istoryworld
Events relating to literature
Gustave Flaubert publishes Madame Bovary, a novel of frustrated romanticism in a provincial French context
Charles Baudelaire publishes his first and extremely influential collection of poems, Les Fleurs du Mal
In Tom Brown's Schooldays Thomas Hughes depicts the often brutal aspects of an English public school
Oliver Wendell Holmes' book The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table is the first in a breakfast-table series
Longfellow uses a romantic story of early New England for his narrative poem The Courtship of Miles Standish
English author George Eliot wins fame with her first full-length novel, Adam Bede
Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of twenty years' research
French author Stendhal publishes his novel La Chartreuse de Parme ('The Charterhouse of Parma')
In On Liberty John Stuart Mill makes the classic liberal case for the priority of the freedom of the individual
Samuel Smiles provides an inspiring ideal of Victorian enterprise in Self-Help, a manual for ambitious young men
Tennyson publishes the first part of Idylls of the King, a series of linked poems about Britain's mythical king Arthur
Charles Dickens publishes his French Revolution novel, A Tale of Two Cities
Edward FitzGerald publishes The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, romantic translations of the work of the Persian poet
Charles Dickens begins serial publication of his novel "Great Expectations" (in book form 1861)
George Eliot publishes The Mill on the Floss, her novel about the childhood of Maggie and Tom Tulliver
Longfellow's narrative poem Paul Revere's Ride dramatizes a turning point at the start of the American Revolution
Mrs Henry Wood publishes her first novel, East Lynne, which becomes the basis of the most popular of all Victorian melodramas
Julia Ward Howe publishes The Battle Hymn of the Republic, inspired by a visit to Union troops in the American Civil War
Victor Hugo publishes his novel Les Misérables, an immensely complex story about the adventures of ex-convict Jean Valjean
Oxford mathematician Lewis Carroll tells 10-year-old Alice Liddell, on a boat trip, a story about her own adventures in Wonderland
Dostoevsky publishes Notes from the House of the Dead, a semi-autobiographical novel about life in a Siberian labour camp
Unpublished American poet Emily Dickinson writes more than 300 poems within the year
Samuel Clemens uses the pseudonym Mark Twain for the first time on an article in Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise
English author Charles Kingsley publishes an improving fantasy for young children, The Water-Babies
Dostoevsky publishes Notes from Underground, the bitter memories of a retired civil servant that is often described as the first existentialist novel
