1888 in literature

Events

February 9 – During Joseph Conrad's career at sea as Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, he departs Bangkok for Sydney in his first command as master, the British barque Otago, a basis for his novella The Shadow Line (1916).

March 6 – On the day of Amos Bronson Alcott's funeral at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (Concord, Massachusetts), his daughter, novelist Louisa May Alcott, already in poor health, suffers a fatal stroke.

March 16 – Foundation stone for a new National Library of Greece building is laid in Athens.

May 26 – In London, Punch magazine begins serialisation of George and Weedon Grossmith's humorous The Diary of a Nobody, the first entry being for "April 3".

June 3 – Ernest Thayer's baseball poem "Casey at the Bat" is first published (under the pen name "Phin") as the last of his humorous contributions to The San Francisco Examiner.

July – Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes detective novel, A Study in Scarlet (1887), is first published separately as a book, by Ward Lock & Co in London with illustrations by the author's father, Charles Altamont Doyle.

October

English publisher Henry Vizetelly is prosecuted in London by the National Vigilance Association and fined for obscene libel for his English translation of Zola's La Terre.

The first book to feature Jack the Ripper in fiction is published while the Whitechapel murders attributed to Jack the Ripper are still taking place in London, the short gothic novel The Curse Upon Mitre Square by John Francis Brewer, which features the murder of Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square on September 30 as a key plot element.

Sholem Aleichem edits the first issue of the anthology Di Yidishe Folksbibliotek in Kiev, giving important exposure to young writers in Yiddish, including I. L. Peretz's long ballad "Monish".

The Finnish epic Kalevala is published for the first time in English by American linguist John Martin Crawford.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche writes Götzen-Dämmerung, oder, Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert ("Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer", published 1889), Der Antichrist (1895) and his autobiography, Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist (posthumous, 1908), his last works before his total mental collapse.

"Papus" founds the esoteric magazine L'Initiation in France.

Approximate date – The sexual memoir My Secret Life by "Walter", perhaps Henry Spencer Ashbee, begins publication, being printed in Amsterdam for clandestine sale in Britain.

Fiction

Grant Allen

The Devil's Die

The White Man's Foot

Edward Bellamy – Looking Backward: 2000–1887

Rolf Boldrewood – Robbery Under Arms

Mary Elizabeth Braddon – The Fatal Three

Richard Francis Burton (translator) – The Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night (publication completed)

Félicien Champsaur – L'Amant des danseuses

Louis Couperus – Eline Vere

James De Mille – A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder

Antonio Fogazzaro – The Mystery of the Poet

Theodor Fontane – Irrungen, Wirrungen

H. Rider Haggard – Maiwa's Revenge

Thomas Hardy – Wessex Tales

Henry James

The Aspern Papers

Princess Casamassima

Rudyard Kipling

The Man Who Would Be King

Plain Tales from the Hills

Amy Levy – Reuben Sachs

Jean Lombard – L'agonie

George MacDonald – The Elect Lady

Herman Melville – John Marr and Other Sailors

Octave Mirbeau – L'Abbé Jules

George Moore – Spring Days – A Prelude to Don Juan

Shardha Ram Phillauri – Bhagyawati

Raul Pompéia – O Ateneu

José Maria de Eça de Queiroz – Os Maias

Arthur Quiller-Couch – Troy Town

Henryk Sienkiewicz – Fire in the Steppe (Pan Wołodyjowski)

Theodor Storm – The Rider on the White Horse (Der Schimmelreiter)

Lew Wallace – The Boyhood of Christ

Mrs Humphrey Ward – Robert Elsmere

Oscar Wilde – The Happy Prince and Other Tales

Children and young adults

G. A. Henty

Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden

In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy

George MacDonald – The Elect Lady

Robert Louis Stevenson – The Black Arrow (book publication)

Jules Verne

Family Without a Name (Famille-sans-nom)

Two Years' Vacation (Deux ans de vacances)

Oscar Wilde – The Happy Prince and Other Tales

Drama

Sarah Bernhardt – L'Aveu, drame en un acte en prose

Félicien Champsaur – Lulu

Henrik Ibsen – The Lady from the Sea

Alexander Kielland – Professoren

August Strindberg – Miss Julie

Poetry

Sir Edwin Arnold (translator) – With Saʿdi in the Garden; or, The Book of Love

W. E. Henley – A Book of Verses, containing the first publication of the poem Invictus.

Andrejs Pumpurs – Lāčplēsis ("The Bear-Slayer")

Non-fiction

Joseph Bertrand – Calcul des probabilités

John D. Billings – Hard Tack and Coffee

Helena Blavatsky – The Secret Doctrine

Esperanza (Jane, Lady Wilde) – Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, with sketches of the Irish past

Papus – Traité méthodique de science occulte

A. F. W. Schimper – Die epiphytische Vegetation Amerikas (The Epiphytic Vegetation of America)

A. E. Waite

Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers

The Magical Writings of Thomas Vaughan

Births

January 24 – Vicki Baum, Austrian-born writer (died 1960)

January 25 – A. L. Zissu, Romanian novelist and Zionist leader (died 1956)

February 10 – Giuseppe Ungaretti, Italian modernist poet and writer (died 1970)

April 26 – Anita Loos, American novelist and screenwriter (died 1981)

June 13 – Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese writer (died 1935)

July 23 – Raymond Chandler, American novelist and screenwriter (died 1959)

September 22 – Lucia Mantu, born Camelia Nădejde, Romanian writer (died 1971)

September 26 – T. S. Eliot, American-born English poet and playwright (died 1965)

October 14 – Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand short story writer (died 1923)

October 16 – Eugene O'Neill, American playwright and Nobel laureate (died 1953)

October 26 – Dem. Theodorescu, Romanian novelist and journalist (died 1946)

Deaths

January 30 – Mary Howitt, English writer, poet and translator (born 1799)

March 4 – Amos Bronson Alcott, American writer and philosopher (born 1799)

March 6 – Louisa May Alcott, American novelist (born 1832)

March 14 – James Hogg, Scottish-born publisher (born 1806)

April 15 – Matthew Arnold, English poet (born 1822)

May 12 – Edward Lear, English writer of comic verse and artist (born 1812)

August 9 – Charles Cros, French poet (born 1842)

August 20 – Henry Richard, Welsh political writer (born 1812)

September 24 – Karl von Prantl, German philosopher (born 1820)

December 8 – Frederick Apthorp Paley, English scholar (born 1815)

December 23 – Laurence Oliphant, Scottish travel writer and novelist (born 1829)

Awards

Newdigate prize – Arthur Waugh