1847 in literature

Events

• January – Vanity Fair: Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society begins serial publication in Punch magazine in yellow covers, with illustrations by the author, William Makepeace Thackeray, writing for the first time in his own name.
• March–April – Ivan Goncharov's debut novel A Common Story is published in Sovremennik.
• March 20 – The String of Pearls, probably written by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest, concludes its serial publication in the 'penny dreadful' The People's Periodical issued by Edward Lloyd in London, begun in November 1846. This is the first literary appearance of Sweeney Todd.
• April – Robert Browning settles with his wife and fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Florence.
• June
• * Elizabeth Gaskell's first published work of fiction, the story "Life in Manchester: Libbie Marsh's Three Eras", appears in Howitt's Journal of Literature and Popular Progress under the pen name Cotton Mather Mills.
• * Hans Christian Andersen begins his first visit to Britain, during which he meets Charles Dickens.
• June 10 – The fictional date at the end of Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is presumed to be that of the novel's completion.
• July – The London publisher Thomas Cautley Newby accepts for publication Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey.
• August 7–24 – Charlotte Brontë completes Jane Eyre at Haworth and sends the manuscript to her publisher, who has rejected The Professor.
• September – Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood, probably written by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Preskett Prest, having been published serially since 1845 as a 'penny dreadful' by Edward Lloyd in London, is first issued in book format. It introduces many of the tropes of vampire fiction.
• September 16 – William Shakespeare's house of birth in Stratford-upon-Avon in England is bought by the United Shakespeare Company for preservation. This year also, Schiller's house in Weimar is opened to the public as a museum.
• October 19 – Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is published in London by Smith, Elder & Co. in 3 volumes.
• November – Dmitry Grigorovich's anti-serfdom novel Anton Goremyka is published in Sovremennik with its politically sensitive last scene rewritten by a censor.
• November 1 – John Maddison Morton's one-act farce Box and Cox opens at the Lyceum Theatre, London with John Pritt Harley and John Baldwin Buckstone in the title roles.
• December 14 – Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey are published in a three-volume set under the pen names of Ellis and Acton Bell respectively, in London by T. C. Newby. Wuthering Heights will be Emily's only published novel, as she dies a year later, aged 30.unknown date – The London publisher E. Churton brings out the first six of George Sand's books to be issued in English, as translated by Matilda Hays, Eliza Ashurst and Rev. Edmund Larken.

New books

Fiction

• Honoré de Balzac – Le Cousin Pons and "Cousin Bette"
• Anne Brontë – Agnes Grey
• Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre
• Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights
• Benjamin Disraeli – Tancred
• Alexandre Dumas – The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later
• Ivan Goncharov – A Common Story
• Catherine Gore – Castles in The Air
• Dmitry Grigorovich – Anton Goremyka
• James Sheridan Knowles – George Lovell
• Eliza Lynn Linton – Azeth, The Egyptian
• Herman Melville – Omoo
• G. W. M. Reynolds – Faust: A Romance of the Secret Tribunals
• George Sand – Le Péché de M. Antoine
• Harriet Anne Scott – The Hen-Pecked Husband
• The Sobieski Stuarts – Tales of the Century: or Sketches of the romance of history between the years 1746 and 1846
• Eugène Sue
• * Martin l'enfant trouvé ou Mémoires d'un valet de chambre
• * Les Sept pêchés capitaux
• William Makepeace Thackeray – Vanity Fair
• Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna – The System
• Anthony Trollope – ''The Macdermots of Ballycloran''

Children and young people

• Frederick Marryat – ''The Children of the New Forest''

Drama

• John Baldwin Buckstone
• * The Flowers of the Forest
• * The Green Bushes
• Gustav Freytag – Graf Waldemar
• Richard Brinsley Peake –
• * Gabrielli
• * ''The Title Deeds''

Poetry

• Heinrich Heine – Atta Troll
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Evangeline
• Petar II Petrović-Njegoš, Prince-Bishop of Montenegro – The Mountain Wreath, Serbian epic verse drama
• Edgar Allan Poe – Ulalume
• Raja Ali Haji or his sister Saleha – Syair Abdul Muluk
• Christina Rossetti – Verses by Christina G. Rossetti
• Alfred Tennyson – ''The Princess''

Non-fiction

• Hans Christian Andersen – The Fairy Tale of My Life
• William Wells Brown – Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself
• Andrew Jackson Davis – The Principles of Nature
• Søren Kierkegaard – Works of Love
• Karl Marx – The Poverty of Philosophy
• William H. Prescott – ''A History of the Conquest of Peru''

Births

• January 6 – Milovan Glišić, Serbian dramatist and translator
• January 8 – Matei Donici, Bessarabian Romanian poet and professional soldier
• January 9 – Oyyarathu Chandu Menon, Indian Malayalam-language novelist
• January 27 – Ella Dietz, American actress and author
• April 2 – Flora Annie Steel, English writer
• April 7 – Jens Peter Jacobsen, Danish novelist
• April 10 – Joseph Pulitzer, Hungarian American newspaperman
• April 10 – Clarissa Caldwell Lathrop, American social reformer and autobiographer
• June 16 – Luella Dowd Smith, American educator and author
• August 20 – Bolesław Prus, Polish novelist
• September 2 – George Robert Sims, English writer
• September 22 – Alice Meynell, English poet
• October 1 – Annie Besant, English women's rights activist, writer and orator
• October 3 – Lilian Whiting, American journalist, editor, and author
• October 18 – E. E. Brown, American author and artist
• October 19 – Aurilla Furber, American author, editor, and activist
• November 8 – Bram Stoker, Irish novelist and theater manager
• December 17 – Émile Faguet, French writer and critic
• December 26 – Hugh Conway, English novelist unknown date:
• * Eunice Gibbs Allyn, American correspondent, author, songwriter
• * Maria Fetherstonhaugh, English novelist

Deaths

• January – Abbasgulu Bakikhanov, Azerbaijani historian and philosopher
• February 8 – George Walker, English Gothic novelist
• April 23 – Erik Gustaf Geijer, Swedish historian, poet, philosopher, and composer
• May 4 – Alexandre Vinet, Swiss critic and theologian
• August 14 – Frans Michael Franzén, Swedish writer
• August 28 – Eugène Bourgeois, French dramatist
• September 16 – Grace Aguilar, English novelist
• October 13 – Johann Heinrich van Ess, German theologian
• October 22 – Henriette Herz, German salon hostess
• December 14 – Dorothy Ann Thrupp, hymnwriter and translator