1892 in literature

The year 1892 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• February 22 - Oscar Wilde's comedy Lady Windermere's Fan premières at St James's Theatre in London starring Winifred Emery and Marion Terry.
• April 27 - The magazine Isis is established by students at the University of Oxford.
• September 12 - 11-year-old Virginia Stephen, the later novelist Virginia Woolf, takes a boat trip to Godrevy Lighthouse on a family holiday in Cornwall.^[1]
• October 31 - The first collection of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories from The Strand Magazine (June 1891–June 1892), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, is published by George Newnes in London; it includes Doyle's favourite, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" (originally published in February).
• December 9 - George Bernard Shaw's first play Widowers' Houses has its first performance, at the Royalty Theatre in London under the auspices of the Independent Theatre Society. The author is booed.^[2]
• December 21 - Brandon Thomas' farce Charley's Aunt begins a record-breaking London run at the Royalty Theatre (following a pre-London opening at Bury St Edmunds on February 29).
• Rehearsals for the première of Oscar Wilde's play Salome for inclusion in Sarah Bernhardt's London season are halted when the British Lord Chamberlain's licensor of plays prohibits it for inclusion of Biblical characters.
• The Irish Literary Society is founded by W. B. Yeats, T. W. Rolleston and Charles Gavan Duffy in London, and the National Literary Society by Yeats in Dublin with scholar Douglas Hyde as its first president.^[3]
• Shadows Uplifted by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper becomes the second novel by an African-American woman published in the United States.
• The Schauspielhaus Zürich opens as the Volkstheater am Pfauen, a music hall.

New books

• Mary Elizabeth Braddon - The Venetians
• Rhoda Broughton - Mrs. Bligh
• Gabriele D'Annunzio - L'innocente
• Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• Theodor Fontane - Frau Jenny Treibel
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper
• George Gissing - Born in Exile
• George and Weedon Grossmith - The Diary of a Nobody (book publication)
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper - Shadows Uplifted
• Herman Heijermans - Trinette
• Emily Lawless - Grania: The Story of an Island
• J. McCullough - Golf in the Year 2000
• Helen Mathers, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker and 21 others - The Fate of Fenella
• Karl May - Durch Wüste und Harem
• Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne - The Wrecker
• Mark Twain - The American Claimant
• Jules Verne - Mistress Branican
• Mary Augusta Ward - The History of David Grieve
• Israel Zangwill
  • The Big Bow Mystery
  • Children of the Ghetto
• Émile Zola - La Débâcle

New drama

• José Echegaray - Mariana
• Georges Feydeau - Champignol malgré lui
• Jacob Mikhailovich Gordin
  • Der pogrom in rusland ("The Pogrom in Russia")
  • Tsvey veltn, oder Der groyser sotsialist ("Two Worlds, or The Great Socialist")^[4]
  • Der yidisher kenig lir ("The Yiddish King Lear")
• Gerhart Hauptmann - The Weavers (Die Weber)
• Brandon Thomas - Charley's Aunt
• Oscar Wilde - Lady Windermere's Fan

Poetry

• Rudyard Kipling - Barrack-Room Ballads (including Gunga Din)
• W. B. Yeats - The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics

Non-fiction

• Peter Kropotkin - The Conquest of Bread
• Papus - La Kabbale
• Ferdinand Praeger (posthumously) - Wagner As I Knew Him

Births

• January 3 – J. R. R. Tolkien, South African-born English novelist and scholar (died 1973)
• February 8 – Ralph Chubb, English poet, printer and artist (died 1960)
• February 22 – Edna St. Vincent Millay, American poet (died 1950)
• February 23 – Agnes Smedley, American journalist and writer (died 1950)
• March 1 – Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Japanese short story writer and poet (suicide, 1927)
• March 18 – Robert P. T. Coffin, American poet, essayist, novelist and academic (died 1955)
• March 22 – Karel Poláček, Czech writer, humorist and journalist (died 1944)
• June 12 – Djuna Barnes, American writer (died 1982)
• June 26 – Pearl S. Buck (Pearl Sydenstricker), American writer (died 1973)
• July 1 – James M. Cain, American author and journalist (died 1977)
• July 12 – Bruno Schulz, Polish writer and artist (killed 1942)
• August 5 – Margery Fish, English gardening writer (died 1969)
• October 9 – Ivo Andrić, Serbo-Croatian novelist and Nobel Prize winner (died 1975)

Deaths

• January 20 – Christopher Pearse Cranch, American poet and magazine editor (born 1813)
• January 28 – Gustav Zerffi, Hungarian journalist and rationalist (born 1820)
• March 26 – Walt Whitman, American poet (born 1819)
• July 10 – Rudolf Westphal, German classical scholar (born 1826)
• July 15 – Thomas Cooper, English Chartist poet (born 1805)
• July 18 – Rose Terry Cooke, American poet and novelist (born 1827)
• August 25 – Richard Lewis Nettleship, English philosopher (born 1846)
• September 7 – John Greenleaf Whittier, American Quaker poet (born 1807)
• September 17 – Ignaz Vincenz Zingerle, Austrian poet (born 1825)
• September 23 – George Grub, Scottish church historian (born 1812)
• October 17 – David Edelstadt, Russian-born American poet in Yiddish (born 1866)
• October 21 – Anne Charlotte Leffler, Swedish novelist and dramatist (born 1849)
• October 24 – Anton Gindely, Bohemian historian (born 1829)
• December 27 – Orange Judd, American editor and publisher (born 1822)

References