1872 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1872.

Events

March
*The Federation of Madrid expels Paul Lafargue and all other signatories to an ostensibly subversive article in La Emancipación.
*Serialisation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Gothic vampire novella Carmilla ends in the monthly The Dark Blue. Later this year it appears in his collection In a Glass Darkly. Set in the Duchy of Styria, it helps to introduce the lesbian vampire genre.
June 15 – Thomas Hardy's second novel, Under the Greenwood Tree, is published in London.
June 19 – The Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire is founded in Strasbourg as the Kaiserliche Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek zu Straßburg, a public regional and academic library for the new German territory of Alsace-Lorraine after destruction of its predecessors in the Siege of Strasbourg in the Franco-Prussian War.
July – Rose la Touche rejects a proposal from John Ruskin for the last time.
July 7 – Paul Verlaine abandons his family for London with Arthur Rimbaud.
September 13 – Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu first attends the literary club Junimea of Iași and reads out his fantasy story Poor Dionis . It is poorly received by the Junimists.
September 30 – George MacDonald arrives in Boston for a lecture tour of the United States.
November – Lafcadio Hearn becomes a reporter on the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer.
December 3 – Assyriologist George Smith presents the first translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh to a meeting of the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London.
December 22 – Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days finishes serialisation in the daily Le Temps, the day after the concluding date of the narrative.
unknown dates
*Benito Pérez Galdós begins Trafalgar, the first in the series of historical novels known as Episodios Nacionales.
*The first university course in American Literature is held at Princeton University by John Seely Hart.
*The Scottish Gaelic magazine Féillire first appears as Almanac Gàilig air son 1872 in Inverness.

New books

Non-fiction

William Henry Davenport Adams, Hector Giacomelli, Athénaïs Michelet – Nature; or the Poetry of Earth and Sea
Chambers's English Dictionary
William Cullen Bryant – Picturesque America, vol. 1
John Evans – The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain
Warren Felt Evans – Mental Medicine
Sophia Jex-Blake – Medical Women: A Thesis and a History
Friedrich Nietzsche – The Birth of Tragedy
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah – Scrieri vechi perdute atingetóre de Dacia
Charles Busbridge Snepp – Songs of Grace and Glory
Henry Wilson – History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, vols. 1 & 2

Births

January 31 – Zane Grey, American Western novelist
March 31 – Mary Lewis Langworthy, American pageant writer
April 4
*Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaș – Romanian art historian, ethnographer and journalist
*Frida Uhl – Austrian writer
May 2 – Ichiyō Higuchi, Japanese writer
May 21 – Teffi, born Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya, Russian-born humorist
May 31 – W. Heath Robinson, English cartoonist and illustrator
June 27 – Paul Laurence Dunbar, African American poet, novelist and playwright
August 24 – Max Beerbohm, English essayist and parodist
September 15 – Frances Garnet Wolseley, English horticulturist and garden writer
September 22 – Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, American fiction writer and poet
October 8 – John Cowper Powys, Anglo-Welsh novelist
October 10 – Arthur Talmage Abernethy, American theologian and poet
October 18 – Mikhail Kuzmin, Russian poet, novelist and composer
October 20 – F. M. Mayor, English novelist
November 23 – Eraclie Sterian, Romanian science writer and playwright
December 28 – Pío Baroja, Spanish novelist

Deaths

January 21 – Franz Grillparzer, Austrian poet and dramatist
February 6 – Sir Thomas Phillipps, English book collector
March 4 – Carsten Hauch, Danish poet
March 10 – Giuseppe Mazzini, Italian philosopher, journalist and politician
March 11 – Emily Taylor, English author, poet and hymn writer
April 1 – Frederick Denison Maurice, English theologian
April 13 – Samuel Bamford, English essayist and poet
April 20 – Ljudevit Gaj, Croatian linguist and journalist
May 13 – Moritz Hartmann, German poet
May 29 – Frank Key Howard, American journalist and memoirist
June 1 – Charles Lever, Irish novelist
July 25 – Gregorio Gutiérrez González, Colombian poet
August 8 – Heinrich Abeken, German theologian
September 11 – Countess Dash, French writer
September 18 – Herbert Haines, English historian and Anglican theologian
September 22 – Vladimir Dal, Russian lexicographer
October 10 – Fanny Fern, American journalist, novelist and children's writer
October 21 – Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné, Swiss historian
November 16 – William Gilham, American military writer
December 23 – Théophile Gautier, French poet and novelist

1872 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young adults

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths