1884 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1884.

Events

• January – Arthur Conan Doyle's (anonymous) story based on the disappearance of the Mary Celeste's crew in 1872, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", is published in the Cornhill Magazine.
• January 14 – Giovanni Verga's play Cavalleria rusticana, dramatised from his short story, is first performed, by Cesare Rossi's company at the Teatro Carignano in Turin starring Eleonora Duse.^[1]
• February 1 – A New English Dictionary on historical principles, part 1, edited by James A. H. Murray, the first fascicle of what will become The Oxford English Dictionary, is published in England.^[2]
• February 18 – English Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins takes up a post as professor of Greek and Latin at University College Dublin in Ireland, where he will remain until his death in 1889 and write his "terrible sonnets".
• May 29 – Oscar Wilde marries Constance Lloyd in London.^[3]
• September 27 – Publication in Sweden of August Strindberg's short stories Getting Married (Giftas). A week later, the author is prosecuted for blasphemy, of which he is acquitted on November 17.^[4]
• December 10 – Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is first published, in London.
• Poet Alfred Tennyson is created 1st Baron Tennyson of Aldworth in the County of Sussex and of Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, hereafter being known as Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
• Lie Kim Hok's collection of children's stories Sobat Anak-anak is published in Buitenzorg, the first work of popular literature in the Dutch East Indies.^[5] His Malay language syair (poem) Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari is also first published.
• The first translation of Shakespeare's plays in Japan is made, an adaptation of Julius Caesar by Tsubouchi Shōyō as a Bunraku puppet play, The Strange Case of Caesar: the renowned sharpness of the blade of liberty.^[6]

New books

Fiction

• Edwin Abbott Abbott – Flatland
• Henry Brooks Adams – Esther
• Juhani Aho – Rautatie
• Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) – La regenta, vol. 1
• Aluísio de Azevedo – Casa de Pensão
• Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly – What Never Dies
• R. D. Blackmore – Tommy Upmore
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Ishmael. A Novel
• Bankim Chandra Chatterji – Devi Chaudhurani
• Wilkie Collins – I Say No
• Alphonse Daudet – Sapho
• Amy Dillwyn – Jill
• J.-K. Huysmans
  • À rebours
  • Controcorrente
• Helen Hunt Jackson – Ramona
• Vernon Lee – Miss Brown
• George A. Moore – A Mummer's Wife
• Mrs. Oliphant
  • The Ladies Lindores
  • The Wizard's Son
• Rachilde – Monsieur Vénus
• Jules Verne
  • The Archipelago on Fire (L’Archipel en feu)
  • The Vanished Diamond (L'Étoile du sud)
• Mary Augusta Ward – Miss Bretherton

Drama

• Henrik Ibsen – The Wild Duck (Vildanden)
• Giovanni Verga – Cavalleria rusticana
• Friedrich Theodor Vischer – Nicht Ia: Schwäbisches Lustspiel in drei Aufzügen

Poetry

• Lie Kim Hok – Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari
• Rabindranath Tagore – Bhanusimha Thakurer Padabali
• William Watson – Epigrams of Art, Life and Nature

Non-fiction

• Friedrich Engels – The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats)
• The Herefordshire Pomona
• Henry James – A Little Tour in France
• Vernon Lee
  • The Countess of Albany
  • Euphorion: Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediæval in the Renaissance
• George Fletcher Moore – Diary of Ten Years Eventful Life of an Early Settler in Western Australia
• Arnold Toynbee – Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England

Births

• January 2 – Oscar Micheaux, African American author and filmmaker (died 1951)
• January 18 – Arthur Ransome, English author of childrens' and other books (died 1967)
• March 13 – Sir Hugh Walpole, New Zealand-born novelist (died 1941)
• April 1 – J. C. Squire, English writer and critic (died 1958)
• April 3 – Nicos Nicolaides, Greek Cypriot writer (died 1956)
• June 5 – Ivy Compton-Burnett, English novelist, (died 1969)
• August 8 – Sara Teasdale, American poet (died 1933)
• August 10 – Panait Istrati, Romanian novelist, short story writer and political essayist (died 1935)
• August 24 – Earl Derr Biggers, American writer (died 1933)
• September 20 – Maxwell Perkins, American literary editor (died 1947)
• Mourning Dove (Christal Quintasket or Hum-isha-ma), Native American writer (died 1936)

Deaths

• January 3 – William Billington, English poet and publican (born 1825)
• January 7 – John Harris, English poet (born 1820)
• January 11 – Hermann Ulrici, German philosopher (born 1806)
• February 2 – Abraham Hayward, English man of letters (born 1801)
• February 11 – Thomas Chenery, Barbadian-born English scholar and editor (born 1826)
• March 10 – William Blanchard Jerrold, English journalist (born 1826)
• March 24 – François Mignet, French historian (born 1796)
• April 6 – Emanuel Geibel, German poet (born 1815)
• April 11 – Charles Reade, English novelist (born 1814)
• May 27 – Caroline Dexter, English-born Australian feminist writer (born 1819)
• May 28 – Joseph d'Haussonville, French historian (born 1809)
• June 10 – Johann Gustav Droysen, German historian (born 1808)
• June 27 – Andreas Munch, Norwegian poet (born 1811)
• July 23 – Anna Mary Howitt, English writer, painter and feminist (born 1822)
• September 18 – Boleslav Markevich, Russian novelist, essayist and critic (born 1922)
• October 16 – Paul Lacroix, French novelist and journalist (born 1806)
• October 19 – Karl Hillebrand, German literary historian and philosopher (born 1829)
• November 3 – František Doucha, Czech translator (born 1810)
• November 6 – William Wells Brown, African-American writer (born 1814)

Awards

• Gaisford Prize – Harry Hammond House (Corpus Christi) for iambics

References