1840 in literature

The year 1840 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• Novelist Fritz Reuter is freed from the fortress of Dömitz after two years' imprisonment on a charge of high treason.
• The first edition of Peter Parley's Annual, a periodical for children, is published.

New books

• William Harrison Ainsworth - The Tower of London
• Henry Cockton - Valentine Vox
• James Fenimore Cooper - The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea
• Richard Henry Dana, Jr. - Two Years Before the Mast
• Alexandre Dumas, père - Otho the Archer
• Thomas Ingoldsby - The Ingoldsby Legends
• Mikhail Lermontov - A Hero of Our Time
• Frederick Marryat
  • Olla Podrida
  • Poor Jack
• Harriet Martineau - The Hour and the Man
• Prosper Mérimée - Colomba
• Edgar Allan Poe - Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
• William Makepeace Thackeray - Catherine
• Edward William Lane publishes an English version of The Arabian Nights

New drama

• Christian Hebbel - Judith
• Jose Zorilla - El Zapatero y el Rey

Poetry

• Victor Hugo - Les Rayons et les Ombres
• Mikhail Lermontov - The Novice

Non-fiction

• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon - What is Property?
• Alexis de Tocqueville - Democracy in America (vol. 2)

Births

• January 18 - Henry Austin Dobson, English author
• April 2 - Emile Zola, writer (+ 1902)
• June 2 - Thomas Hardy, novelist and poet (+ 1928)
• November 29 - Rhoda Broughton (+ 1920

Deaths

• January 6 - Fanny Burney, novelist

Awards