1883 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1883.

Events

January 13 – Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People gains its first performance at the Christiania Theatre.
February – Carlo Collodi's children's story The Adventures of Pinocchio appears first in Italy complete in book form as Le avventure di Pinocchio.
May 23 – Robert Louis Stevenson's children's pirate adventure novel Treasure Island first appears in book form from Cassell in London.
June – Footlights, the University of Cambridge drama club in England, gives its first performance.
June 4 – Mihai Eminescu reads his nationalist poem Doina to an enthusiastic crowd at Junimea in Iași. It is sometimes described as his last work before a mental breakdown later this year. Eminescu's host Ion Creangă recalls it being composed on the spot, but some researchers date it back to 1870.
June 30–October 20 – Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is serialized in the British magazine Young Folks as by "Captain George North". Stevenson completes writing it at the end of the summer in France.
July – The first issue of Fiamuri Arbërit, an Albanian literary and political magazine, is published from Cosenza. Managed by Girolamo de Rada, it promotes Ottomanism against Philhellenism.
August – Ivan Turgenev dictates his last story, "An end", to Pauline Viardot on his deathbed at Bougival in France.
August 29 – Dunfermline Carnegie Library, the first Carnegie library, opens in Andrew Carnegie's home town, Dunfermline, Scotland.
October 3–9 – Turgenev's body is returned by train from Paris to Saint Petersburg with crowds turning out to honor him.
December 27–28 – The Modern Language Association of America holds its first meeting.
Uncertain dates
*Mark Twain's memoirs Life on the Mississippi are published simultaneously in Boston and London, as the first major book submitted to a publisher in typescript.
*Kisari Mohan Ganguli begins publication of the first English-language translation of the Mahabharata.
*The Deutsches Theater company is formed in Berlin.

New books

Non-fiction

American Medical Association – Journal of the American Medical Association
Mathilde Blind – George Eliot
Hall Caine – Cobwebs of Criticism
Thomas Hill Green – Prolegomena to Ethics
J.-K. Huysmans – L'Art moderne
Agnes Catherine Maitland – The Rudiments of Cookery: a Manual for Use in Schools and Homes
William Robinson – The English Flower Garden
J. R. Seeley – The Expansion of England
Alfred Percy Sinnett – Esoteric Buddhism
John Addington Symonds – A Problem in Greek Ethics: an inquiry into the phenomenon of sexual inversion, addressed especially to medical psychologists and jurists
Mark Twain – ''Life on the Mississippi''

Births

January 1 – Alberto Gerchunoff, Argentine writer
January 6 – Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-born poet and novelist writing in Arabic and English
January 10 – Aleksei Tolstoy, Russian writer
January 20 – Forrest Wilson, American journalist and author
January 21 – Olav Aukrust, Norwegian poet and teacher
February 8 – Joseph Schumpeter, Austrian/American political economist
February 15 – Sax Rohmer, English novelist
February 16 – Elizabeth Craig, British writer
February 20 – Naoya Shiga, Japanese novelist
March 2 – Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek novelist
March 9 – Umberto Saba, Italian poet and novelist
March 17 – Urmuz, Romanian short prose writer
March 27 – Marie Under, Estonian poet
April 18 – Aleksanteri Aava, Finnish poet
April 27 - Hubert Harrison, African-American writer, critic, and activist
April 30 – Jaroslav Hašek, Czech novelist
June 3 – Franz Kafka, Czech novelist writing in German
June 4 – Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, English crime writer
July 29 – Porfirio Barba-Jacob, Colombian writer
September 14 – Rose Combe, French writer and railway worker
September 22 – Ferenc Oslay, Hungarian-Slovene historian, writer and irredenta
October 18 – Helena Boguszewska, Polish writer, columnist and a social activist
December 13 – Belle da Costa Greene, American librarian
December 23 – Yoshishige Abe, Japanese philosopher and politician
December 30 – Marie Gevers, Belgian novelist writing in French
unknown date – May Edginton, English popular novelist

Deaths

January 21 – Anna Eliza Bray, English novelist and travel writer
March 14 – Karl Marx, German philosopher
April 24 – Jules Sandeau, French novelist
May 15 – Mary Elizabeth Mohl, English-born literary salonnière
May 23 – Cyprian Norwid, Polish poet, dramatist and artist
June 20 – Gustave Aimard, French novelist
June 11 – Caroline Leigh Gascoigne, English poet, novelist, short story writer
July 16 – Edward Backhouse Eastwick, Anglo-Indian orientalist and translator
August 31 – Levin Schücking, German novelist
September 2 – Léon Halévy, French historian and dramatist
September 3 – Ivan Turgenev, Russian novelist
September 10 – Hendrik Conscience, Flemish novelist
September 25 – George Ayliffe Poole, English writer and cleric
November 26 – Sojourner Truth, African American abolitionist, women's rights activist, and author
December 13 – Victor de Laprade, French poet and critic
unknown date – Mary S. B. Shindler, American poet

1883 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths