1875 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1875.

Events

Edgar Allan Poe's reburial and new monument, October 1, 1875.

• January 16 – Henry James Byron's comedy Our Boys opens at the Vaudeville Theatre in London. It becomes the world's longest-running play up to this time, with 1,362 performances until April 1879.^[1] It also opens this year in New York, at the New Fifth Avenue Theatre.
• February/March – Arthur Rimbaud meets Paul Verlaine for the last time in Stuttgart, Germany, after Verlaine's release from prison, gives him the manuscript of his poems Illuminations and gives up literary writing entirely at the age of 20.
• February 12 – Robert Louis Stevenson is introduced (by Leslie Stephen) to fellow writer W. E. Henley, at this time (August 1873–April 1875) a patient of surgeon Joseph Lister in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh; he will be the model for Long John Silver. Henley has also met his future wife while in hospital and written the poems collected as In Hospital.^[2]
• October 1 – American poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe is reburied in Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, Baltimore, Maryland, with a larger memorial marker. Some controversy arises years later as to whether the correct body was exhumed.
• December 5–6 – German emigrant ship SS Deutschland runs aground in the English Channel resulting in the death of 157 passengers and crew and inspiring Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem The Wreck of the Deutschland. This introduces his innovative sprung rhythm and metre but, being rejected for publication in 1876, is not published until 1918.
• Flammarion publishing house founded in Paris, France.
• Isaac K. Funk establishes the publishing house of I.K. Funk & Company, predecessor of Funk & Wagnells, in the United States.
• Caroline M. Hewins begins a children's library in Hartford, Connecticut.
• Nebelspalter is founded by Jean Nötzli of Zürich (Switzerland) as an "illustrated humorous political weekly".

New books

Fiction

• W. Harrison Ainsworth – The Goldsmith's Wife
• R. D. Blackmore – Alice Lorraine
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Hostages to Fortune
• Wilkie Collins – The Law and the Lady
• Alphonse Daudet – Contes du Lundi
• Fyodor Dostoevsky – A Raw Youth
• Bonifaciu Florescu – Etiam contra omnes (Even against all)
• Benito Pérez Galdós – Saragossa
• William Dean Howells – A Foregone Conclusion
• Henry James – Roderick Hudson
• Julia Kavanagh – John Dorrien
• Helen Mathers – Comin' thro' the Rye^[3]
• Karl May – Old Firehand
• George Meredith – Beauchamp's Career
• José Maria de Eça de Queiroz – O Crime do Padre Amaro (The Crime of Father Amaro: Scenes of Religious Life)
• Anthony Trollope – The Way We Live Now (serial publication ends in September; publication in two book volumes in June)
• Jules Verne – The Survivors of the Chancellor (Le Chancellor: Journal du passager J.-R. Kazallon)
• Edmund Yates – Two, by Tricks
• Charlotte Mary Yonge – The Brother's Wife
• Émile Zola – La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret

Children

• Louisa May Alcott – Eight Cousins
• George MacDonald – The Lost Princess (originally entitled The Wise Woman)

Drama

• Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson – En fallit (The Bankrupt)
• Henri de Bornier – La Fille de Roland
• H. J. Byron – Our Boys
• José Echegaray – En el puño de la espada (The Sword's Handle)
• Alfred Tennyson – Queen Mary

Poetry

• Wilfrid Scawen Blunt – Sonnets and Songs of Proteus
• Alice Meynell – Preludes
• See also 1875 in poetry

Non-fiction

• Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. 1
• Swami Dayanand – Satyarth Prakash
• Edward Dowden – Shakspere: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art
• Mary Baker Eddy – Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
• Warren Felt Evans – Soul and Body
• Francis Galton – "The History of Twins, as a criterion of the relative powers of nature and nurture" (Fraser's Magazine, vol. 12, pp. 566–76)
• Baron Jules Dupotet de Sennevoy – La Magie dévoilée
• Lysander Spooner – Vices Are Not Crimes, A Vindication of Moral Liberty
• John Addington Symonds
  • The Age of the Despots (first volume of Renaissance in Italy)
  • Picturesque Europe

Births

• January 4 – William Williams (Crwys), Welsh poet (died 1968)
• February 8 – Valentine O'Hara, Irish author and authority on Russia and Baltic (died 1945)
• March 30 – Edmund Clerihew Bentley, English writer (died 1956)
• April 1 – Edgar Wallace (Richard Horatio Edgar), English thriller writer (died 1932)
• April 9 – Jacques Futrelle, American author (died in Titanic 1912)
• April 18
  • Oskar Ernst Bernhardt (Abdruschin), German author (died 1941)
  • Katherine Thurston (Katherine Cecil Madden), Irish novelist (died 1911)
• June 6 – Thomas Mann, German novelist and Nobel Prize winner (died 1955)
• June 24 – Forrest Reid, Irish novelist and literary critic (died 1947)
• July 9 – W. W. Greg, English literary scholar (died 1959)
• July 26 – Antonio Machado, Spanish poet (died 1939)
• August 21 – Winnifred Eaton, Canadian author (died 1954)
• August 26 – John Buchan, Scottish novelist and diplomat (died 1940)
• September 1 – Edgar Rice Burroughs, American popular novelist (died 1950)
• October – George Ranetti, Romanian humorist and playwright (died 1928)
• December 4 – Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet (died 1926)

Deaths

• January 3 – Pierre Larousse, French grammarian and lexicographer (born 1817)
• January 23 – Charles Kingsley, English novelist and cleric (born 1819)
• March 1 – Tristan Corbière, French poet (born 1845)
• March 25 – Louis Amédée Achard, novelist (born 1814)
• June 2 – Józef Kremer, Polish philosopher (born 1806)
• June 4 – Eduard Mörike, German poet (born 1804)
• June 18 – António Feliciano de Castilho, Portuguese poet and author (born 1800)
• August 4 – Hans Christian Andersen, Danish fairy-tale writer (born 1805)
• August 12 – János Kardos, Slovenian Evangelical priest, teacher, and writer (born 1801)
• August 19 – Robert Elis (Cynddelw), Welsh writer (born 1812)
• October 10 – Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Russian poet, novelist and dramatist (born 1817)
• October 24 – Jacques Paul Migne, French priest, theologian, and publisher (born 1800)
• November 17 – Hilario Ascasubi, Argentine poet (born 1807)

Awards

References