1898 in literature

Events

January 13 – Émile Zola's open letter to Félix Faure, President of France, on the Dreyfus affair, J'accuse, is published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper L'Aurore. On February 23, Zola is convicted of criminal libel in connection with J'accuse. Following dismissal of his appeal he flees to London (arriving on July 19) to escape imprisonment. In August he begins writing his novel Fécondité in the suburbs.

February 5–June 18 – M. P. Shiel's "Yellow Peril" novel The Empress of the Earth, written around contemporary events in China, appears in the Pearson weekly Short Stories and in book form in July as The Yellow Danger; it is frequently reprinted.

February 25 – Première of Frank Wedekind's Earth Spirit (Erdgeist), first of his Lulu plays, in Leipzig, in a production by Carl Heine, with Wedekind himself in the role of Dr Schön.

March 25 – O. Henry is imprisoned in Ohio Penitentiary, Columbus, for embezzlement.

May 28 – Max Beerbohm succeeds George Bernard Shaw as theatre critic of The Saturday Review (London); Shaw introduces him as "The Incomparable Max".

June – First appearance of E. W. Hornung's fictional gentleman thief A. J. Raffles in the story "The Ides of March" in Cassell's Magazine (London).

Moscow Art Theatre stages its first season under Constantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, including a double bill of Emilia Matthai's Greta's Happiness and Carlo Goldoni's The Mistress of the Inn, opening on 2 December, and the successful and influential Moscow Art Theatre production of The Seagull by Chekhov (its Moscow première), opening on 29 December [O.S. 17 December] 1898.

Peadar Ua Laoghaire's story Séadna begins serialization in Ireland as the first Irish language novel (published in book form 1904).

Gerald Duckworth establishes the publishers Gerald Duckworth and Company in London. Henry James's novella In the Cage is among their first year's output.

English designer C. R. Ashbee begins book production at the Essex House Press.

Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary begins publication.

The "Generation of '98" writers and thinkers are active in Spain.

The term "Young Poland" is coined after a manifesto by Artur Górski, published in the Kraków newspaper Życie ("Life"), to signify the period of modernism in the Polish arts.

Fiction

Txomin Agirre – Aunamendiko Lorea

Leonid Andreyev – "Bargamot and Garaska" (Баргамот и Гараська)

Elizabeth von Arnim – Elizabeth and Her German Garden

F. W. Bain – A Digit of the Moon

L. Frank Baum – By the Candelabra's Glare

Arnold Bennett – A Man from the North

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez – The Shack

Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Rough Justice

N. D. Cocea – Poet-Poetă

Ralph Connor – Black Rock

Joseph Conrad – Tales of Unrest

Alexander Craig – Ionia

Stephen Crane

The Monster and Other Stories

The Open Boat and Other Tales

Stephanus Jacobus du Toit – Die Koningin van Skeba

Paul Laurence Dunbar – The Uncalled

Finley Peter Dunne – Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War

John Fox, Jr. – The Kentuckians

Ángel Ganivet – Los trabajos del infatigable creador Pío Cid

Maurice Hewlett – Forest Lovers

Anthony Hope – Rupert of Hentzau

Joris-Karl Huysmans – La Cathédrale

Henry James – The Turn of the Screw (novella in The Two Magics)

Olha Kobylianska – Valse melancolique

Jerome K. Jerome – The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

John Luther Long – "Madame Butterfly"

Pierre Louÿs – La Femme et le pantin

Charles Major – When Knighthood Was in Flower

George Moore – Evelyn Innes

Władysław Reymont – The Promised Land (Ziemia Obiecana; serialization completed)

Morgan Robertson – Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan

Emilio Salgari – The Black Corsair

Italo Svevo – Senilità (As a Man Grows Older)

Jules Verne – The Mighty Orinoco (Le Superbe Orénoque)

