1879 in literature

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The year 1879 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• The Rabelais Club is founded in London, holding a literary dinner once every two months. High-profile members included novelists Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Bret Harte, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Walter Besant, and George du Maurier.

New books

• William Harrison Ainsworth - Beau Nash
• Louisa May Alcott - Jack and Jill: A Village Story
• Ethel Lynn Beers - "All Quiet Along The Potomac" and Other Poems
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon - The Cloven Foot
  • Vixen
• Edward William Cole - Cole's Funny Picture Book
• Wilkie Collins - The Fallen Leaves
  • A Rogue's Life
• Alphonse Daudet - Kings in Exile
• Joris-Karl Huysmans - Les Soeurs Vatard
• Henry James - Daisy Miller
• Pierre Loti - Aziyadé
• George Meredith - The Egoist
• John Boyle O'Reilly - Moondyne
• Samuel Vedanayakam Pillai - Prathapa Mudaliar Charithram
• August Strindberg - The Red Room (Roda Rummet)
• Anthony Trollope - Cousin Henry
  • The Duke's Children
  • John Caldigate
• Jules Verne - The Begum's Fortune
  • Tribulations of a Chinaman in China

New drama

• James Herne - Hearts of Oak
• Henrik Ibsen - A Doll's House
• George Robert Sims - Crutch and Toothpick

Non-fiction

• Lewis Carroll - Euclid and his Modern Rivals
• Gottlob Frege - Begriffsschrift
• Robert Louis Stevenson - Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

Births

• January 1 - E. M. Forster (died 1970)
• April 14 - James Branch Cabell, novelist (died 1958)
• October 2 - Wallace Stevens, poet (died 1955)
• December 24 - Émile Nelligan, poet (died 1941)

Deaths

• February 11 - Willem J van Zeggelen, Dutch author
• March 3 - Annie Keary, novelist (born 1825)
• March 9 - Mark Prager Lindo, historian (born 1819)
• March 19 - Claire Clairmont, lover of Lord Byron (born 1798)
• April 8 - Anthony Panizzi, librarian (born 1797)
• April 21 - George Hadfield, Radical author and politician (born 1787)
• April 25 - Charles Tennyson Turner, poet (born 1808)
• July 4 - Sarah Dorsey, novelist and historian (born 1829)
• July 30 - Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, poet and journalist (born 1818)
• September 23 - Francis Kilvert, diarist (born 1840)
• October 13 - Henry Charles Carey, economist (born 1793)
• October 28 - Marie Roch Louis Reybaud, political economist
• October 31 - Jacob Abbott, writer (born 1803)
  • John Baldwin Buckstone, dramatist (born 1802)

Awards