1861 in literature

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The year 1861 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• October 20 - Poet and dramatist Apollo Korzeniowski is arrested for his political activities and placed in the infamous Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel.
• Sheridan Le Fanu becomes editor of the Dublin University Magazine.
• Gottfried Keller becomes municipal secretary of his home town of Zurich.
• John Edward Taylor the younger becomes editor of the Manchester Guardian.
• The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce becomes The Times of India.
• Frederick James Furnivall becomes editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

New books

• Mary Elizabeth Braddon
  • The Black Band
  • The Octoroon
• Frances Browne - My Share of the World
• Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
• Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Insulted and Humiliated
• George Eliot - Silas Marner
• Harriet Ann Jacobs - Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
• George Sand - Consuelo
• Walter Chalmers Smith - The Bishop's Walk
• William Makepeace Thackeray - The Adventures of Philip
• Anthony Trollope - Orley Farm
• George J. Whyte-Melville - Market Harborough
• Mrs Henry Wood - East Lynne
• Charlotte Mary Yonge - The Young Step-Mother

New drama

• Léon Gozlan - La Pluie et le beau temps

Poetry

• Charles Baudelaire - Les fleurs du mal, 2nd edition
• Kalevipoeg (Estonian national epic)

Non-fiction

• Isabella Beeton - Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management
• Michael Faraday - The Chemical History of a Candle
• Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - Writings on the U.S. Civil War

Births

• March 1 - Henry Harland, novelist and editor (died 1905)
• April 15 - Bliss Carman, poet (died 1929)
• May 7 - Rabindranath Tagore, poet and novelist (died 1941)
• September 20 - Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress (died 1955)
• October 16 - J. B. Bury, historian (died 1927)
• May 13 - Margaret Marshall Saunders, author (died 1947)
• date unknown - Sir John Edward Lloyd, historian (died 1947)

Deaths

• January 28 - Henri Murger, novelist and poet
• January 29, Catherine Gore, author
• February 20 - Eugène Scribe, dramatist
• April 1 - Lady Charlotte Bury, novelist
• May 23 - Edward Cardwell, theologian
• June 7 - Patrick Brontë, father of the Brontë sisters
• June 29 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet
• July 6 - Sir Francis Palgrave, historian
• November 13 - Arthur Hugh Clough, poet
• November 30
  • Alexander Gilchrist, biographer
  • Theodor Mundt, novelist and critic

Awards