1860 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1860.

Events

January
*The first issue of the Cornhill Magazine appears in London. It serializes Anthony Trollope's Framley Parsonage throughout the year.
*Mrs. Henry Wood's "sensation novel" East Lynne begins serialization in The New Monthly Magazine. Her first full-length novel, Danesbury House, also appears this year.
*Approximate date – The Catholic newspaper L'Univers is suppressed by the French government.
January 28 – The first of Charles Dickens' literary sketches generally titled The Uncommercial Traveller appears in his magazine All the Year Round.
February – Mary Elizabeth Braddon gives up her acting career to write. In the same year she meets her future husband John Maxwell.
March 27 – The Irish melodrama The Colleen Bawn, or The Brides of Garryowen, written by and starring Dion Boucicault, is first performed at Miss Laura Keene's theatre, New York.
April 4 – George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss is published by John Blackwood in three volumes.
June 9 – Ann S. Stephens' Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter, a tale of the American frontier, becomes the first Beadle's dime novel, published in cheap paperback book format by Irwin P. Beadle & Co. in New York City.
June 30 – In the 1860 Oxford evolution debate, Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley debate the theories of Charles Darwin at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Lewis Carroll is among the audience.
August 25 – Wilkie Collins' sensation novel The Woman in White, an early example of mystery fiction, completes its serialization in All the Year Round. It appears in book form in London around August 15.
c. September 3 – Charles Dickens burns most of his private papers at his home in Kent, Gads Hill Place, having taken up regular residence there this year.
December 1 – Charles Dickens's Bildungsroman ''Great Expectations begins serialization in All the Year Round.
unknown dates
*Alexander Bain is appointed to the chair of logic and English literature at the University of Aberdeen.
*Vasil Drumev, later Metropolitan Kliment of Tarnovo and Bulgaria's Prime Minister, brings out the first original story in the Bulgarian language, "A Woeful Family", in the Istanbul journal Bâlgarski knižitsi''.
*Andreas Munch becomes the first person granted a poet's pension by the Parliament of Norway.

New books

Births

January 10 – Charles G. D. Roberts, Canadian poet
January 29 – Anton Chekhov, Russian short story writer, novelist and dramatist
February 11 – Rachilde, French author
April 8 – Catherine Isabella Dodd, English education writer and novelist
April 9 – Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, English writer of romances and children's books
May 9
May 28 – Sigrid Pettersson, Swedish poet and translator
June 1 – Hugh Thomson, Irish-born illustrator
June 6 – William Inge, English theologian
July 3 – Charlotte Perkins Gilman, American novelist, short story writer and social reformer
July 7 – Abraham Cahan, American Jewish journalist and novelist
July 14 – Owen Wister, American Western fiction writer and historian
July 18 – Herbert Kelly, English religious writer and cleric
August 8 – Eliza Putnam Heaton, American journalist and editor
August 12 – Harriet Theresa Comstock, American children's author
August 16 – Jane Agnes Stewart, American author, editor, and contributor to periodicals
August 18 – Kristína Royová, Slovak novelist, religious writer and poet
September 2 – Georgina Fraser Newhall, Canadian author
September 13 – Ralph Connor, Canadian novelist
September 14 – Hamlin Garland, American novelist, poet and essayist
September 20 – Jennie Thornley Clarke, American educator, writer, and anthologist
October 6 – Rosamund Marriott Watson, born Rosamund Ball and writing as Graham R. Tomson, English poet
October 23 – Molly Elliot Seawell, American novelist and dramatist
December 8 – Amanda McKittrick Ros, born Anna McKittrick, Irish novelist and poet noted for her purple prose
December 11 – Leonard Huxley, English writer and editor

Deaths

January 26 – Eliza Lee Cabot Follen, American abolitionist and writer
January 29 – Ernst Moritz Arndt, German poet
February 9 – William Evans Burton, English dramatist, theatre manager and publisher
February 25 – Chauncey Allen Goodrich, American lexicographer
March 17 – Anna Brownell Jameson, Irish-born essayist, travel writer and editor
May 9 – Samuel Griswold Goodrich, American children's author
May 16 – Anne Isabella Byron, Baroness Byron, English memoirist and wife of Lord Byron
May 28 – Rosine de Chabaud-Latour, French religious thinker and translator
May 23 – Albert Richard Smith, English journalist and humorist
June 18 – Friedrich Wilhelm von Bismarck, German army officer and writer
August 25
*Christian Lobeck, German classicist
*Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Danish poet and critic
September 21 – Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher
September 23 – George Godfrey Cunningham, Scottish non-fiction writer, compiler, and translator
October 22 – Wanda Malecka, Polish publisher
December 2 – Ferdinand Christian Baur, German theologian
December 8 – Mary Hall Adams, American book editor and letter writer
December 11 – Anne Knight, English children's writer and educationist

Awards

Newdigate Prize – John Addington Symonds

1860 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards