1889 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1889.

Events

January – H. G. Wells begins to teach science at Henley House School, north London, where his pupils include A. A. Milne, whose father runs the school.
February 12 – Henrik Ibsen's symbolic drama The Lady from the Sea receives simultaneous first performances in Oslo and Weimar.
March 14 – August Strindberg's naturalistic drama Miss Julie , 1888, is first performed, by the Scandinavian Experimental Theater at the University of Copenhagen. His wife Siri von Essen plays the title rôle.
April 24 – The Garrick Theatre in London, financed by playwright W. S. Gilbert, opens with a performance of Pinero's The Profligate.
May 30 – The English publisher Henry Vizetelly is prosecuted for obscenity for the second time in London; he is again fined and imprisoned for his English translations of Émile Zola's works.
June – Algernon Methuen begins publishing books in England, which is the origin of Methuen Publishing.
August 30 – Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde are entertained together at dinner at the Langham Hotel, London, by the American Joseph Marshall Stoddart of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, who commissions from them respectively the stories The Sign of the Four and The Picture of Dorian Gray, which appear next year in the magazine.
September 3 – Jerome K. Jerome's comic fictional English travelogue set on the River Thames, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), is published in Bristol.
November – Leo Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata circulates in clandestine copies. In December the Russian authorities confirm that commercial publication will not be permitted.
September 14 – The Volkstheater, Vienna opens with a performance of Der Fleck auf der Ehr by its Dramaturg, Ludwig Anzengruber, who dies on December 10 from blood poisoning.
November – Marcel Proust begins a year's service in the French army, stationed at Coligny Barracks in Orléans.
December 12 – Robert Browning's book Asolando; Fancies and facts is published on the same day he dies at Ca' Rezzonico in Venice. He is buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
unknown dates
*The first literary novel in the Maltese language, Anton Manwel Caruana's Ineż Farruġ, is published.
*The first of four volumes of Theodore Roosevelt's The Winning of the West is published in the United States.

New books

Births

February 8 – Siegfried Kracauer, German-American writer, journalist, sociologist, cultural critic, and film theorist
March 1 – Kanoko Okamoto, Japanese novelist and poet
April 7 – Gabriela Mistral, Chilean poet, Nobel Prize laureate
April 18 – Horace Alexander, English current-affairs writer and ornithologist
May 12 – Ouyang Yuqian, Chinese dramatist
June 23 – Anna Akhmatova, Russian poet
July 5 – Jean Cocteau, French writer
July 17 – Erle Stanley Gardner, American author
July 22 - James Whale, English film director
August 5 – Conrad Aiken, American novelist and poet
August 12 – Zerna Sharp, American writer and educator
August 22 – Peter Frederick Anson, English writer on religion and maritime matters
September 1 – Leonora Eyles, English feminist writer and novelist
September 15 – Claude McKay, Jamaican American writer
September 23 – Walter Lippmann, American writer
September 25
*G. D. H. Cole, English political theorist, economist and historian
*C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Scottish writer and translator
September 26 – Martin Heidegger, German philosopher
October 18 – Fannie Hurst, American novelist
October 27 – Enid Bagnold, English writer and playwright
November 12 – DeWitt Wallace, American magazine publisher
November 14 – Taha Hussein, Egyptian writer and intellectual
December 7 – Gabriel Marcel, French philosopher, critic and playwright

Deaths

January 3 – James Halliwell-Phillipps, English bibliophile
January 17 – Juan Montalvo, Ecuadorian writer
March 26 – Elizabeth Ayton Godwin, English hymn writer and religious poet
April 23 – Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly, French novelist
May 28 – Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren, American writer, translator
June 8 – Gerard Manley Hopkins, English poet
June 15 – Mihai Eminescu, Romanian poet
August 5 – Fanny Lewald, German novelist
August 19 – Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, French Symbolist writer
September 4 – Warren Felt Evans, American author of the New Thought movement
September 10 – Amy Levy, English feminist poet and novelist
September 23
*Wilkie Collins, English novelist
*Eliza Cook, English poet
October 25 – Émile Augier, French dramatist
November 18 – William Allingham, Irish poet
November 20 – August Ahlqvist, Finnish professor, poet, scholar of the Finno-Ugric languages, author, and literary critic
December 10 – Ludwig Anzengruber, Austrian poet
December 12 – Robert Browning, English poet
December 17 – Thomas Purnell, Welsh-born English drama critic and essayist
December 30 – Ion Creangă, Romanian writer

Awards

Gaisford Prize – Harold Trevor Baker

1889 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards