1853 in literature

Events

• January 28 – Charlotte Brontë's novel Villette appears, its publication having been delayed in order to allow Ruth, by her friend Elizabeth Gaskell, to be given a head start in the press.
• September – The 20th and final instalment of Charles Dickens's Bleak House is published, followed shortly by its book publication.
• November – Poet Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald completes the Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg but Russian censorship makes it impossible to publish.
• November 25 – English poet Alfred Tennyson settles at Farringford House on the Isle of Wight.
• December 27 – Charles Dickens gives the first of his public readings of his own works, in Birmingham Town Hall to the Industrial and Literary Institute, repeated three days later to an audience of working people and including an adaptation of A Christmas Carol; these are very successful and Dickens continues public readings until the year of his death.
• unknown dates
• *Abraham Mapu's historical novel Ahavat Zion, set in ancient Israel and self-published in Kaunas, is the first narrative novel in the Hebrew language.
• *Uriah Maggs establishes what will become the antiquarian bookselling business of Maggs Bros Ltd in London.

  New books

Fiction

• Edward Bradley – The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green
• Charlotte Brontë – Villette
• William Wells Brown – Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States
• Martha Haines Butt – Antifanaticism: A Tale of the South
• Charles Dickens – Bleak House
• Alexandre Dumas, père – La Comtesse de Charny
• Elizabeth Gaskell
• *Cranford
• *Ruth
• Sarah J. Hale – Liberia; or, Mr. Peyton's Experiments
• Caroline Lee Hentz – Helen and Arthur
• Charles Kingsley – Hypatia
• Sheridan Le Fanu – An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
• Maria McIntosh – The Lofty and the Lowly, or Good in All and None All Good
• Abraham Mapu – Ahavat Zion
• Herman Melville – "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
• Susanna Moodie – Life in the Clearings
• Gérard de Nerval – Sylvie
• J. W. Page – Uncle Robin, in His Cabin in Virginia, and Tom Without One in Boston
• Charles Reade
• *Christie Johnstone
• *Peg Woffington
• George Sand – Les Maîtres sonneurs
• Elizabeth Sara Sheppard – Charles Auchester
• Robert Smith Surtees – Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour
• Vidi – Mr. Frank, the Underground Mail-Agent
• George J. Whyte-Melville – Digby Grand
• Charlotte M. Yonge – ''The Heir of Redclyffe''

  Children and young people

• Philip J. Cozans – Little Eva: The Flower of the South
• Fanny Fern – ''Little Ferns for Fanny's Little Friends''

  Drama

• Agha Hasan Amanat – Inder Sabha
• Gustav Freytag – Die Journalisten
• Alexander Ostrovsky – The Poor Bride
• Charles Reade – Gold
• George Sand – ''Le Pressoir''

  Poetry

• Álvares de Azevedo – Lira dos Vinte Anos
• Matthew Arnold – "The Scholar Gipsy"
• Victor Hugo – ''Les Châtiments''

  Non-fiction

• Arthur de Gobineau – An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, vol. 1
• Judge Edmonds, George Dexter – Spiritualism
• Johann Jakob Herzog – Real-Encyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche begins publication
• Ferdinand Hoefer – Nouvelle Biographie Générale, vol. 1
• George Holyoake – Christianity and Secularism. Report of a Debate between the Rev. Bruin Grant B.A. and George Jacob Holyoake Esq.
• Solomon Northup – Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana
• Karl Rosenkrantz – Aesthetic of Ugliness
• Hippolyte Taine – Essai sur les fables de La Fontaine
• Otto von Böhtlingk – Sanskrit-Wörterbuch begins publication

  Births

• January – Dharmavaram Ramakrishnamacharyulu, Telugu dramatist
• February 22 – Annie Le Porte Diggs, Canadian-born American activist, journalist, author
• April 17 – Mrs. Henry Clarke, English historical novelist and children's writer
• April 23 – Thomas Nelson Page, American writer and lawyer
• April 27 – Jules Lemaître, French dramatist and critic
• May 3 – E. W. Howe, American author and editor
• May 14 – Hall Caine, British novelist and playwright
• May 14 – Ella H. Brockway Avann, American educator and writer
• July 27 – Clementina Black, English novelist and political writer
• September 14 – Radu Rosetti, Romanian politician, historical novelist and memoirist
• November 1 – Lie Kim Hok, Dutch East Indian Chinese journalist, novelist, poet and translator

  Deaths

• January 26 – Sylvester Judd, American novelist
• February 3 – August Kopisch, German poet
• April 4 – James Scholefield, English classicist
• April 28 – Ludwig Tieck, German poet, novelist and translator
• May 3 – Juan Donoso Cortés, Spanish diplomat and writer
• June 4 – Pavel Katenin, Russian classicist, poet and dramatist
• September 1 – Jacob Bailey Moore, American journalist and historical writer
• September 5 – Georges Depping, German-French historian
• October 29 – Thomas Jonathan Wooler, English satirist
• December 2 – Amelia Opie, English poet and novelist

  Awards

• Newdigate Prize – Samuel Harvey Reynolds, "The Ruins of Egyptian Thebes"