1870 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1871.

Events

Luke Fildes – The Empty Chair (engraving). Fildes, the illustrator for Edwin Drood at the time of Charles Dickens's death, shows Dickens's empty chair in his study at Gads Hill Place. It appears in the Christmas edition of the The Graphic and thousands of prints of it are sold.^[1]

• March 7 – Thomas Hardy meets his first wife, Emma Gifford, in Cornwall.^[2]
• March 28 – Serialisation of Kenward Philp's The Bowery Detective in The Fireside Companion (New York) begins, the first known story to include the word detective in the title.
• April—September – Serialisation of Charles Dickens' last novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood, left unfinished due to his death on June 9 at Gads Hill Place in Kent from a stroke aged 58.^[3]
• Spring – Serial publication begins of Aleksis Kivi's only novel Seitsemän veljestä ("Seven Brothers"), the first significant Finnish language novel.
• August 24/25 – Libraries of the University of Strasbourg and the City of Strasbourg at Temple Neuf are destroyed by fire during the Siege of Strasbourg in the Franco-Prussian War resulting in the loss of 3,446 medieval manuscripts, including the original 12th-century Hortus deliciarum compiled by Herrad of Landsberg, and rare Renaissance books.^[4]
• September 17 – First performance of Alexander Pushkin's play Boris Godunov (1825) at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, given by the artists of the Alexandrinsky Theatre.
• c. September 20 – Friedrich Engels moves permanently to London from Manchester.^[5]
• December 18 – The Russian literary weekly Niva («Ни́ва», "Cornfield") is first published by Adolf Marks in Saint Petersburg.
• Karl May begins a second 4-year prison sentence for thefts and frauds, at Waldheim, Saxony.
• The David Sassoon Library in Bombay is completed.

New books

Fiction

• Thomas Bailey Aldrich – The Story of a Bad Boy
• Thomas Archer – The Terrible Sights of London
• Rhoda Broughton – Red as a Rose is She
• Wilkie Collins – Man and Wife
• José Maria de Eça de Queiroz and Ramalho Ortigão – O Mistério da Estrada de Sintra (The Mystery of the Sintra Road)
• Charles Dickens – The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• Benjamin Disraeli – Lothair
• Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Eternal Husband («Вечный муж», Vechny muzh)
• Edward Jenkins – Ginx's Baby: his birth and other misfortunes
• Mór Jókai – Fekete gyémántok (The Dark Diamonds)
• Aleksis Kivi – Seitsemän veljestä
• Jonas Lie – Den Fremsynte (The Visionary or Pictures From Nordland)
• George Meredith – The Adventures of Harry Richmond (begins serial publication)
• William Morris – The Earthly Paradise
• Leopold von Sacher-Masoch – Venus in Furs (Venus im Pelz)
• Bayard Taylor – Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania
• Anthony Trollope – The Vicar of Bullhampton
• Jules Verne
  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers)
  • Around the Moon (Autour de la Lune)
• Charlotte M. Yonge – The Caged Lion

Drama

• James Albery – Two Roses
• Ludwig Anzengruber (as L. Gruber) – Der Pfarrer von Kirchfeld (The Priest of Kirchfeld)
• Pietro Cossa – Nero
• Lydia Koidula
  • Maret ja Miina (or Kosjakased; The Betrothal Birches)
  • Saaremaa Onupoeg (The Cousin from Saaremaa)
• Lord Newry – Ecarte
• George Sand and Sarah Bernhardt – L'Autre
• Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy – Tsar Boris («Царь Борис», published)

Poetry

Lear's illustration of The Owl and the Pussycat from Nonsense Songs

• Bret Harte – The Heathen Chinee
• Edward Lear – Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets (dated 1871),^[6] including "The Owl and the Pussycat"
• Giovanni Marradi – Canzone moderne
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Poems,^[6] including "Jenny" and a fragment of "The House of Life"

Non-fiction

• J. E. Austen-Leigh – A Memoir of Jane Austen
• Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1st edition)
• Richard William Church – Life of St. Anselm
• Hargrave Jennings – The Rosicrucians, their Rites and Mysteries
• William Robinson – The Wild Garden

Births

• January 3 – Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson), Australian novelist (died 1946)
• March 5 – Frank Norris, American novelist (died 1902)
• April 7 – Gustav Landauer, German philosopher and revolutionary (murdered 1919)
• June 25 – Erskine Childers, English novelist (executed 1922)
• July 27 – Hilaire Belloc, French-born English writer, poet and satirist (died 1953)
• October 22 (October 10 OS) – Ivan Bunin, Russian-born writer, recipient of Nobel Prize in Literature (died 1953)
• October 29 – Gerald Duckworth, English publisher (died 1937)
• December 17 – Ioan A. Bassarabescu, Romanian short story writer and politician (died 1952)
• December 18 – Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), English short story writer and dramatist (killed in action 1916)

Deaths

• February 25 – Henrik Hertz, Danish poet (born 1797)
• April 24 – Louisa Stuart Costello, Irish writer on history and travel (born 1799)
• June 9 – Charles Dickens, English novelist (born 1812)
• June 11 – William Gilmore Simms, American poet, novelist and historian (born 1806)
• July 19 – Benjamin Thorpe, scholar of Old English (born c. 1782)
• July 20 – Jules de Goncourt, French novelist and critic (syphilis, born 1830)^[7]
• July 24 – Anders Abraham Grafström, Swedish poet and historian (born 1790)
• September 12 – Fitz Hugh Ludlow, American author and explorer (born 1836)
• November 4 – Comte de Lautreamont, French poet and writer (born 1846)^[8]
• December 5 – Alexandre Dumas, père, French novelist (born 1802)

References