1881 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1881.
Events
- February 13 – The first issue of the feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is published by Hubertine Auclert in France.
- March – Ambrose Bierce contributes to the weekly satirical San Francisco magazine The Wasp and resumes his column "Prattle" and the series of cynical definitions which he first calls The Devil's Dictionary.
- April – William Poel's production of Shakespeare's Hamlet at St. George's Hall, London, reverts to the first quarto text and avoids elaborate scene changes.
- April 23 – Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Patience, a satire on Oscar Wilde and aestheticism, opens with George Grossmith in the lead at the Opera Comique in London.
- July 7 – Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, a children's story about a wooden puppet in Tuscany, begins to be serialized in the first issue of Giornale per i bambini, a supplement to the Roman Sunday newspaper .
- July 29 – The Law on the Freedom of the Press is passed in France.
- August 17 – The Pushkin Prize is established by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
- October 1 – Robert Louis Stevenson's children's pirate adventure novel Treasure Island begins serialization in the British magazine Young Folks as Treasure Island; or, The mutiny of the Hispaniola by "Captain George North".
- The S. Fischer Verlag publishing house is founded by Samuel Fischer in Berlin.
- The first of the three-volume History of Woman Suffrage, is published by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the United States.
- Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy's historical drama Tsar Boris receives its première, posthumously, at Anna Brenko's Pushkin Theater in Moscow.
- The literary review and movement La Jeune Belgique is founded by the poet Max Waller.
New books
Fiction
- William Harrison Ainsworth – Stanley Brereton
- Emilia Pardo Bazán – Un viaje de novios
- Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Asphodel
- Robert Buchanan – God and the Man
- Bankim Chatterjee – Rajsimha
- Wilkie Collins – The Black Robe
- Machado de Assis – The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
- Antonio Fogazzaro – Malombra
- Anatole France – Sylvestre Bonnard
- Thomas Hardy – A Laodicean
- Henry Honor – The Great Romance
- Joris-Karl Huysmans – En Ménage
- Robert G. Ingersoll – The Great Infidels
- Henry James – The Portrait of a Lady
- Nikolai Leskov – The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea
- Margaret Oliphant – Harry Joscelyn
- "Jack Saul" – The Sins of the Cities of the Plain
- Joseph Henry Shorthouse – John Inglesant
- Anthony Trollope – Doctor Wortle's School and Ayala's Angel
- Giovanni Verga – I Malavoglia
- Jules Verne – ''Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon ''
Children and young people
- Joel Chandler Harris – Uncle Remus
- Talbot Baines Reed – The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's
- Bram Stoker – Under the Sunset
- Mrs. Humphry Ward – ''Milly and Olly''
Drama
- Henrik Ibsen
- *Ghosts
- *Catiline
- William Young – ''Pendragon''
Poetry
- Roden Noël – ''A Little Child's Monument''
Non-fiction
- Abel Boyer – Boyer's French-English and English-French Dictionary
- Florence Caddy – Lares et Penates, or, The Background of Life
- Thomas Carlyle – Reminiscences
- Jefferson Davis – The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government
- Warren Felt Evans – The Divine Law of Cure
- Walter Gregor – Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland
- Alice Diehl – The Story of Philosophy
- North-Western Provinces – Weekly Notes of Cases Decided by the High Court, N.-w. P
- Hermann Schultz – Die Lehre von der Gottheit Christi
- Alfred Percy Sinnett – The Occult World
- John Francon Williams – ''The Geography of the Oceans''
Births
- January 9
- *Lascelles Abercrombie, English poet and literary critic
- *Giovanni Papini, Italian writer
- January 18 – Gaston Gallimard, French publisher
- January 28 – Ruby M. Ayres, English romance novelist
- February 10 – Boris Zaytsev, Russian novelist and dramatist
- February 13 – Eleanor Farjeon, English children's writer and poet
- March 4 – Thomas Sigismund Stribling, American novelist
- March 14 – Eugeniu Ștefănescu-Est, Romanian poet, novelist and cartoonist
- March 17 – Kristian Elster, Norwegian novelist, literary historian and biographer
- March 25 – Mary Webb, English novelist
- April 14 – Husain Salaahuddin, Maldivian writer
- May 13 – Lima Barreto, Brazilian novelist and journalist
- June 24 – George Shiels, Northern Irish dramatist
- July 22 – Margery Williams, English-born American children's writer
- August 1 – Rose Macaulay, English novelist, biographer and travel writer
- August 2 – Ethel M. Dell, English romantic fiction writer
- August 10 – Witter Bynner, American poet and scholar
- August 24 – Nicolae Petrescu-Comnen, Romanian social scientist, historian and poet
- October 5 – Barbu Lăzăreanu, Romanian literary historian, poet, and communist journalist
- October 15 – P. G. Wodehouse, English-born American humorous novelist
- October 30 – Elizabeth Madox Roberts, American novelist and poet
- November 28 – Stefan Zweig, Austrian novelist and playwright
Deaths
- January 12 – George Robert Aberigh-Mackay, Anglo-Indian author
- January 28 – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist
- January 30 – Anna Maria Hall, Irish novelist
- February 5 – Thomas Carlyle, Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher
- March 23 – George Métivier, Guernsey poet writing in Guernésiais
- April 19 – Benjamin Disraeli, English novelist and politician
- April 24 – James T. Fields, American publisher
- July 1 – Hermann Lotze, German philosopher
- July 12 – Caroline Leakey, English poet and novelist
- October 13 – Mary Emma Ebsworth, English dramatist
- November 1 – Jacques Perk, Dutch poet
- December 13 – August Šenoa, Croatian novelist and critic
- unknown date – Liu Xizai, Chinese scholar and literary critic