1853 in literature

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The year 1853 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• Charles Dickens writes Bleak House, the first English novel to feature a detective.
• William Wells Brown becomes the first African American novelist to be published.

New books

• Charlotte Brontë - Villette
• William Wells Brown - Clotel; or, The President's Daughter
• Martha Haines Butt - Antifanaticism: A Tale of the South
• Philip J. Cozans - Little Eva: The Flower of the South
• Charles Dickens - Bleak House
• Alexandre Dumas, père - The Countess de Charny
• Elizabeth Gaskell
  • Cranford
  • Ruth
• Sarah Josepha Hale - Liberia; or, Mr. Peyton's Experiments
• Caroline Lee Hentz - Helen and Arthur
• Victor Hugo - Les Châtiments
• Charles Kingsley - Hypatia
• Sheridan Le Fanu - An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
• Maria McIntosh - The Lofty and the Lowly, or Good in All and None All Good
• Herman Melville - Bartleby, the Scrivener
• Susanna Moodie - Life in the Clearings
• J. W. Page - Uncle Robin, in His Cabin in Virginia, and Tom Without One in Boston
• Charles Reade
  • Christie Johnstone
  • Peg Woffington
• Robert Smith Surtees - Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour
• Vidi - Mr. Frank, the Underground Mail-Agent
• George J. Whyte-Melville - Digby Grand
• Charlotte Mary Yonge - The Heir of Redclyffe

New drama

• Gustav Freytag - Die Journalisten
• Charles Reade - Gold

Poetry

• Álvares de Azevedo - Lira dos Vinte Anos (published posthumously)
• Matthew Arnold - The Scholar Gipsy

Non-fiction

• Johann Herzog - Encyclopedia of Protestant Theology
• Theodor Mommsen - History of Rome
• Karl Rosenkrantz - Aesthetic of Ugliness
• Hippolyte Taine - Essai sur les fables de La Fontaine

Births

• April 23 - Thomas Nelson Page, novelist (+ 1922)
• May 3 - Edgar Watson Howe, author and editor (+ 1937)
• May 14 - Hall Caine, author (+ 1931)
• William Herrick Macaulay

Deaths

• January 3 - János Majláth, poet and historian
• January 26 - Sylvester Judd, novelist
• February 3 - August Kopisch, poet
• April 4 - James Scholefield, classicist
• April 28 - Ludwig Tieck, poet, novelist and translator
• May 3 - Juan Donoso Cortés, political author
• September 5 - Georges Depping, historian
• October 29 - Thomas Jonathan Wooler, satirist
• December 2 - Amelia Opie, poet and novelist

Awards