1856 in literature

The year 1856 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• Arthur Schopenhauer adds a chapter on "The Metaphysics of Sexual Love" to the third edition of his The World as Will and Representation.
• Lewis Carroll takes up photography as a hobby.
• William Henry Smith first makes the claim that the author of Shakespeare's plays was Sir Francis Bacon.
• Richard Francis Burton serves in the army in the Crimean War and becomes engaged to Isabel Arundel.
• Alphonse Daudet begins his teaching career.
• On March 5, the second Royal Opera House at Covent Garden is destroyed by fire (as the first was in 1808).

New books

• Anonymous - Tit for Tat
• José de Alencar - Cinco minutos
• R. M. Ballantyne -The Young Fur-Traders
• Fredrika Bremer - Hertha
• William M. Burwell - White Acre vs. Black Acre
• Wilkie Collins - The Dead Secret
• Mrs. Craik - John Halifax, Gentleman
• Caroline Lee Hentz - Ernest Linwood
• Geraldine Jewsbury - The Sorrows of Gentility
• Gottfried Keller - Die Leute von Seldwyla
• Herman Melville
  • The Piazza Tales
  • I and My Chimney
• Eduard Mörike - Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag
• Charles Reade - It Is Never Too Late to Mend
• Harriet Beecher Stowe - Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp
• Leo Tolstoy - Youth
• Ivan Turgenev - Rudin
• Charlotte Mary Yonge - The Daisy Chain

New drama

• Henrik Ibsen - Olaf Liljekrans

Poetry

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Aurora Leigh
• Victor Hugo - Les Contemplations

Non-fiction

• Lord Dufferin -Letters From High Latitudes
• J. A. Froude - History of England
• Washington Irving - The Life of George Washington, Volume 3
• Hermann Lotze - Mikrokosmos
• William Ridley - gurre kamilaroi
• Alexis de Tocqueville - L'Ancien régime et la révolution
• Henry Morley - Cornelius Agrippa: The Life of Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Doctor and Knight, Commonly known as a Magician.

Births

• January 9 - Lizette Woodworth Reese, poet (died 1935)
• February 14 - Frank Harris, journalist, publisher and memoirist (died 1931)
• April 5 - Booker T. Washington (died 1915)
• May 15 - L. Frank Baum, Wizard of Oz author (died 1919)
• July 25 - Charles Major (died 1913)
• July 26 - George Bernard Shaw, dramatist (died 1950)
• date unknown - Maria Cederschiöld, journalist

Deaths

• January - James Baillie Fraser, travel writer
• February 17 - Heinrich Heine, poet
• June 11 - Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen, philologist
• June 26 - Max Stirner, philosopher
• June 27 - Joseph Meyer, publisher
• July 21 - Emil Aarestrup, poet
• July 29 - Karel Havlíček Borovský, poet, critic and publisher
• August 24 - William Buckland, antiquarian
• August 30 - Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, humorous writer
• October 13 - Robert Christie, historian and journalist
• November 10 - Johann Kaspar Zeuss, historian
• date unknown - Pyotr Chaadaev, philosopher
• date unknown - Josef Kajetán Tyl, dramatist and author of the Czech national anthem

Awards