1870 in literature

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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1870.

Events

January 19 – Ivan Turgenev attends and writes about the public execution by guillotine of the spree killer Jean-Baptiste Troppmann outside the gates of La Roquette Prisons in Paris.^[2]
March 7 – Thomas Hardy meets his first wife, Emma Gifford, in Cornwall.^[3]
March 28 – Serialisation of Kenward Philp's The Bowery Detective in The Fireside Companion (New York) begins, the first known story to include the word detective in the title.
April–September – The serialisation of Charles Dickens' last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, is left unfinished on his death on June 9 at Gads Hill Place in Kent, from a stroke, aged 58.^[4]
May – Karl May begins a second four-year prison sentence for thefts and frauds, at Waldheim, Saxony.^[5]
Spring – Serial publication begins of Aleksis Kivi's only novel Seitsemän veljestä ("Seven Brothers"), the first notable novel in the Finnish language.^[6]
August 24/25 – Libraries of the University of Strasbourg and the City of Strasbourg at Temple Neuf are destroyed by fire during the Siege of Strasbourg in the Franco-Prussian War, resulting in the loss of 3,446 medieval manuscripts, including the original 12th-century Hortus deliciarum compiled by Herrad of Landsberg, the Apologist codex containing the only text of the early Epistle to Diognetus, and rare Renaissance books.^[7]
September 17 – The first performance of Alexander Pushkin's play Boris Godunov (1825) is given at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg by members of the Alexandrinsky Theatre.
c. September 20 – Friedrich Engels moves permanently to London from Manchester.^[8]
December 18 – The Russian literary weekly Niva («Ни́ва», "Cornfield") is first published by Adolf Marks in Saint Petersburg.^[9]
unknown date – Construction of the David Sassoon Library in Bombay, India, is completed.^[10]

New books

Fiction

William Harrison Ainsworth - Talbot Harland
Thomas Bailey Aldrich – The Story of a Bad Boy
Thomas Archer – The Terrible Sights of London
Rhoda Broughton – Red as a Rose is She
Wilkie Collins – Man and Wife
Annie Denton Cridge - Man's Rights; Or, How Would You Like It? Comprising Dreams
José Maria de Eça de Queiroz and Ramalho Ortigão – O Mistério da Estrada de Sintra [pt] (The Mystery of the Sintra Road)
Charles Dickens – The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Benjamin Disraeli – Lothair
Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Eternal Husband («Вечный муж», Vechny muzh)
Edward Jenkins – Ginx's Baby: his birth and other misfortunes
Mór Jókai – Fekete gyémántok (Black Diamonds, i. e. coal)
Aleksis Kivi – Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers)
Jonas Lie – Den Fremsynte (The Visionary or Pictures From Nordland)
George Meredith – The Adventures of Harry Richmond (begins serial publication)
William Morris – The Earthly Paradise
Charles Reade - Put Yourself in His Place^[11]
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch – Venus in Furs (Venus im Pelz)
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin – The History of a Town («История одного города», Istoriya odnogo goroda)
Bayard Taylor – Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania
Anthony Trollope – The Vicar of Bullhampton^[12]
Ivan Turgenev – Stepnoy korol Lir (Степной король Лир); novella, English translation: King Lear of the Steppes
Charlotte M. Yonge – The Caged Lion

Children and young people

John Neal — Great Mysteries and Little Plagues^[13]

Drama

James Albery – Two Roses
Ludwig Anzengruber (as L. Gruber) – Der Pfarrer von Kirchfeld (The Priest of Kirchfeld)
Henry James Byron – Uncle Dick's Darling
Pietro Cossa – Nero
Lydia Koidula
- Maret ja Miina (or Kosjakased; The Betrothal Birches)
- Saaremaa Onupoeg (The Cousin from Saaremaa)
Lord Newry – Ecarte
George Sand and Sarah Bernhardt – L'Autre
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy – Tsar Boris («Царь Борис», published)

Poetry

Lear's illustration of The Owl and the Pussycat from *Nonsense Songs*

Bret Harte – The Heathen Chinee
Edward Lear – Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets (dated 1871),^[14] including "The Owl and the Pussycat"
Giovanni Marradi – Canzone moderne
Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Poems,^[14] including "Jenny" and a fragment of "The House of Life"

Non-fiction

J. E. Austen-Leigh – A Memoir of Jane Austen
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1st edition)
Richard William Church – Life of St. Anselm
Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Army Life in a Black Regiment
Hargrave Jennings – The Rosicrucians, their Rites and Mysteries
Henry Maudsley – Body and Mind
Dadabhai Naoroji – The Wants and Means of India
William Robinson – The Wild Garden
Charles Dudley Warner - My Summer in a Garden and Calvin, A Study of Character

