1864 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1864.
—Opening of ''Our Mutual Friend''

Events

January – Anthony Trollope's Can You Forgive Her?, the first of his Palliser novels, begins to appear in monthly parts in London. Trollope completes it on April 28 and the first volume is published as a book in September by Chapman & Hall. In April, The Small House at Allington concludes publication in the Cornhill Magazine and is published in book form by George Smith.
January 2–April 16 – James Payn publishes his most popular story, Lost Sir Massingberd, in Chambers's Journal. He follows it in the magazine by Married Beneath Him.
February 20 – Painter George Frederic Watts marries his 16-year-old model, the actress Ellen Terry, 30 years his junior, in London. She elopes less than a year later.
March – The first issue of the Russian literary magazine Epoch, edited by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his brother Mikhail, is published in Saint Petersburg. This and the March and April issues contain the first publication of Fyodor's existential novella Notes from Underground.
April 10 – Publisher William Ticknor dies of pneumonia in Philadelphia while on a trip with Nathaniel Hawthorne for the sake of the latter's health.
April 23 – The Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft is founded as the first scientific and cultural association of its type in Weimar, and one of the world's oldest continuing literary societies.
April – Charles Baudelaire leaves Paris for Belgium in the hope of resolving his financial difficulties.
May 26 – Alexandre Dumas, fils marries Nadejda Naryschkine. His father, Alexandre Dumas, père, returns to Paris from Italy.
May – The first Lithuanian press ban is imposed in the Russian Empire.
June 19 – Henrik Ibsen arrives in Rome in a self-imposed exile from Norway that will last for 27 years.
June 27 – Ambrose Bierce is wounded at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain.
July 2 – The Female Detective is published under the pseudonym "Andrew Forrester, Junior" in London, presenting the first female professional detective in fiction. Around December, she is followed by Mrs Paschal in Revelations of a Lady Detective, published anonymously by William Stephens Hayward. R. D. Blackmore's first published work of fiction, the sensation novel Clara Vaughan, also issued anonymously this year in England, has a heroine solving a mystery.
September – A debate at the Royal Geographical Society between Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke is prevented by Speke's suicide.
November 10 – The poet and critic John Addington Symonds the younger marries Janet Catherine North.
November 25 – The brothers Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth and Junius Brutus Booth Jr. make their only appearance onstage together, in a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at the Winter Garden Theater in New York City, staged to raise funds for a memorial to William Shakespeare in the city's Central Park.
December – Sheridan Le Fanu's Gothic locked room mystery-thriller Uncle Silas completes its serialisation in his Dublin University Magazine as "Maud Ruthyn and Uncle Silas" and is published as a three-volume novel by Richard Bentley in London.
unknown date – The English former chess master Howard Staunton publishes a facsimile of the 1600 quarto text of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, the first use of photolithography for such a book.

New books

Births

January 24 – Marguerite Durand, French actress, journalist and feminist leader
February 14 – Israel Zangwill, English novelist, playwright and Zionist
February 21 – Leonard Merrick, English novelist
February 26 – Antonín Sova, Czech poet and librarian
April 8 – J. Smeaton Chase, English-born American author and photographer
April 21 – Max Weber, German sociologist
May 11 – Ethel Lilian Voynich, née Boole, Anglo-Irish novelist and composer
July 20 – Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Nobel Prize-winning Swedish writer
September 22 – Lodewijk van Deyssel, Dutch novelist
September 28 – Barry Pain, English poet and fiction writer
September 29 – Miguel de Unamuno, Basque Spanish writer
October 1 – Emma Sheridan Fry, American actor, playwright, and drama teacher
October 14 – Stefan Żeromski, Polish novelist, poet and dramatist
October 21 – Mary Tracy Earle, American author and essayist
November 11
*Alfred Hermann Fried, Austrian Jewish pacifist writer and Nobel Peace Prize winner
*Maurice Leblanc, French novelist and crime writer
November 26 – Herman Gorter, Dutch poet and socialist
November 28 – James Allen, English self-help writer and poet
December 12 – Paul Elmer More, American critic and essayist

Deaths

January 16 – Anton Felix Schindler, Austrian biographer of Beethoven
January 29
* Lucy Aikin, English historian
* Julia Maitland, English writer on India and children's writer
February 2 – Adelaide Anne Procter, English poet
March 16 – Robert Smith Surtees, English novelist and sporting writer
May 19 – Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist
May 20 – John Clare, English poet
May 26 – Charles Sealsfield, Austro-American novelist and journalist
July 4 – Thomas Colley Grattan, Irish miscellanist and novelist
August 6 – Catherine Sinclair, Scottish novelist and children's writer
August 7 – Janez Puhar, Slovene poet
September 17 – Walter Savage Landor, English writer and poet
November 3 – Gonçalves Dias, Brazilian poet and playwright
December 6 – Simonas Daukantas, Lithuanian ethnographer and historian

Awards

Newdigate Prize – William John Courthope

1864 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards