1858 in literature

The year 1858 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• Henrik Ibsen marries and becomes creative director of Oslo's National Theater.
• Charles Baudelaire's study on Théophile Gautier is published in Revue contemporaine.
• John Ruskin meets Rose la Touche.
• The third Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, designed by Edward Middleton Barry, opens on May 15. It was rebuilt after the fire of 1856 destroyed the second theatre (as the fire of 1808 had destroyed the first).

New books

• Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson - Arne
• George Eliot - Scenes of Clerical Life (first published in Blackwood's Magazine the previous year as three short stories)
• Ernest-Aimé Feydeau - Fanny
• Catherine Gore - Heckington
• Catharine Maria Sedgwick - Memoir of Joseph Curtis
• Anthony Trollope - Doctor Thorne
• George MacDonald - Phantastes

New drama

• Tom Taylor - Our American Cousin
• Thomas Holley Chivers - The Sons of Usna: a Tragic Apotheosis in Five Acts, published this year

Poetry

• Matthew Arnold - Merope
• Alphonse Daudet - Les Amoureuses
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Courtship of Miles Standish
• William Morris - The Defence of Guinevere, and other Poems

Non-fiction

• Gray's Anatomy - 1st edition
• William H. Prescott - History of Philip II, volume 3
• Alfred Russel Wallace - On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. - The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

Births

• January 22 - Beatrice Webb, political writer, wife and collaborator of Sidney Webb
• March 12 - Adolph Ochs, newspaper publisher
• April 15 - Émile Durkheim, sociologist
• June 25 – Georges Courteline, dramatist and novelist (died 1929)
• July 24 - Wolfgang Kapp, journalist
• August 3 - Paul Sabatier, religious writer
• November 20 - Selma Lagerlöf Swedish writer (+ 1940)
• date unknown - Sir Owen Morgan Edwards, historian and educator (+ 1920)
• date unknown - William Watson, poet

Deaths

• January 15 - Louisa Cranstoun Nisbett ("Miss Mordaunt"), actress
• February 13 - Hermann Heinrich Gossen, economist
• February 26 - Thomas Tooke, economist
• May 3 - Julien Auguste Pélage Brizeux, poet
• May 12 - Georg Benedikt Winer, theologian
• May 17 - Frank Forester, novelist and sports writer
• June 3 - Edward Moxon, poet and publisher
• June 28 - Jane Marcet, author of science textbooks
• November 15 - Johanna Kinkel, writer and composer, wife of Gottfried Kinkel
• date unknown - Harriet Taylor Mill, philosopher
• date unknown - Robert Stephen Rintoul, journalist

Awards