istoryworld
Events relating to literature
In 21 years Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass has grown from 12 poems to the two volumes of the sixth edition, published in the USA's centenary year
English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins develops a new verse form that he calls 'sprung rhythm'
Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, in which Tom and his friends find excitement in a small town on the Mississippi
Lewis Carroll publishes The Hunting of the Snark, a poem about a voyage in search of an elusive mythical creature
21-year-old Joseph Conrad, a Polish subject, goes to sea with the British merchant navy
US author Joel Chandler Harris introduces Uncle Remus in a story in the Constitution
Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House signals a new direction in drama in its frank treatment of tensions within a marriage
Henry James's story Daisy Miller, about an American girl abroad, brings him a new readership
Gustave Flaubert dies, with his novel Bouvard et Pécuchet incomplete
Dostoevsky publishes his novel The Brothers Karamazov, featuring the four sons of the depraved Feodor Pavlovich Karamazov
US author Lew Wallace publishes a historical novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
In Washington Square Henry James tells the sad story of heiress Catherine Sloper
Joel Chandler Harris publishes Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, the first of many Uncle Remus volumes
Henry James's novel The Portrait of a Lady studies an American girl, Isabel Archer, in the unfamiliar context of Europe
The Aesthetic Movement and 'art for art's sake', attitudes personified above all by Whistler and Wilde, are widely mocked and satirized in Britain
In Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche envisages the Übermensch ('superman') enhancing human existence
Mark Twain's autobiographical book Life on the Mississippi details his own personal involvement with the great river
Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure story, Treasure Island, features Long John Silver and Ben Gunn
Verlaine publishes Les Poètes maudits, short studies of various 'cursed poets' – including Rimbaud
German mathematician Gottlob Frege publishes Grundlagen der Arithmetik ('Foundations of Arithmetic'), linking mathematics and logic
Huck Finn and his friend Tom Sawyer continue their exploits on the Mississippi in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Oxford University Press publishes the A volume of its New English Dictionary, which will take 37 years to reach Z
In his novel The Rise of Silas Lapham US author William Dean Howells follows the fortunes of a self-made man in Boston
Explorer and orientalist Richard Burton begins publication of his multi-volume translation from the Arabic of The Arabian Nights
US author Frances Hodgson Burnett publishes Little Lord Fauntleroy, featuring an aristocratic child in a velvet suit
