1874 in literature

Events

February – Anthony Trollope's satirical novel The Way We Live Now (set in 1872 and written in 1873) begins publication in monthly shilling parts in London, one of the last significant Victorian novels to be published in this format (it is concluded and published as a 2-volume book in 1875).

The German literary and political periodical Deutsche Rundschau is established by Julius Rodenberg in Berlin.

Arthur William à Beckett joins the staff of Punch.

Alexandre Dumas, fils, is elected to the Académie française.

Johan Nicolai Madvig loses his sight, forcing him to give up most of his research and writing.

Karl May completes a 4-year prison sentence for thefts and frauds at Waldheim, Saxony (May) and has his first story, "Die Rose von Ernstthal" ("The Story of Rose Ernstthal"), published (November).

Arthur Rimbaud goes to London with Germain Nouveau.

Fiction

Thomas Bailey Aldrich – Prudence Palfrey

José de Alencar – Ubirajara

Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly – Les Diaboliques

R. M. Ballantyne – The Pirate City

Ambrose Bierce – Cobwebs from an Empty Skull

Andrew Blair – Annals of the Twenty-Ninth Century

Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Lost For Love

William Wells Brown – The Rising Sun

Wilkie Collins – The Frozen Deep and Other Stories

Alphonse Daudet – Fromont jeune et Risler aîné

Amelia Edwards – A Night on the Borders of the Black Forest

George Eliot – Middlemarch (first single-volume publication)

Gustave Flaubert – The Temptation of Saint Anthony

Émile Gaboriau – Other People's Money

Thomas Hardy – Far From the Madding Crowd

Marie Howland – Papa's Own Girl

Victor Hugo – Ninety-Three

J.-K. Huysmans – Le drageoir aux epices

George Meredith – Beauchamp's Career

Margaret Oliphant – A Rose in June

Theodor Storm

Paul the Puppeteer (Pole Poppenspäler)

Viola Tricolor

Anthony Trollope

Harry Heathcote of Gangoil: A Tale of Australian Bush Life

Lady Anna

Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano – Pepita Jiménez

Jules Verne – The Mysterious Island (L'Île mystérieuse)

Mrs. Henry Wood – Johnny Ludlow

Edmund Yates – The Impending Sword

Émile Zola – La Conquête de Plassans

Children and young people

Emilia Marryat – Amongst the Maoris

Drama

José Echegaray – La esposa del vengador ("The Avenger's Wife")

Adolphe d'Ennery and Eugène Cormon – The Two Orphans

W. S. Gilbert – Charity

Henry Glapthorne (died c. 1643) – The Plays and Poems of Henry Glapthorne: Now first collected with illustrative notes and a memoir of the Author

Victorien Sardou – La Haine (Hatred)

Jules Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery – Around the World in Eighty Days (stage adaptation)

Poetry

Stéphane Mallarmé – L'après-midi d'un faune

Paul Verlaine – Romances sans paroles

Non-fiction

Franz Brentano – Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkte ("Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint")

William Cullen Bryant – Picturesque America, vol. 2

John William Draper – A History of the Conflict between Religion and Science

Elise Otté – Scandinavian History

Antonio Raimondi – El Perú

Dorothy Wordsworth – Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A. D. 1803

Births

January 16 – Robert W. Service, English-born Canadian poet (died 1958)

January 25 – W. Somerset Maugham, British novelist (died 1965)

February 1 – Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Austrian writer (died 1929)

February 3 – Gertrude Stein, American-born writer and arts patron (died 1946)

February 9 – Amy Lowell, American poet (died 1925)

February 11 – Elsa Beskow (Elsa Maartman), Swedish children's book and fairy-tale writer (died 1953)

February 27 – F. M. Cornford, English classicist and poet (died 1943)

March 20 – Börries von Münchhausen, German poet (died 1945)

March 26 – Robert Frost, American poet (died 1963)

May 29 – G. K. Chesterton, English novelist, writer and poet (died 1936)

June 20 – Trumbull Stickney, American poet (died 1904)

July 29 – August Stramm, German Expressionist poet and playwright (killed in action 1915)

August 8 – Tristan Klingsor (Arthur Justin Léon Leclère), French poet (died 1966)

October 6 – Ursula Bethell, English-born New Zealand poet (died 1945)

November 30 – Lucy Maud Montgomery, Canadian novelist (died 1942)

November 30 – Paul Zarifopol, Romanian critic (died 1934)

December 12 – Volter Kilpi, Finnish novelist (died 1939)

December 13? – Radu D. Rosetti, Romanian poet and playwright (died 1964)

Deaths

January 24 – Adam Black, Scottish publisher (born 1784)

January 26 – Giuseppe Rovani, Italian novelist (born 1818)

February 8 – David Strauss, German theologian (born 1808)

February 9 – Jules Michelet, French historian (born 1798)

February 23 – Shirley Brooks, English journalist and novelist (born 1816)

March 3 – Francis Mason, English-born American grammarian and translator (born 1799)

March 4 – Ada Clare, American journalist (born 1834)

March 24 – Joseph Tracy, American newspaper editor and historian (born 1793)

June 19 – Jules Janin, French critic (born 1804)

July 7 – John Heneage Jesse, English historian (born 1815)

July 8 – Agnes Strickland, English popular historian and poet (born 1796)

July 12 – Fritz Reuter, German novelist (born 1810)

August 8 – Augustin Theiner, German theologian and historian (born 1804)

September 20 – Victor Séjour, American-born Creole novelist and dramatist writing in French (born 1817)

October 5 – Bryan Procter, English poet (born 1787)

October 24 – Thomas Miller, English poet (born 1807)

November 20 – Tom Hood, English humorist (born 1835)