1849 in literature

Events

• February – J. A. Froude's semi-autobiographical, epistolary philosophical novel of religious doubt The Nemesis of Faith is published by John Chapman in London. A copy is burned by William Sewell, Dean of Exeter College, Oxford, himself a novelist.
• March–November – La Tribune des Peuples, a pan-European romantic nationalist periodical, is published by Adam Mickiewicz.
• April 22 – Fyodor Dostoyevsky and fellow members of the literary Petrashevsky Circle in Russia are arrested for expressing their progressive views. Sentenced to death on November 16 and facing a firing squad on December 23, he and some others are reprieved at the last moment and exiled to the katorga prison camps in Siberia.

• May 1 – Charles Dickens's Bildungsroman ''David Copperfield begins serial publication by Bradbury and Evans in London.
• May 10 – The Astor Place Riot takes place in Manhattan over a dispute between two Shakespearean actors, the American Edwin Forrest and the Englishman William Macready. Over 20 people are killed when troops fire on the rioters.
• May 28 – Anne Brontë dies of tuberculosis aged 29 at Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast of England, where she is buried. Until 2013, her headstone mistakenly gives her age as 28.
• September 20 – Honoré de Balzac travels to Poland to meet Eveline Hanska, whom he will marry shortly before his death next year.
• October 3 – Death of Edgar Allan Poe: Edgar Allan Poe is found in Baltimore delirious, "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance". He dies on October 7 aged 40, of an uncertain cause, in Washington College Hospital. On October 9 the New York Tribune publishes an influential but substantially fictitious obituary written anonymously by Rufus Wilmot Griswold.
• October–December – Thomas De Quincey's essay The English Mail-Coach appears in issues of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
• November – The English scholarly correspondence magazine Notes and Queries is first published.
• November 13 – The public hanging in London of Marie Manning (murderer) is attended independently by Charles Dickens and Herman Melville; Dickens writes a letter published in the following day's issue of The Times decrying the "wickedness and levity of the immense crowd".
• November 14 – A public festival is held in Denmark to mark the 70th birthday of Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger.
• Uncertain dates
• *The Leipzig publisher B. G. Teubner begins publishing the Bibliotheca Teubneriana series of editions of the Classics.
• *Who's Who is published for the first time in the United Kingdom.
• *Philip Massinger's play Believe as You List'' receives its first publication, 218 years after its theatrical première.

New books

Fiction

• William Harrison Ainsworth – The Lancashire Witches
• Charlotte Brontë – Shirley
• François-René de Chateaubriand – Memoirs from Beyond the Grave
• Charles Dickens – David Copperfield
• Fyodor Dostoevsky – Netochka Nezvanova
• Alexandre Dumas, père – The Queen's Necklace
• Paul Féval – Les Belles-de-nuit ou Les Anges de la famille
• J. A. Froude – The Nemesis of Faith
• Catherine Gore – The Diamond and the Pearl
• Charles Kingsley – Alton Locke
• Herman Melville
• *Mardi
• *Redburn
• Mayne Reid – The Rifle Rangers
• G. W. M. Reynolds – The Bronze Statue
• George Sand – La Petite Fadette
• Theodor Storm – ''Immensee''

Children and young people

• Charlotte Mary Yonge – ''The Railroad Children''

Drama

• Christian Friedrich Hebbel – Der Rubin
• John Westland Marston – Strathmore
• Gaspar Núñez de Arce – Amor y Orgullo
• Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé – ''Adrienne Lecouvreur''

Poetry

• Matthew Arnold – The Strayed Reveller
• Petrus Augustus de Genestet – De Sint-Nicolaasavond
• Elias Lönnrot – Kalevala
• Edgar Allan Poe – "Annabel Lee", "Eldorado", "The Bells", "A Dream Within a Dream"

Non-fiction

• Josiah Henson – "The Life of Josiah Henson"
• John Mitchell Kemble – History of the Saxons in England
• Søren Kierkegaard – The Sickness Unto Death
• Francis Parkman – The Oregon Trail
• Thomas Phillips – Wales, the Language, Social Condition, Moral Character, and Religious Opinions of the People, considered in their relation to Education...
• John Ruskin – The Seven Lamps of Architecture
• William Smith – Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
• Henry David Thoreau – Resistance to Civil Government
• George Ticknor – A History of Spanish Literature
• Chandos Wren-Hoskyns – ''A Short Inquiry into the History of Agriculture in Mediæval and Modern Times''

Births

• January 9 – Laura Kieler, Norwegian novelist and dramatic inspiration
• January 22 – August Strindberg, Swedish dramatist
• February 18 – Alexander Kielland, Norwegian novelist
• February 27 – Václav Beneš Třebízský, Czech novelist
• March 10 – Mary Evelyn Hitchcock, American author and explorer
• April 1 – Mary K. Buck, Bohemian-born American author
• April 24
• *Emma Whitcomb Babcock, American litterateur and author
• *Helen Taggart Clark, American columnist, short story writer, and poet
• June 9 – Karl Tanera, German military writer and novelist
• July 22 – Emma Lazarus, American poet
• July 30 – Lettie S. Bigelow, American poet and author
• August 8 – Hume Nisbet, Scottish thriller writer, poet and artist
• August 9 – Amy Catherine Walton, English writer of Christian children's books
• August 23 – W. E. Henley, English poet
• August 30 – J. M. Dent, English publisher
• September 3 – Sarah Orne Jewett, American writer
• October 7 – James Whitcomb Riley, American writer and poet
• October 31 – Marie Louise Andrews, American writer and editor
• December 16– Mary Hartwell Catherwood, American author and poet
• November 24 – Frances Hodgson Burnett, English children's writer and playwright
• ''date unknown''

Deaths

• January 6 – Hartley Coleridge, English poet and critic
• February 8 – France Prešeren, Slovenian poet
• February 19 – Bernard Barton, English Quaker poet
• May 22 – Maria Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish novelist
• May 28 – Anne Brontë, English novelist and poet
• June 4 – Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, Irish novelist and literary hostess
• July 7 – Goffredo Mameli, Italian poet
• July 12 – Horace (Horatio) Smith, English poet and novelist
• July 25 – James Kenney, English dramatist
• July 27 – Charlotte von Ahlefeld, German novelist
• July 31 – Sándor Petőfi, Hungarian poet and revolutionary
• August 25 – Adele Schopenhauer, German novelist and paper-cut artist
• October 7 – Edgar Allan Poe, American poet, short story writer and critic