1873 in literature

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The year 1873 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• 3 March - The U.S. Congress enacts the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" books through the mail.
• Bertha Kinsky becomes governess to the Suttner family.
• Charles M. Barnes opens his first store in Wheaton, Illinois, the genesis of Barnes & Noble.
• 18 December - Louisa May Alcott's family satire "Transcendental Wild Oats" is published in the Boston newspaper The Independent.
• The children's periodical St. Nicholas Magazine begins publication.

New books

• Louisa May Alcott - Work: A Story of Experience
• Ambrose Bierce - The Fiend's Delight
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Publicans and Sinners
• Rhoda Broughton
  • Nancy
  • Tales for Christmas Eve
• Bankim Chatterjee - The Poison Tree
• Wilkie Collins
  • Miss or Mrs.?
  • The New Magdalen
• Émile Gaboriau - La Corde au cou
• Thomas Hardy - A Pair of Blue Eyes
• William Dean Howells - A Chance Acquaintance
• George MacDonald - The History of Gutta-Percha Willie, the Working Genius
• Karolina Světlá - Nemodlenec
• Mark Twain (with Charles Warner) - The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
• Jules Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days

New drama

• Henrik Ibsen - Emperor and Galilean (first published) and Love's Comedy (first performed)
• Émile Zola - Thérèse Raquin

Poetry

• Paul Bourget - Au bord de la mer
• Robert Browning - Red Cotton Night-Cap Country
• Tristan Corbière - only published work included in Les Amours Jaunes
• Edmund Gosse - On Viol and Flute
• Arthur Rimbaud - Une Saison en Enfer

Non-fiction

• Émile Littré - Dictionnaire de la langue française
• Leslie Stephen - Essays on Free Thinking and Plain Speaking
• Charlotte Mary Yonge - Life of John Coleridge Patteson

Births

• January 20 - Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, Danish writer, Nobel prize winner (died 1950)
• January 28 - Colette, writer (died 1954)
• April 22 - Ellen Glasgow (died 1945)
• May 17 - Henri Barbusse (died 1935)
• June 16 - Lady Ottoline Morrell, patron of authors and artists (died 1938)
• September 8 - Alfred Jarry, dramatist (died 1907)
• October 10 - George Cabot Lodge, poet (died 1909)
• December 7 - Willa Cather (died 1947)
• December 17 - Ford Madox Ford (died 1939)

Deaths

• January 9 - Sigurd Abel, historian (born 1837)
• January 10 - Francesco Dall'Ongaro, poet and dramatist (born 1808)
• January 18 - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author (born 1803)
• February 1 - Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, novelist (born 1814)
• February 7 - Sheridan Le Fanu, writer (born 1814)
• February 24 - Spiridon Trikoupis, author and orator (born 1788)
• May 8 - John Stuart Mill, philosopher (born 1806)
• May 22 - Alessandro Manzoni, poet and novelist (born 1785)
• May 27 - Pierre-Antoine Lebrun, poet (born 1785)
• August 15 - Edward Meredith Cope, classical scholar (born 1818)
• September 25 - Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, novelist (born 1804)
• September 26 - Julius Roerich Benedix, dramatist (born 1811)
• September 28 - Émile Gaboriau, novelist (born 1832)
• October 4 - Margaret Gatty, children's author (born 1809)

Awards