1869 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1869.

Events

• February 3 – Booth's Theatre opens on Manhattan with the owner, Edwin Booth, playing the male lead in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
• May 22 – Serial publication of Anthony Trollope's novel He Knew He Was Right concludes and it is issued in London as a book, the first to include a fictional private investigator, ex-policeman Samuel Bozzle (in a case of marital breakdown).
• August
  • Ambrose Bierce, writing a satirical column for the San Francisco News Letter, begins to produce the cynical definitions which will eventually become The Devil's Dictionary.
  • Macmillan Publishing opens its first American office in New York City, headed by George Edward Brett.^[1]
• October 5 – Model, poet and artist Elizabeth Siddal (d. 1862) is exhumed at Highgate Cemetery in London in order to recover the manuscript of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poems buried with her.
• December – Publication of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace («Война и миръ», Voyna i mir) complete in book form concludes. It is printed in Moscow and sold by the author on subscription.^[2]

New books

• Louisa May Alcott – Good Wives
• Thomas Bailey Aldrich – The Story of a Bad Boy
• Horatio Alger, Jr. – Luck and Pluck
• R. M. Ballantyne – Erling the Bold
• R. D. Blackmore – Lorna Doone
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky – The Idiot (Идіотъ)
• Alexandre Dumas, père – The Knight of Sainte-Hermine (Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine, unfinished; first published 2005)
• Gustave Flaubert – Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale)
• Émile Gaboriau – Monsieur Lecoq
• Ivan Goncharov – The Precipice (Обрыв)
• Edmond and Jules de Goncourt – Madame Gervaisais
• Victor Hugo – The Man Who Laughs (L'Homme qui rit)
• Sheridan Le Fanu – The Wyvern Mystery
• Joaquim Manuel de Macedo – A Luneta Mágica ("The Magical Glasses")
• Hector Malot – Romain Kalbris
• Florence Montgomery – Misunderstood
• Charles Reade – Foul Play
• Capt. Hawley Smart – Breezie Langton
• Hesba Stretton – Alone in London
• Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
• Charlotte M. Yonge – The Chaplet of Pearls

New drama

• Navalram Pandya – Veermati
• Mendele Mocher Sforim – Di Takse ("The Tax"; unperformed)

Poetry

• Henry Kendall – Leaves from Australian Forests

Non-fiction

• Matthew Arnold – Culture and Anarchy
• P. T. Barnum – Struggles and Triumphs
• Warren Felt Evans – The Mental Cure, illustrating the influence of the Mind on the Body
• William Ewart Gladstone – Juventus Mundi: The gods and men of 'the heroic' age
• John Stuart Mill – The Subjection of Women
• Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad
• Richard Wagner – Das Judenthum in der Musik ("Jewishness in Music")
• Alexander Wilder – New Platonism and Alchemy

Births

• January 15 – Stanisław Wyspiański, Polish dramatist, poet, painter and architect (died 1907)
• February 8 – Victor Ido, born Hans van de Wall, Dutch East Indian journalist, novelist and playwright (died 1948)
• February 11 – Else Lasker-Schüler, German-born poet, playwright and short story writer (died 1945)
• March 11 – F. G. Loring, English writer and naval officer (died 1951)
• March 14 – Algernon Blackwood, English writer (died 1951)
• May 10 – Rachel Davis Harris, African American librarian (died 1969)
• May 23 – Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, American poet (died 1944)
• June 10 – Arthur Shearly Cripps, English-born poet, short story writer and Anglican priest in Africa (died 1952)
• July 1 – William Strunk, Jr., American professor of English (died 1946)
• July 8 – William Vaughn Moody, American dramatist and poet (died 1910)
• July 29 – Booth Tarkington, American novelist (died 1946)
• August 10 – Laurence Binyon, English poet and scholar (died 1943)
• October 6 – Bo Bergman, Swedish poet (died 1967)
• November 15 – Charlotte Mew, English poet (suicide, 1928)
• November 20 – Zinaida Gippius, Russian writer (died 1945)
• November 22 – André Gide, French writer (died 1951)
• December 22 – Edwin Arlington Robinson, American poet (died 1935)
• December 30 – Stephen Leacock, English-born Canadian humorist and economist (died 1944)

Deaths

• January 20 – Carl Wilhelm Göttling, German classical commentator (born 1793)^[3]
• January 30 – William Carleton, Irish writer (born 1794)
• February 15 – Ghalib, Indian poet (born 1796)
• February 28 – Alphonse de Lamartine, French poet and politician (born 1790)
• May 18 – Peter Cunningham, British literary scholar and antiquarian (born 1816)
• July 19 – Victor Aimé Huber, German travel writer and literary historian (born 1800)
• August 2 – Thomas Medwin, English poet, biographer and translator (born 1788)
• October 18 – Simon Jenko, Slovene poet (born 1835)
• November 3 – Andreas Kalvos, Greek Romantic poet and dramatist (born 1792)

References