Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

1866 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1866.

Contents

Events

  • Ludwig Anzengruber returns to Vienna after working as a travelling actor.
  • Charles Baudelaire's collection Les Épaves is published in Belgium containing poems suppressed from Les Fleurs du mal (Paris, 1857) for outraging public morality.
  • Luigi Capuana becomes theatre critic for Italian newspaper The Nation.
  • Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel Crime and Punishment (Преступлéние и наказáние, Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) is serialized throughout the year in the monthly literary magazine Russkiy Vestnik (Русскій Вѣстникъ, "The Russian Messenger"). His novella The Gambler (Игрок, Igrok) is dictated to his future wife to meet a publisher deadline of November 1.
  • Josip Jurčič publishes Deseti brat ("The Tenth Brother"), the first full-length Slovene language novel.
  • Nandshankar Mehta publishes Karana Ghelo ("The Idiot King Karana"), the first Gujarati language novel.
  • Hesba Stretton's children’s story Jessica's First Prayer is serialized in Sunday at Home (U.K.); as a book, it sells one and half million copies.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne's first collection Poems and Ballads causes a sensation on publication in London, especially the poems written in homage to Sappho and the sadomasochistic "Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)", and, under threat of prosecution, his original publisher, Moxon and Co., transfer publication rights to the more liberal John Camden Hotten.
  • Anthony Trollope's novel Nina Balatka: The Story of a Maiden of Prague is initially published anonymously (serialization in Blackwood's Magazine July 1866–January 1867) – Trollope is interested in discovering whether his books sell on their own merits or as a consequence of the author's name and reputation.
  • Publication of the first detective fiction by women authors: the dime novel The Dead Letter, an American Romance by 'Seeley Regester' (Metta Victoria Fuller Victor) is published in New York City as the first full-length American work of crime fiction, having begun to appear serially in the January Beadle’s Monthly; and Mary Fortune's story "The Dead Witness, or the Bush waterhole" is published in the Australian Journal on January 20.
  • Former English chess master Howard Staunton publishes a facsimile of the Shakespeare First Folio by photolithography.
  • London publisher Samuel Orchart Beeton is obliged (as a result of the financial panic of May/June) to sell his titles and name to Ward Lock & Co.
  • The American magazine for children Children's Hour publishes its first issue.

    • Fiction

  • Louisa May Alcott (as A. M. Barnard) – "Behind a Mask, or A Woman's Power" (novella published in The Flag of Our Union)
  • R. D. Blackmore – Cradock Nowell
  • Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay – Kapalkundala
  • Wilkie Collins – Armadale (serialization completed and in book form)
  • John Esten Cooke – Surry of Eagle's-Nest
  • Alphonse Daudet – Letters From My Windmill (Lettres de mon moulin)
  • Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
  • Alexandre Dumas, fils – L'Affaire Clemenceau
  • George Eliot – Felix Holt, the Radical
  • Augusta Jane Evans – St. Elmo
  • John William De Forest – Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
  • Émile Gaboriau – L'Affaire Lerouge
  • Victor Hugo – Toilers of the Sea (Les Travailleurs de la Mer)
  • George MacDonald – Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood
  • Mrs Oliphant – Miss Marjoribanks
  • Ouida – Chandos
  • Charles Reade – Griffith Gaunt
  • Emmanuel Rhoides – Ἡ Πάπισσα Ἰωάννα (I Papissa Ioanna, Pope Joan)
  • Felicia Skene (anonymously) – Hidden Depths
  • Anthony Trollope – Nina Balatka
  • José Milla y Vidaurre – La Hija del Adelantado

    • Children

  • Hesba Stretton – Jessica's First Prayer

    • Drama

  • Dion Boucicault – Rip van Winkle or The Sleep of Twenty Years
  • Alexandre Dumas, fils – Heloise Paranquet
  • Henrik Ibsen – Brand
  • Dobri Voynikov – Princess Rayna

    • Poetry

  • Charles Baudelaire – Les Épaves
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne – Poems and Ballads
  • Paul Verlaine – Poèmes saturniens, including "Chanson d'automne"

    • Non-fiction

  • William Wells Brown – The Negro in the American Rebellion
  • Friedrich Albert Lange – History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance (Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, published October 1865 but dated 1866)
  • John Robert Seeley (anonymously) – Ecce Homo
  • Charles Haddon Spurgeon – The Wordless Book
  • Benjamin Thorpe assisted by Elise Otté (translator) – Edda Sæmundar Hinns Frôða: the Edda of Sæmund the Learned, from the old Norse or Icelandic

    • Births

  • January 2 (December 21, 1865 OS) – Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică (Gheorghe Bogdan), Romanian literary critic (died 1934)
  • January 29 – Romain Rolland, French dramatist, novelist and Nobel Prize-winner (died 1944)
  • February 9 – George Ade, American columnist and playwright (died 1944)
  • February 24 – Arthur Pearson, English writer and newspaper publisher (died 1921)
  • March 2 – John Gray, English poet (died 1934)
  • March 16 – E. K. Chambers, English literary scholar (died 1954)
  • May 2 – Paul Kretschmer, German linguist (died 1956)
  • July 28 – Beatrix Potter, English children's writer and illustrator (died 1943)
  • August 12 – Jacinto Benavente, Spanish dramatist and Nobel Prize-winner (died 1954)
  • August 16 – Dora Sigerson, Irish poet (died 1918)
  • September 7 – Tristan Bernard, French writer (died 1947)
  • August 31 – Elizabeth von Arnim, née Mary Annette Beauchamp, Australian-born novelist (died 1941)
  • September 21 – H. G. Wells, English novelist and social commentator (died 1946)
  • October 28 – Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Spanish dramatist and novelist (died 1936)
  • November 4 – Jane Findlater, Scottish novelist (died 1946)
  • November 21 – Dusé Mohamed Ali, Egyptian-born political activist, journalist and dramatist (died 1945)

    • Deaths

  • January 23 – Thomas Love Peacock, English satirist (born 1785)
  • February 2 – François-Xavier Garneau, French Canadian historian and civil servant (born 1809)
  • March 6 – William Whewell, English polymath and cleric (born 1794)
  • March 29 – John Keble, English poet and cleric (born 1792)
  • May 5 – John Critchley Prince, English poet (born 1808)
  • June 16 – Joseph Méry, French satirist and librettist (born 1797)
  • August 1 – Luigi Carlo Farini, Italian historian (born 1812)
  • August 12 – Philip Stanhope Worsley, English poet and translator (born 1835)
  • September 10 – Charles Maclaren, Scottish founding editor of The Scotsman (born 1782)
  • September 14 – Léon Gozlan, French novelist and dramatist (born 1803)
  • September 19 – Christian Hermann Weisse, German philosopher (born 1801)
  • December 20 – Ann Taylor, English poet and critic (born 1782)

    • References

    1866 in literature Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA