1869 in literature

Events

• February 3 – Booth's Theatre opens on Manhattan with the owner, Edwin Booth, playing the male lead in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
• May 10 – As a protest against her drama school having been closed down by the Russian authorities, Swedish-born actress Hedvig Raa-Winterhjelm delivers the lines in her next performance, Aleksis Kivi's Lea, in the Finnish language, the first time it has been spoken in the public theatre in Finland.
• May 22 – Serial publication of Anthony Trollope's novel He Knew He Was Right concludes and it appears in London as the first book to include a fictional private investigator, ex-policeman Samuel Bozzle.
• August
• *Ambrose Bierce, writing a satirical column for the San Francisco News Letter, begins to produce the cynical definitions which will eventually become The Devil's Dictionary.
• *Macmillan Publishing opens its first American office in New York City, headed by George Edward Brett.
• October 5 – Model, poet and artist Elizabeth Siddal is exhumed by Charles Augustus Howell at Highgate Cemetery in London in order to recover the manuscript of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poems buried with her.
• December – Publication of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace complete in book form concludes. It is printed in Moscow and sold by the author on subscription.
• unknown dates – Eiríkur Magnússon and William Morris publish their first translations of Old Icelandic sagas into English: Grettis Saga: The Story of Grettir the Strong and The Story of Gunnlaug the Worm-tongue and Raven the Skald.

New books

Fiction

• Thomas Bailey Aldrich – The Story of a Bad Boy
• Ignacio Manuel Altamirano – Clemencia
• Horatio Alger, Jr. – Luck and Pluck
• R. M. Ballantyne – Erling the Bold
• R. D. Blackmore – Lorna Doone
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky – The Idiot
• Alexandre Dumas, père – The Knight of Sainte-Hermine
• Gustave Flaubert – Sentimental Education
• Émile Gaboriau – Monsieur Lecoq
• Ivan Goncharov – The Precipice
• Edmond and Jules de Goncourt – Madame Gervaisais
• Victor Hugo – The Man Who Laughs
• Sheridan Le Fanu – The Wyvern Mystery
• Nikolai Leskov – Old Years in Plodomasovo
• Joaquim Manuel de Macedo – A Luneta Mágica
• Hector Malot – Romain Kalbris
• Florence Montgomery – Misunderstood
• Charles Reade – Foul Play
• Capt. Hawley Smart – Breezie Langton
• Hesba Stretton – Alone in London
• Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
• Anthony Trollope
• *He Knew He Was Right
• *Phineas Finn
• Charlotte M. Yonge – ''The Chaplet of Pearls''

Children and young people

• Louisa May Alcott – Good Wives
• Frances Freeling Broderip
• *Tales of the Toys told by Themselves
• *The Daisy and her Friends: Tales and Stories for Children
• Juliana Horatia Ewing – Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances
• Jean Ingelow – Mopsa the Fairy
• A. D. T. Whitney – ''Hitherto''

Drama

• Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson – Sigurd Slembe
• François Coppée – Le Passant
• Navalram Pandya – Veermati
• Mendele Mocher Sforim – Di Takse
• Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin – ''Scenes from the Past''

Poetry

• Henry Kendall – ''Leaves from Australian Forests''

Non-fiction

• Matthew Arnold – Culture and Anarchy
• P. T. Barnum – Struggles and Triumphs
• Josephine Butler – Women's Work and Women's Culture
• Warren Felt Evans – The Mental Cure, illustrating the influence of the Mind on the Body
• William Ewart Gladstone – Juventus Mundi: The gods and men of "the heroic" age
• John Stuart Mill – The Subjection of Women
• John Neal — Wandering Recollections of a Somewhat Busy Life: An Autobiography
• Anthony Trollope – On English Prose Fiction as a Rational Amusement
• Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad
• Richard Wagner – Das Judenthum in der Musik
• Garnet Wolseley – ''Soldier’s Pocket-book for Field Service''

Births

• January 10 – Rachel Davis Harris, African American librarian
• January 15 – Stanisław Wyspiański, Polish dramatist, poet, painter and architect
• February 8 – Victor Ido, born Hans van de Wall, Dutch East Indian journalist, novelist and playwright
• February 11 – Else Lasker-Schüler, German-born poet, playwright and short story writer
• March 11
• * F. G. Loring, English writer and naval officer
• * Rosa Louise Woodberry, American journalist and educator
• March 14 – Algernon Blackwood, English writer
• May 23 – Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, American poet
• June 10 – Arthur Shearly Cripps, English-born poet, short story writer and Anglican priest in Africa
• July 1 – William Strunk, Jr., American professor of English
• July 8 – William Vaughn Moody, American dramatist and poet
• July 29 – Booth Tarkington, American novelist
• August 10 – Laurence Binyon, English poet and dramatist
• September 6 – Felix Salten, Austrian author and critic
• October 6 – Bo Bergman, Swedish poet
• November 15 – Charlotte Mew, English poet
• November 20 – Zinaida Gippius, Russian writer
• November 22 – André Gide, French writer
• December 22 – Edwin Arlington Robinson, American poet
• December 30 – Stephen Leacock, English-born Canadian humorist and economist

Deaths

• January 20 – Carl Wilhelm Göttling, German classical commentator
• January 28 – Sophie Bolander, Swedish writer
• January 30
• *Frances Catherine Barnard, English writer
• *William Carleton, Irish writer
• February 15 – Ghalib, Indian poet
• February 28 – Alphonse de Lamartine, French poet and politician
• March 31 – David Rees (Y Cynhyrfwr), Nonconformist leader and author
• May 16 – Giovanni Peruzzini, Italian poet, opera librettist, and translator of German literature
• May 18 – Peter Cunningham, British literary scholar and antiquarian
• July 7 – Paul Botten-Hansen, Norwegian librarian, book collector, magazine editor and literary critic
• July 11 – William Jerdan, Scottish-born editor
• July 15 – Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Duncker, German publisher
• July 19 – Victor Aimé Huber, German travel writer and literary historian
• July 22 – Julius Braun, German historian
• August 2 – Thomas Medwin, English poet, biographer and translator
• September 12 – Peter Mark Roget, British lexicographer
• October – John Jones (Talhaiarn), poet
• October 13 – Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, French literary critic
• October 18 – Simon Jenko, Slovene poet
• November 3 – Andreas Kalvos, Greek Romantic poet and dramatist
• November 12 – Gheorghe Asachi, Moldavian polymath