Births

January 3 – Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson), Australian novelist (died 1946)
February 16 – Henric Streitman, Romanian essayist and journalist (died 1950)^[15]
March 5 – Frank Norris, American novelist (died 1902)
April 7 – Gustav Landauer, German philosopher and revolutionary (murdered 1919)
June 25 – Erskine Childers, Irish novelist (executed 1922)
July 27 – Hilaire Belloc, French-born English writer, poet and satirist (died 1953)
October 18 – Petre P. Negulescu, Romanian philosopher (died 1951)
October 22 (October 10 OS) – Ivan Bunin, Russian-born writer, recipient of Nobel Prize in Literature (died 1953)
October 29 – Gerald Duckworth, English publisher (died 1937)
December 17 – Ioan A. Bassarabescu, Romanian short story writer and politician (died 1952)
December 18 – Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), English short story writer and dramatist (killed in action 1916)^[16]

Deaths

January 21 – Alexander Herzen, Russian writer (born 1812)
February 25 – Henrik Hertz, Danish poet (born 1797)
April 16 – Rallou Karatza, Greek Wallachian translator and theatrical promoter (born 1799)
April 24 – Louisa Stuart Costello, Irish writer on history and travel (born 1799)
June 9 – Charles Dickens, English novelist (born 1812)^[17]
June 11 – William Gilmore Simms, American poet, novelist and historian (born 1806)
June 24 – Adam Lindsay Gordon, Australian poet (born 1833)^[18]
July 19 – Benjamin Thorpe, scholar of Old English (born c. 1782)
July 20 – Jules de Goncourt, French novelist and critic (syphilis, born 1830)^[19]
July 24 – Anders Abraham Grafström, Swedish poet and historian (born 1790)
July 30 – Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, Norwegian journalist and poet (born 1818)^[20]
September 12 – Fitz Hugh Ludlow, American author and explorer (born 1836)^[21]
September 23 – Prosper Mérimée, French writer (b. 1803)^[22]
November 4 – Comte de Lautreamont (Isidore Lucien Ducasse), French poet and writer (born 1846)^[23]
December 5 – Alexandre Dumas, père, French novelist (born 1802)^[24]

References

^ "Luke Fildes". TheFamousArtists.com.
^ Brumfield, William С. (2014), "Invitation to a Beheading: Turgenev and Troppmann", Informatsionnyi gumanitarnyi portal "Znanie. Ponimanie. Umenie" (6), archived from the original on 2015-04-02, retrieved 2015-03-17.
^ "Emma Gifford". Spartacus Educational. Archived from the original on 2013-08-02. Retrieved 2013-07-23.
^ Obituary, The Times (London), August 1870.
^ Sonderheft der Karl-May-Gesellschaft. Karl-May-Gesellschaft. 1972. p. 129.
^ "Aleksis Kivi: Seitsemän veljestä". Jyväskylän yliopisto. 11 August 2024. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
^ "History of the BNU". Strasbourg: BNU (Bibliothèque nationale universitaire). Retrieved 2014-01-21.
^ "Outstanding Dates". The Life and Work of Karl Marx. Retrieved 2013-07-23.
^ Jeffrey Brooks (2003). When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917. Northwestern University Press. p. 111. ISBN 0-8101-1897-1
^ Govinda Nārāyaṇa Māḍagã̄vakara (2009). Govind Narayan's Mumbai: An Urban Biography from 1863. Anthem Press. p. 366. ISBN 978-1-84331-305-2.
^ This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Put Yourself in His Place" . New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
^ R. H. Super (1988). The Chronicler of Barsetshire: A Life of Anthony Trollope. University of Michigan Press. pp. 256–57.
^ Sears, Donald A. (1978). John Neal. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. p. 120. ISBN 080-5-7723-08.
^ ^a ^b Cox, Michael, ed. (2004). The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860634-6.
^ Arghezi, Tudor (1945). "75 de ani". Bilete de Papagal (46): 1.
^ Ignatius Frederick Clarke (1997). The Great War with Germany, 1890-1914: Fictions and Fantasies of the War-to-come. Liverpool University Press. p. 438. ISBN 978-0-85323-642-9.
^ "Dickens, Charles" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
^ Harris, Max (1983). The unknown great Australian and other psychobiographical portraits. Melbourne: Sun Books. p. 45. ISBN 9780725104245.
^ Pages from the Goncourt Journals (2006). NYRB Classics. ISBN 159017190X.
^ "Vinje-Sanger" (in Norwegian). Store norske leksikon.
^ Johnson, Rossiter, ed. (1906). The Biographical Dictionary of America . Vol. 7. Boston: American Biographical Society. p. 75 – via Wikisource. [scan ]
^ "Prosper Mérimée". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
^ Bachelard, Gaston (1986). "Lautréamont". Dallas Institute.
^ Douglas Munro (1978). Alexandre Dumas Père: A Bibliography of Works Translated Into English to 1910. Garland Pub. p. 242. ISBN 978-0-8240-9836-0.