1888 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1888.

Events

February 9 – During Joseph Conrad's career at sea as Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, he departs from Bangkok for Sydney in his first command as master, on the British barque Otago. This provides a basis for his novella The Shadow-Line.
March 6 – On the day of Amos Bronson Alcott's funeral at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (Concord, Massachusetts), his daughter, novelist Louisa May Alcott, already in poor health, suffers a fatal stroke.
March 16 – Foundation stone for a new National Library of Greece building is laid in Athens.
May 26 – In London, Punch magazine begins serialisation of George and Weedon Grossmith's humorous The Diary of a Nobody, the first entry being for "April 3".
June 3 – Ernest Thayer's baseball poem "Casey at the Bat" is first published under the pen name "Phin" as the last of his humorous contributions to The San Francisco Examiner.
July – Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes detective novel, A Study in Scarlet, is first published separately as a book, by Ward Lock & Co in London with illustrations by the author's father, Charles Altamont Doyle.
October
*The English publisher Henry Vizetelly is prosecuted in London by the National Vigilance Association and fined for obscene libel for his English translation of Zola's La Terre.
*"Papus" founds the esoteric magazine L'Initiation in France.
*The first book to feature Jack the Ripper in fiction is published while the Whitechapel murders attributed to Jack the Ripper are still taking place in London, the short Gothic novel The Curse Upon Mitre Square by John Francis Brewer, which features the murder of Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square on September 30 as a key plot element.
unknown dates
*Sholem Aleichem edits the first issue of the anthology Di Yidishe Folksbibliotek in Kiev, giving important exposure to young writers in Yiddish, including I. L. Peretz's long ballad "Monish".
*The Finnish epic Kalevala is published for the first time in English, in a translation by American linguist John Martin Crawford.
*German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche writes Götzen-Dämmerung, oder, Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert, Der Antichrist and his autobiography, Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist, his last works before his total mental collapse.
probable – The sexual memoir My Secret Life by "Walter", perhaps Henry Spencer Ashbee, begins publication, being printed in Amsterdam for clandestine sale in Britain.

New books

Poetry

Sir Edwin Arnold – With Saʿdi in the Garden; or, The Book of Love
W. E. Henley – A Book of Verses, including first publication of "Invictus"
Andrejs Pumpurs – ''Lāčplēsis''

Non-fiction

Joseph Bertrand – Calcul des probabilités
John D. Billings – Hard Tack and Coffee
Helena Blavatsky – The Secret Doctrine
Emilia Dilke – Art in the Modern State
Esperanza (Jane, Lady Wilde) – Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, with sketches of the Irish past
Celia Fiennes – Through England on a Side Saddle
Charles Colcock Jones, Jr. – Negro Myths of the Georgia Coast
Benjamin Hall Kennedy – Revised Latin Primer
Papus – Traité méthodique de science occulte
Joseph Prestwich – Geology, Chemical and Physical, Stratigraphical and Palaeontological
Henry S. Salt – Flesh or Fruit? An Essay on Food Reform
A. F. W. Schimper – Die epiphytische Vegetation Amerikas
Charlotte Carmichael Stopes – The Bacon/Shakespeare Question
A. E. Waite
*Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers
*''The Magical Writings of Thomas Vaughan''

Births

January 24 – Vicki Baum, Austrian-born writer
January 25 – A. L. Zissu, Romanian novelist and Zionist leader
February 10 – Giuseppe Ungaretti, Italian modernist poet and writer
February 19 – José Eustasio Rivera, Colombian writer
April 26 – Anita Loos, American novelist and screenwriter
June 13 – Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese writer
July 23 – Raymond Chandler, American novelist and screenwriter
September 4 – Margaret Henley, daughter of W. E. Henley and J. M. Barrie's inspiration for the name "Wendy" in Peter Pan
September 22 – Lucia Mantu, born Camelia Nădejde, Romanian writer
September 26 – T. S. Eliot, American-born English poet and playwright
October 14 – Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand short story writer
October 16 – Eugene O'Neill, American playwright and Nobel laureate
October 26 – Dem. Theodorescu, Romanian novelist and journalist
December 7 – Joyce Cary, Anglo-Irish novelist

Deaths

January 30 – Mary Howitt, English writer, poet and translator
March 4 – Amos Bronson Alcott, American writer and philosopher
March 6 – Louisa May Alcott, American novelist
March 14 – James Hogg, Scottish-born publisher
April 15 – Matthew Arnold, English poet
May 12 – Edward Lear, English writer of comic verse and artist
May 27 – Františka Stránecká, Czech writer and collector of Moravian folklore
August 9 – Charles Cros, French poet
August 20 – Henry Richard, Welsh political writer
September 24 – Karl von Prantl, German philosopher
September 30 – William Gifford Palgrave, English Arabic scholar and writer
November 17 – Dora d'Istria, Romanian-Albanian writer
December 8 – Frederick Apthorp Paley, English scholar
December 23 – Laurence Oliphant, Scottish travel writer and novelist

Awards

Newdigate prize – Arthur Waugh

1888 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards