•
February 2 –
Alexandre Dumas, fils's stage adaptation of his
1848 novel
La Dame aux caméllias is premièred at the
Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris. •
February 24 –
Nikolai Gogol burns some of his manuscripts, including most of the second part of
Dead Souls, telling acquaintances the action is a practical joke played on him by the Devil. He takes to his bed and dies a few days later. • March – Serialization of
Charles Dickens' novel
Bleak House begins; the September installment introduces the first detective in an English novel. •
March 8 –
Nathaniel Hawthorne purchases
The Wayside in
Concord, Massachusetts from
Bronson Alcott. •
March 20 –
Harriet Beecher Stowe's
abolitionist novel ''
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is first published in book form, by
John P. Jewett of
Boston with illustrations by
Hammatt Billings, rapidly establishing its position as the best-selling novel of the 19th century. The first British publication (by
Samuel Orchart Beeton) is in April followed by C. H. Clarke and Co.'s in May and
John Cassell's serial issue with illustrations by
George Cruikshank, together with pirated reprints from
Routledge. The first dramatic adaptations appear on the
New York stage from Autumn. This year also, Jewett publishes the first work of fiction in English by an African American, the escaped slave
Frederick Douglass's novella
The Heroic Slave, a heartwarming Narrative of the Adventures of Madison Washington, in Pursuit of Liberty. • April – Samuel Orchart Beeton launches ''
The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine'', the first British magazine aimed at a middle-class female readership. •
April 24 –
Wilkie Collins' first contribution to
Household Words, "The traveller's story of a terribly strange bed", is an early example of crime fiction involving the (Paris) police. •
April 29 – ''
Roget's Thesaurus, created by retired British physician Peter Mark Roget, is first published as Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition'' in London. • August –
Ivan Turgenev's ''
A Sportsman's Sketches («Записки охотника», Zapiski ohotnika
; also known as Sketches from a Hunter's Album'') are published in book form in Russia while the author is in internal exile; the work is subsequently banned in the Russian Empire. The first major writing to gain him international recognition and influential in the Russian tradition of
literary realism, the stories are notable for their sympathy for the privations of
serfdom in Russia in the prelude to the
emancipation reform of 1861. •
August 5 – Exiled French novelist
Victor Hugo moves to
Saint Helier on
Jersey in the
Channel Islands with his mistress
Juliette Drouet. •
September 2 – The
public library in
Campfield,
Manchester, England, is the first to offer free lending under the U.K.
Public Libraries Act 1850;
Edward Bulwer-Lytton and
Charles Dickens are present at the opening ceremony. • November •
Leo Tolstoy's
debut novel,
Childhood («Детство»,
Detstvo), is published under the initials L. N. in this month's issue of the Saint Petersburg literary journal
Sovremennik. •
The Merchant of Venice becomes the first of
Shakespeare's plays to be performed publicly in India in an Indian language,
Gujarati, as
Nathari Firangiz Thekani Avi presented by a
Parsi company at
Surat. •
November 23 – At the suggestion of English novelist
Anthony Trollope, at this time an official of the British
General Post Office, the first roadside
pillar boxes in the
British Isles are brought into public use in Saint Helier on Jersey in the Channel Islands. •
unknown dates •
Pierre Larousse and Augustin Boyer found a publishing house in Paris. • Hanah Mullens'
Karuna O Phulmonir Bibaran is the first
Bengali novel. The first publication of
Bengali plays also takes place this year: C. C. Gupta's
Kirtivilas and Taracharan Sikdar's
Bhadrarjun. • The first translation of a substantial literary work into the
Māori language,
Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe as
Ropitini Koruhu, translated by government official Henry T. Kemp, is published in
Wellington, New Zealand, "under the direction of the Government". •
probable – The first printing press in the
Faeroe Islands is established. ==New books==