1843 in literature

Events

January

Serial publication of Charles Dickens' picaresque novel The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit by Chapman & Hall in London begins. In the July chapters, he lands his hero in the United States.

Publication of Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" in The Pioneer in Boston and poem "The Conqueror Worm" in Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia.

February – Macmillan Publishers is founded in London by Scottish brothers Daniel and Alexander Macmillan.

April 4 – William Wordsworth accepts the office of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom (following the death of Robert Southey on March 21) on being assured that it is regarded as a purely honorific position.

June 21 – Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Gold-Bug" begins serialization in the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper as the winning entry in a competition, earning Poe a $100 prize, being widely reprinted, given a theatrical adaptation, and popularizing cryptography.

July – Margaret Fuller's "The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women" is published in The Dial magazine in the United States. It would later be expanded into the book Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845).

August 19 – Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic short story "The Black Cat" is first published in The Saturday Evening Post.

August 22 – The Theatres Act is passed in the United Kingdom, ending the virtual monopoly on theatrical performances held by the patent theatres, encouraging the development of popular entertainment.

September – Ada Lovelace (Byron's daughter) translates and expands Menabrea’s notes on Charles Babbage's analytical engine, including an algorithm for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers, regarded as the world's first computer program.

October – Anna Atkins begins publication of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, a collection of contact printed cyanotype photograms of algae which forms the first book illustrated with photographic images.

December 17 – Publication of Charles Dickens' novella A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Chapman & Hall at his expense, introducing the character Ebenezer Scrooge. Released on December 19 it sells out by Christmas Eve.

Christmas – Thomas Hood's poem "The Song of the Shirt" is first published, in Punch.

date unknown

The Routledge publishing imprint is established in London by Cumberland-born bookseller George Routledge.

The steam-powered rotary printing press is invented by Richard March Hoe in the United States.

Fiction

W. Harrison Ainsworth – Windsor Castle

Edward Bulwer-Lytton – The Last of the Barons

James Fenimore Cooper – Le Mouchoir; an Autobiographical Romance

Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol

Martin Chuzzlewit

Alexandre Dumas, père – Georges

Catherine Gore – The Banker's Wife

Léon Gozlan – Aristide Froissart

Victor Hugo – Les Burgraves

Søren Kierkegaard – Diary of a Seducer (literary novel included in Either/Or)

Frederick Marryat – Monsieur Violet

Eugène Sue – The Mysteries of Paris

Robert Smith Surtees – Handley Cross

Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna – Perils of the Nation

Children and young people

Hans Christian Andersen – New Fairy Tales (Nye Eventyr; published November 10, dated 1844) including "The Ugly Duckling" (Den grimme ælling)

Drama

Eusebio Asquerino – Casada, vírgen y mártir

V. A. Bhave – Sita Swayamvar

Théophile Gautier – Un Voyage en Espagne

Nikolai Gogol – The Gamblers

W. T. Moncrieff – The Scamps of London

Poetry

Richard Henry Horne – Orion: an epic poem

Edgar Allan Poe – "The Conqueror Worm"

Non-fiction

Leon Battista Alberti – I Libri della famiglia

Anna Atkins – Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions

Paul Rudolf von Bilguer – Handbuch des Schachspiels (Handbook of Chess)

George Borrow – The Bible in Spain; or, the Journey, Adventures, and Imprisonment of an English-man in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula

James Braid – Neurypnology: or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep

Thomas Carlyle – Past and Present

Søren Kierkegaard (as Johannes de Silentio) – Fear and Trembling (Frygt og Bæven)

Thomas Babington Macaulay – Critical and Historical Essays

John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic

William H. Prescott – History of the Conquest of Mexico

John Ruskin – Modern Painters, vol. 1.

Wei Yuan and others (comp.) – Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms (海國圖志, Hǎiguó Túzhì)

Births

January 14 – Hans Forssell, Swedish historian (died 1901)

January 17 – Florence Montgomery, English novelist and children's writer (died 1923)

February 24

Teófilo Braga, Portuguese poet, playwright and politician (died 1924)

Violet Fane (Mary Montgomerie Lamb), English novelist, poet and essayist (died 1905)

April 15 – Henry James, American-born fiction writer (died 1916)

May 3 – Edward Dowden, Irish-born poet and critic (died 1913)

May 25 – Christabel Rose Coleridge, English novelist and editor (died 1921)

July 5 – Mandell Creighton, English bishop and historian (died 1901)

October 25 – Gleb Uspensky, Russian writer (died 1902)

September 26 – James Rice, English novelist (died 1882)

December 7 – Helena Nyblom, née Roed, Danish-born poet and writer of fairy tales (died 1926)

December 21 – Thomas Bracken, Irish-born New Zealand poet (died 1898)

December 29 – Princess Elisabeth of Wied ("Carmen Sylva"), German-born queen consort and writer (died 1916)

Mary Bathurst Deane, English novelist (died 1940)

Deaths

January 11 – Francis Scott Key, American poet (born 1779)

February 10 – Richard Carlile, English writer and agitator for suffrage and freedom of the press (born 1790)

March 21 – Robert Southey, English poet and Poet Laureate (born 1774)

May 12 – Charlotte von Kalb, German writer (born 1761)

May 19 – Charles James Apperley ("Nimrod"), English sporting writer (born 1777)

May 28 – Noah Webster, American lexicographer (born 1758)

June 6 – Friedrich Hölderlin, German poet, novelist, and dramatist (born 1770)

July 4 – John Basset, writer on Cornish mining (born 1791)

July 9 – Karoline Pichler, Austrian novelist (born 1769)

July 31 – William Thomas Lowndes, English bibliographer (born c.1798)

August 10 – Jakob Friedrich Fries, German philosopher (born 1773)

October 21 – William Pinnock, English writer, publisher and bookseller (born 1782)

November 25 – Ellen Pickering, English novelist (born 1801 or 1802)

December 11 – Casimir Delavigne, French poet and dramatist (born 1793)

Awards

Newdigate Prize – Matthew Arnold, "Cromwell"

In literature

Margaret Atwood's novel Alias Grace (1996) is based on events in this year.