1866 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1866.

Events
Ludwig Anzengruber returns to Vienna after working as a travelling actor.
Charles Baudelaire's collection Les Épaves is published in Belgium, containing poems from Les Fleurs du mal (Paris, 1857) that were suppressed for outraging public morality.
Luigi Capuana becomes a theatre critic for the Italian newspaper The Nation.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel Crime and Punishment (Преступлéние и наказáние, Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) is serialized through the year in the monthly literary magazine Russkiy Vestnik (Русскій Вѣстникъ, "The Russian Messenger"). His novella The Gambler (Игрок, Igrok) is dictated to his future wife to meet a publisher deadline of November 1.
Josip Jurčič has Deseti brat ("The Tenth Brother") published, as the first full-length novel in the Slovene language.
Nandshankar Mehta publishes Karana Ghelo ("The Idiot King Karana"), the first Gujarati language novel.
Hesba Stretton's children's story Jessica's First Prayer is serialized in Sunday at Home (U.K.) As a book, it sells one and half million copies.
Algernon Charles Swinburne's first collection Poems and Ballads causes a sensation on publication in London, especially the ones written in homage to Sappho and the sadomasochistic "Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)". Under threat of prosecution, his original publisher, Moxon and Co., transfers publication rights to the more liberal John Camden Hotten.
Anthony Trollope's novel Nina Balatka: The Story of a Maiden of Prague is initially published anonymously (serialization in Blackwood's Magazine July 1866 – January 1867). Trollope is interested in discovering whether his books sell on their own merits or as a consequence of the author's name and reputation.
The Stockholm Reading Parlor (Stockholms läsesalong) is co-founded by Sophie Adlersparre in Sweden; it becomes a free library for women to improve their access to education.
The first detective fiction by women authors is published: the dime novel The Dead Letter, an American Romance by "Seeley Regester" (Metta Victoria Fuller Victor) in New York City as the first full-length American work of crime fiction, having begun to appear serially in the January Beadle's Monthly; Mary Fortune's story "The Dead Witness, or the Bush waterhole" is published in the Australian Journal on January 20. 
The former English chess master Howard Staunton publishes a facsimile of the Shakespeare First Folio by photolithography.
London publisher Samuel Orchart Beeton is obliged by the financial panic of May/June to sell his titles and name to Ward Lock & Co. 
The American magazine for children Children's Hour publishes its first issue.
Charles Dickens publishes "Mugby Junction" as a Christmas supplement to his magazine All the Year Round (London), containing short stories by himself (including "The Signal-Man") and by Charles Collins, Amelia B. Edwards, Andrew Halliday and Hesba Stretton.

New books

Fiction
Louisa May Alcott (as A. M. Barnard) – "Behind a Mask, or A Woman's Power" (novella published in The Flag of Our Union)
R. D. Blackmore – Cradock Nowell
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay – Kapalkundala
Wilkie Collins – Armadale (serialization completed and in book form)
John Esten Cooke – Surry of Eagle's-Nest
Alphonse Daudet – Letters From My Windmill (Lettres de mon moulin)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
Alexandre Dumas, fils – L'Affaire Clemenceau
George Eliot – Felix Holt, the Radical
Augusta Jane Evans – St. Elmo
John William De Forest – Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
Émile Gaboriau – L'Affaire Lerouge
Elizabeth Gaskell (posthumously) – Wives and Daughters (serialization completed and in book form)
Victor Hugo – Toilers of the Sea (Les Travailleurs de la mer)
George MacDonald – Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood
Mrs Oliphant – Miss Marjoribanks
Ouida – Chandos
Charles Reade – Griffith Gaunt
Emmanuel Rhoides – Ἡ Πάπισσα Ἰωάννα (I Papissa Ioanna, Pope Joan)
Felicia Skene (anonymously) – Hidden Depths
Anthony Trollope – Nina Balatka
José Milla y Vidaurre – La Hija del Adelantado

Children
Anna Harriett Drury – The Three Half-Crowns : a story for boys
James Greenwood – The True History of a Little Ragamuffin
Hesba Stretton – Jessica's First Prayer

Drama
Dion Boucicault – Rip van Winkle or The Sleep of Twenty Years
Alexandre Dumas, fils – Heloise Paranquet
Henrik Ibsen – Brand
Dobri Voynikov – Princess Rayna

Poetry
Charles Baudelaire – Les Épaves
Algernon Charles Swinburne – Poems and Ballads
Paul Verlaine – Poèmes saturniens, including "Chanson d'automne"

Non-fiction
William Wells Brown – The Negro in the American Rebellion
Edward Bruce Hamley – The Operations of War Explained and Illustrated
Friedrich Albert Lange – History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance (Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, published October 1865 but dated 1866)
Edward A. Pollard – The Lost Cause
John Robert Seeley (anonymously) – Ecce Homo: A Survey in the Life and Work of Jesus Christ
Charles Haddon Spurgeon – The Wordless Book
Benjamin Thorpe assisted by Elise Otté (translator) – Edda Sæmundar Hinns Frôða: the Edda of Sæmund the Learned, from the old Norse or Icelandic

Births
January 2 (December 21, 1865 OS) – Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică (Gheorghe Bogdan), Romanian literary critic (died 1934)
January 29 – Romain Rolland, French dramatist, novelist and Nobel Prize-winner (died 1944)
February 9 – George Ade, American columnist and playwright (died 1944)
February 24 – Arthur Pearson, English writer and newspaper publisher (died 1921)
March 2 – John Gray, English poet (died 1934)
March 16 – E. K. Chambers, English literary scholar (died 1954)
May 2 – Paul Kretschmer, German linguist (died 1956)
July 28 – Beatrix Potter, English children's writer and illustrator (died 1943)
August 12 – Jacinto Benavente, Spanish dramatist and Nobel Prize-winner (died 1954)
August 16 – Dora Sigerson, Irish poet (died 1918)
September 7 – Tristan Bernard, French writer (died 1947)
August 31 – Elizabeth von Arnim, née Mary Annette Beauchamp, Australian-born novelist (died 1941)
September 21 – H. G. Wells, English novelist and social commentator (died 1946)
October 28 – Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Spanish dramatist and novelist (died 1936)
November 4 – Jane Findlater, Scottish novelist (died 1946)
November 21 – Dusé Mohamed Ali, Egyptian-born political activist, journalist and dramatist (died 1945)
Unknown date – Edith Escombe, English fiction writer and essayist (died 1950)

Deaths
January 23 – Thomas Love Peacock, English satirical novelist (born 1785)
February 2 – François-Xavier Garneau, French Canadian historian and civil servant (born 1809)
March 6 – William Whewell, English polymath and cleric (born 1794)
March 29 – John Keble, English poet and cleric (born 1792)
May 5 – John Critchley Prince, English poet (born 1808)
June 16 – Joseph Méry, French satirist and librettist (born 1797)
August 1 – Luigi Carlo Farini, Italian historian (born 1812)
August 12 – Philip Stanhope Worsley, English poet and translator (born 1835)
September 10 – Charles Maclaren, Scottish founding editor of The Scotsman (born 1782)
September 14 – Léon Gozlan, French novelist and dramatist (born 1803)
September 19 – Christian Hermann Weisse, German philosopher (born 1801)
September 26 – Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, Swedish-born novelist (born 1793)
October – Evan Bevan, Welsh writer of satirical verse (born 1803)
December 20 – Ann Taylor, English poet and critic (born 1782)

Awards
Newdigate Prize – George Yeld

References

 
Category:Years of the 19th century in literature