1874 in literature

Events

• January – Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, the first novel set specifically in Thomas Hardy's Wessex, begins publication as an anonymous serial in The Cornhill Magazine, It appears on November 23 in two volumes from his publisher, Smith, Elder & Co. of London.
• February – Anthony Trollope's satirical novel The Way We Live Now begins publication in monthly shilling parts in London, as one of the last major Victorian novels published in that format. It is completed and appears in two volumes in 1875.
• February 11 – Alexandre Dumas, fils, is admitted to the Académie française.
• March – Arthur Rimbaud moves to London with the French poet Germain Nouveau.
• October – The German literary and political periodical Deutsche Rundschau is established by Julius Rodenberg in Berlin.
• November – After completing a four-year prison sentence for thefts and frauds at Waldheim, Saxony, Karl May has his first story, "Die Rose von Ernstthal", published.
• unknown dates
• *Arthur William à Beckett joins the staff of Punch.
• *Mark Twain moves into the house he has had built adjacent to that of Harriet Beecher Stowe in Hartford, Connecticut, where he will live until 1891 and work on his classic novels.
• *Johan Nicolai Madvig begins to lose his sight, forcing him to give up most of his research and writing.

New books

Fiction

• Thomas Bailey Aldrich – Prudence Palfrey
• José de Alencar – Ubirajara
• Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly – Les Diaboliques
• R. M. Ballantyne – The Pirate City
• Ambrose Bierce – Cobwebs from an Empty Skull
• Andrew Blair – Annals of the Twenty-Ninth Century
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Lost For Love
• William Wells Brown – The Rising Son
• Marcus Clarke – For the Term of His Natural Life
• Wilkie Collins – The Frozen Deep and Other Stories
• Alphonse Daudet – Fromont jeune et Risler aîné
• Amelia Edwards – A Night on the Borders of the Black Forest
• George Eliot – Middlemarch
• Gustave Flaubert – The Temptation of Saint Anthony
• Émile Gaboriau – Other People's Money / A Great Robbery
• Thomas Hardy – Far From the Madding Crowd
• Marie Howland – Papa's Own Girl
• Victor Hugo – Ninety-Three
• J.-K. Huysmans – Le Drageoir aux épices
• Nikolai Leskov – A Decayed Family
• Eliza Lynn Linton – Patricia Kemball
• George Meredith – Beauchamp's Career
• Margaret Oliphant – A Rose in June
• Theodor Storm
• *Paul the Puppeteer
• *Viola Tricolor
• Anthony Trollope
• *Harry Heathcote of Gangoil: A Tale of Australian Bush Life
• *Lady Anna (novel)
• *Phineas Redux
• Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano – Pepita Jiménez
• Mrs. Henry Wood – Johnny Ludlow
• Edmund Yates – The Impending Sword
• Émile Zola – ''La Conquête de Plassans''

Children and young people

• Emilia Marryat – Amongst the Maoris
• Mrs. O. F. Walton – ''Christie's Old Organ''

Drama

• José Echegaray – La esposa del vengador
• Adolphe d'Ennery and Eugène Cormon – The Two Orphans
• Sami Frashëri – Besâ yâhut Âhde Vefâ
• W. S. Gilbert
• *Charity
• *Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: A tragic episode in three tabloids
• Henry Glapthorne – The Plays and Poems of Henry Glapthorne: Now first collected with illustrative notes and a memoir of the Author
• Victorien Sardou – La Haine
• Jules Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery – ''Around the World in Eighty Days''

Poetry

• Stéphane Mallarmé – "L'après-midi d'un faune"
• Paul Verlaine – ''Romances sans paroles''

Non-fiction

• Franz Brentano – Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkte
• William Cullen Bryant – Picturesque America, vol. 2
• Charles Darwin – The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
• John William Draper – A History of the Conflict between Religion and Science
• Gustav Jaeger – Deutschlands Tierwelt nach ihren Standorten
• Robert C. Kedzie – Shadows from the Walls of Death
• Henry Maudsley – Mental Responsibility in Health and Disease
• John Neal – Portland Illustrated
• Elise Otté – Scandinavian History
• Antonio Raimondi – El Perú
• Dorothy Wordsworth – ''Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A. D. 1803''

Births

• January 16 – Robert W. Service, English-born Canadian poet
• January 17 – Thornton Burgess, American children's writer
• January 25 – W. Somerset Maugham, British novelist
• February 1 – Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Austrian writer
• February 3 – Gertrude Stein, American-born writer and arts patron
• February 9 – Amy Lowell, American poet
• February 11 – Elsa Beskow, Swedish children's book and fairy-tale writer
• February 13 – Elsa Lindberg, Swedish writer of harem stories
• February 20 – Gordon Bottomley, English poet, writer of verse drama
• February 27 – F. M. Cornford, English classicist and poet
• March 20 – Börries von Münchhausen, German poet
• March 26 – Robert Frost, American poet
• April 28 – Karl Kraus, Austrian writer and journalist
• May 29 – G. K. Chesterton, English novelist, writer and poet
• June 20 – Trumbull Stickney, American poet
• July 29 – August Stramm, German Expressionist poet and playwright
• August 8 – Tristan Klingsor, French poet
• August 14 – Bertha M. Wilson, American playwright, critic, and actress
• October 6 – Ursula Bethell, English-born New Zealand poet
• November 20 – Nicolae Constantin Batzaria, Ottoman-born Romanian humorist, novelist, editor, and journalist
• November 30:
• *Lucy Maud Montgomery, Canadian novelist
• *Paul Zarifopol, Romanian critic
• December 12 – Volter Kilpi, Finnish novelist
• c. December 13 – Radu D. Rosetti, Romanian poet and playwright
• December 26 – J. H. M. Abbott, Australian novelist and poet
• December 31 – Holbrook Jackson, English journalist, writer, publisher and bibliophile

Deaths

• January 24 – Adam Black, Scottish publisher
• January 26 – Giuseppe Rovani, Italian novelist
• February 8 – David Strauss, German theologian
• February 9 – Jules Michelet, French historian
• February 23 – Shirley Brooks, English journalist and novelist
• March 3 – Francis Mason, English-born American grammarian and translator
• March 4 – Ada Clare, American journalist
• March 24 – Joseph Tracy, American newspaper editor and historian
• June 19 – Jules Janin, French critic
• July 7 – John Heneage Jesse, English historian
• July 8 – Agnes Strickland, English popular historian and poet
• July 12 – Fritz Reuter, German novelist
• August 8 – Augustin Theiner, German theologian and historian
• September 20 – Victor Séjour, American-born Creole novelist and dramatist writing in French
• October 5 – Bryan Procter, English poet
• October 24 – Thomas Miller, English poet
• November 20 – Tom Hood, English humorist