard.

January 7 - Ouida, English novelist (d. 1908)
February 1 - James Herne, American dramatist (d. 1901)
February 22 - Francis Pharcellus Church, American editor and publisher (d. 1906)
March 16 - Sully Prudhomme, French poet and essayist, winner of the first Nobel Prize in Literature (d. 1907)
April 18 - Henry Kendall, Australian poet (d. 1882)
June 21 - Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Brazilian poet and novelist (d. 1908)
August 4 - Walter Pater, English writer (d. 1894)
August 9 - Gaston Paris, French writer and scholar (d. 1903)
September 10 - Charles Sanders Peirce, American philosopher (d. 1914)
November 29 - Ludwig Anzengruber, Austrian dramatist (d. 1889)