1870 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1870.
Events
- January 19 – Ivan Turgenev attends and writes about the public execution by guillotine of the spree killer Jean-Baptiste Troppmann outside the gates of La Roquette Prisons in Paris.
- March 7 – Thomas Hardy meets his first wife, Emma Gifford, in Cornwall.
- March 28 – Serialisation of Kenward Philp's The Bowery Detective in The Fireside Companion begins, the first known story to include the word detective in the title.
- April–September – The serialisation of Charles Dickens' last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, is left unfinished on his death on June 9 at Gads Hill Place in Kent, from a stroke, aged 58.
- May – Karl May begins a second four-year prison sentence for thefts and frauds, at Waldheim, Saxony.
- Spring – Serial publication begins of Aleksis Kivi's only novel Seitsemän veljestä, the first notable novel in the Finnish language.
- August 24/25 – Libraries of the University of Strasbourg and the City of Strasbourg at Temple Neuf are destroyed by fire during the Siege of Strasbourg in the Franco-Prussian War, resulting in the loss of 3,446 medieval manuscripts, including the original 12th-century Hortus deliciarum compiled by Herrad of Landsberg, the Apologist codex containing the only text of the early Epistle to Diognetus, and rare Renaissance books.
- September 17 – The first performance of Alexander Pushkin's play Boris Godunov is given at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg by members of the Alexandrinsky Theatre.
- c. September 20 – Friedrich Engels moves permanently to London from Manchester.
- December 18 – The Russian literary weekly Niva is first published by Adolf Marks in Saint Petersburg.
- unknown date – Construction of the David Sassoon Library in Bombay, India, is completed.
New books
Fiction
- William Harrison Ainsworth - Talbot Harland
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich – The Story of a Bad Boy
- Thomas Archer – The Terrible Sights of London
- Rhoda Broughton – Red as a Rose is She
- Wilkie Collins – Man and Wife
- Annie Denton Cridge - Man's Rights; Or, How Would You Like It? Comprising Dreams
- José Maria de Eça de Queiroz and Ramalho Ortigão –
- Charles Dickens – The Mystery of Edwin Drood
- Benjamin Disraeli – Lothair
- Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Eternal Husband
- Edward Jenkins – Ginx's Baby: his birth and other misfortunes
- Mór Jókai – Fekete gyémántok
- Aleksis Kivi – Seitsemän veljestä
- Jonas Lie – Den Fremsynte
- George Meredith – The Adventures of Harry Richmond
- William Morris – The Earthly Paradise
- Charles Reade - Put Yourself in His Place
- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch – Venus in Furs
- Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin – The History of a Town
- Bayard Taylor – Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania
- Anthony Trollope – The Vicar of Bullhampton
- Ivan Turgenev – Stepnoy korol Lir ; novella, English translation: King Lear of the Steppes'
- Jules Verne – Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
- Charlotte M. Yonge – ''The Caged Lion''
Children and young people
- John Neal — ''Great Mysteries and Little Plagues''
Drama
- James Albery – Two Roses
- Ludwig Anzengruber – Der Pfarrer von Kirchfeld
- Henry James Byron – Uncle Dick's Darling
- Pietro Cossa – Nero
- Lydia Koidula
- *Maret ja Miina
- *Saaremaa Onupoeg
- Lord Newry – Ecarte
- George Sand and Sarah Bernhardt – L'Autre
- Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy – ''Tsar Boris''
Poetry
- Bret Harte – The Heathen Chinee
- Edward Lear – Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets, including "The Owl and the Pussycat"
- Giovanni Marradi – Canzone moderne
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Poems, including "Jenny" and a fragment of "The House of Life"
Non-fiction
- J. E. Austen-Leigh – A Memoir of Jane Austen
- Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
- Richard William Church – Life of St. Anselm
- Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Army Life in a Black Regiment
- Hargrave Jennings – The Rosicrucians, their Rites and Mysteries
- Henry Maudsley – Body and Mind
- Dadabhai Naoroji – The Wants and Means of India
- William Robinson – The Wild Garden
- Charles Dudley Warner - ''My Summer in a Garden and Calvin, A Study of Character''
Births
- January 3 – Henry Handel Richardson, Australian novelist
- February 16 – Henric Streitman, Romanian essayist and journalist
- March 5 – Frank Norris, American novelist
- April 7 – Gustav Landauer, German philosopher and revolutionary
- June 25 – Erskine Childers, Irish novelist
- July 27 – Hilaire Belloc, French-born English writer, poet and satirist
- October 18 – Petre P. Negulescu, Romanian philosopher
- October 22 – Ivan Bunin, Russian-born writer, recipient of Nobel Prize in Literature
- October 29 – Gerald Duckworth, English publisher
- December 17 – Ioan A. Bassarabescu, Romanian short story writer and politician
- December 18 – Saki, English short story writer and dramatist
Deaths
- January 21 – Alexander Herzen, Russian writer
- February 25 – Henrik Hertz, Danish poet
- April 16 – Rallou Karatza, Greek Wallachian translator and theatrical promoter
- April 24 – Louisa Stuart Costello, Irish writer on history and travel
- June 9 – Charles Dickens, English novelist
- June 11 – William Gilmore Simms, American poet, novelist and historian
- June 24 – Adam Lindsay Gordon, Australian poet
- July 19 – Benjamin Thorpe, scholar of Old English
- July 20 – Jules de Goncourt, French novelist and critic
- July 24 – Anders Abraham Grafström, Swedish poet and historian
- July 30 - Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, Norwegian journalist and poet
- September 12 – Fitz Hugh Ludlow, American author and explorer
- September 23 - Prosper Mérimée, French writer
- November 4 – Comte de Lautreamont, French poet and writer
- December 5 – Alexandre Dumas, père, French novelist