Mary Augusta Ward – Helbeck of Bannisdale

Theodore Watts-Dunton – Aylwin

H. G. Wells – The War of the Worlds

Edward Noyes Westcott – David Harum

Owen Wister – Lin McLean

Charlotte Mary Yonge – The Armourer's Prentices

Émile Zola – Paris

Children and young adults

J. Meade Falkner – Moonfleet

Kenneth Grahame – Dream Days

Emilio Salgari – Il Corsaro Nero (The Black Corsair – first in the Black Corsair series of five books)

Ernest Thompson Seton – Wild Animals I Have Known

Drama

Gabriele D'Annunzio

Città Morta

La Gioconda

Sogno di un Pomeriggio d' Autunno

R.C. Carton – Lord and Lady Algy

José Echegaray – La duda (The Calum)

Clyde Fitch – Nathan Hale

'John Oliver Hobbes' (Pearl Craigie) – The Ambassador

Arthur Wing Pinero – Trelawny of the 'Wells'

George Bernard Shaw – Arms and the Man

Iosif Vulcan – Soare cu ploaie (Sunshower)

Poetry

Thomas Hardy – Wessex Poems and Other Verses

Oscar Wilde (originally as "C.3.3") – The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Non-fiction

Ebenezer Howard – To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform

Fred T. Jane – Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships

Sidney Lee – A Life of William Shakespeare

Liliʻuokalani – Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen

Thérèse of Lisieux (posthumous) – The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une âme)

Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers – The Book of Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage

A. E. Waite – The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts

Births

April 28 – William Soutar, Scottish poet and diarist (died 1943)

February 6 – Melvin B. Tolson, African-American modernist poet (died 1966)

March 12 – Tian Han, Chinese dramatist (died 1968)

May 19 – Julius Evola, Italian esotericist, journalist and philosopher (died 1974)

May 23 – Scott O'Dell, American children's author (died 1989)

June 9 – Curzio Malaparte, Italian novelist, playwright, and journalist (died 1957)

July 22

Stephen Vincent Benét, American poet and short-story writer (died 1943)

Erich Maria Remarque, German novelist (died 1970)

August 23 – George Papashvily, Georgian-American sculptor and author (died 1978)

September 13 – Arthur J. Burks, American writer (died 1974)

September 15 – J. Slauerhoff, Dutch poet and novelist (died 1936)

September 16 – H. A. Rey, German-born American children's writer and illustrator (died 1977)

October 9 – Tawfiq al-Hakim, Egyptian novelist and dramatist (died 1987)

October 17 – Simon Vestdijk, Dutch writer (died 1971)

November 14 – Benjamin Fondane, Romanian-born French poet, playwright and critic (died 1944)

November 29 – C. S. Lewis, English novelist and children's writer (died 1963)

December 27 – W. C. Sellar, English humorous writer (died 1951)

Deaths

January 14 – Lewis Carroll (Charles L. Dodgson), English scholar and children's writer (born 1832)

January 18 – Henry Liddell, English lexicographer of Greek (born 1811)

March 6 – Felice Cavallotti, Italian poet, playwright and politician (born 1842)

March 24 – George Thomas Stokes, Irish church historian (born 1843)

March 25 – James Payn, English novelist (born 1830)

March 31 – Eleanor Marx, English political writer and translator (born 1855)

May 22 – Edward Bellamy, American novelist (born 1850)

July 20 – Jean Ingelow, English poet and novelist (born 1820)

August 7 – Georg Ebers, German novelist and Egyptologist (born 1837)

August 17 – Sir William Fraser, 4th Baronet, English politician, author and book collector (born 1826)

September 9 – Stéphane Mallarmé, French Symbolist poet (born 1842)

September 20 – Theodor Fontane, German novelist and poet (born 1819)

September 29 – William Kingsford, English-born Canadian historian (born 1819)

November 29 – Ángel Ganivet, Spanish writer (born 1865; suicide by drowning)

December 10 – William Black, Scottish novelist (born 1841)

Awards

Newdigate prize – John Buchan