1878 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1878.

Events

January 28 – The Yale News becomes the first daily college newspaper in the United States.
June – Robert Louis Stevenson's three linked detective fiction short stories The Suicide Club featuring Prince Florizel begin publication in The London Magazine.
June 10 – Konrad Korzeniowski, the future English-language novelist Joseph Conrad, sets foot on British soil for the first time, at Lowestoft from the SS Mavis.
July – The Scottish poetaster William McGonagall, a self-described "poet and tragedian", journeys on foot from Dundee to Balmoral Castle over mountainous terrain and through a thunderstorm in a fruitless attempt to perform his verse before Queen Victoria.
August 3 – Guy de Maupassant writes to Gustave Flaubert, complaining about his monotonous life and his new job as an employee of the Ministry of Public Instruction in France.
October – The Peabody Institute Library opens to the public in Baltimore, Maryland.
December 30 – Henry Irving's production of Hamlet, with himself in the title rôle playing opposite Ellen Terry as Ophelia, opens at the Lyceum Theatre, London.
unknown dates
*Anton Chekhov writes his first substantial play, known as Platonov, but it is not completed, titled, performed or published in his lifetime.
*The Johns Hopkins University Press is established in Baltimore, Maryland, as the University Publication Agency, making it the oldest continuously operating university press in the United States.
*The Remington No. 2 typewriter, the first with a shift key enabling production of lower as well as upper case characters, is introduced in the United States.

New books

Births

January 4 – A. E. Coppard, English short story writer and poet
January 6 – Carl Sandburg, American poet and historian
January 12 – Ferenc Molnár, Hungarian playwright and novelist
March 14 – Victor Bridges, English novelist, playwright and poet
April 15 – Robert Walser, Swiss author and poet writing in German
June 1 – John Masefield, English poet
June 12 – James Oliver Curwood, American author
August 2 – Berta Ruck, Indian-born Welsh romantic novelist
August 10 – Louis Esson, Scottish-born Australian poet and playwright
September 20 – Upton Sinclair, American novelist
September 22 – F. J. Harvey Darton English children's literature historian and publisher
November 25 – Georg Kaiser, German dramatist
December 15 – Hans Carossa, German novelist and poet

Deaths

January 8 – Nikolay Nekrasov, Russian poet
January 19 – Ede Szigligeti, Hungarian dramatist
February 1 – George Cruikshank, English illustrator
April 24 – Heinrich Leo, Prussian historian
April 25 – Anna Sewell, English novelist
May 28 – Sophie de Choiseul-Gouffier, Lithuanian novelist
July 1 – Catherine Winkworth, English translator
July 17 - Aleardo Aleardi, Italian poet
August 13
*George Gilfillan, Scottish poet and author
*Elizabeth Prentiss, American poet and hymnist
November 3 – Frances Freeling Broderip, English children's writer
November 17 – Karl Theodor Keim, German theologian
November 20 – William Thomas, Welsh-language poet
December 5 – George Whyte-Melville, Scottish-born novelist
December 19 – Bayard Taylor, American poet
December 31 – Giulietta Pezzi, Italian novelist, journalist, and poet

Awards

Newdigate prize – Oscar Wilde, "Ravenna"

1878 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards