1858 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1858.

Events

January 3 – The English critic John Ruskin first meets at her London home 10-year-old Rose La Touche, who becomes his muse.
April 29 – Charles Dickens embarks on his first professional tour giving readings from his works. This will involve 129 appearances in 49 towns throughout the British Isles.
May 15 – The third Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, designed by Edward Middleton Barry, opens, having been rebuilt after its second destruction by fire in 1856.
June 18 – Henrik Ibsen marries Suzannah Thoresen, in the same year that he becomes creative director of Oslo's National Theater.
September – Charles Baudelaire's study on Théophile Gautier is published in Revue contemporaine.
October 15 – The farce Our American Cousin by the English playwright Tom Taylor is first performed at Laura Keene's Theatre in New York City, with the American Joe Jefferson in the title rôle and the English actor Edward Askew Sothern as Lord Dundreary.
unknown date – Khachatur Abovian's historical novel Wounds of Armenia: Lamentation of a Patriot, written in the Yerevan dialect in 1841, appears in Tiflis a decade after the author's presumed death; it is seen as the first Armenian novel and the first modern Eastern Armenian literary work.

John Brown – Horas Subsecivae
Gray's Anatomy, 1st edition
William Carew Hazlitt – The History of the Origin and Rise of the Republic of Venice
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. – The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table
William H. Prescott – History of Philip II, volume 3
Charles Piazzi Smyth – Teneriffe: An Astronomer's Experiment
Dimitrie Ralet – Suvenire și impresii de călătorie în România, Bulgaria, Constantinopole
Alfred Russel Wallace – ''On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type''

January 11 – Anna Braden, American author, editor, elocutionist
January 21 – Anna Bowman Dodd, American author
January 22 – Beatrice Webb, English political writer
January 24 – Constance Naden, English poet and philosopher
January 27 – Neel Doff, Dutch-born French author
February 19 – Charles Alexander Eastman, Native American author, physician, reformer, co-founder of Boy Scouts of America
March 12 – Adolph Ochs, American newspaper publisher
March 28 – Joséphin Péladan, French novelist
April 1 – Gaetano Mosca, Italian political scientist and public servant
April 15 – Émile Durkheim, French sociologist
June 8 – Florence Hull Winterburn, American children's author
June 20 – Charles W. Chesnutt, American writer
June 25 – Georges Courteline, French dramatist and novelist
July 1 – Velma Caldwell Melville, American editor, and writer of prose and poetry
July 24 – Wolfgang Kapp, Prussian journalist
August 2 – William Watson, English poet
August 3 – Paul Sabatier, French religious writer
August 15 – E. Nesbit, English children's author
September 15 – Emma Augusta Sharkey, American writer, journalist, dime novelist
October 2 – Emma A. Cranmer, American author, reformer, suffragist
November 20 – Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish writer
December 24 – Harriet Pritchard Arnold, American author
December 26 – Owen Morgan Edwards, Welsh historian and educator