1886 in literature

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The year 1886 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• MLN: Modern Language Notes, an academic journal founded with the intention of introducing European literary criticism into American scholarship, is founded at the Johns Hopkins University.

Books

• Louisa May Alcott - Jo's Boys
• Edmondo De Amicis - Heart
• Leon Bloy - Disperato
• Rhoda Broughton - Doctor Cupid
• Frances Hodgson Burnett - Little Lord Fauntleroy
• Hall Caine - A Son of Hagar
• Mary Cholmondeley - The Danvers Jewels
• Wilkie Collins
  • The Evil Genius
  • The Guilty River
• Marie Corelli - A Romance of Two Worlds
• Thomas Hardy - The Mayor of Casterbridge
• William Dean Howells - Indian Summer
• Henry James - The Bostonians
• Jerome K. Jerome - The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
• Pierre Loti - Pêcheur d'Islande
• Octave Mirbeau - Le Calvaire
• George A. Moore
  • A Drama in Muslin
  • Confessions of a Young Man
• Robert Louis Stevenson
  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  • Kidnapped
• August Strindberg - Married I-II (short stories)
• Leo Tolstoy - The Death of Ivan Ilyich
• Jules Verne
  • The Lottery Ticket
  • Robur the Conqueror
• Philippe Villiers - Eva Futura

New drama

• Anton Chekhov - On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco
• Henrik Ibsen - Rosmersholm
• William Butler Yeats - Mosada

Non-fiction

• Edwin Abbott Abbott - The Kernel and the Husk
• William Morris - A Dream of John Ball

Births

• January 14 - Hugh Lofting, author (died 1947)
• March 1 - Oskar Kokoschka, poet and artist (died 1980)
• September 8 - Siegfried Sassoon, poet and memoirist (died 1967)
• September 20 - Charles Williams, British author and member of the Inklings (died 1945)
• November 1 - Hermann Broch, Modernist writer (died 1951)
• November 21 - Harold Nicolson, British author (died 1968)
• December 5 - Rose Wilder Lane, journalist (died 1968)

Deaths

• May 15 - Emily Dickinson, poet (born 1830)
• May 17 - Erskine May, constitutional theorist (born 1815)
• July 21 - Maximilian Wolfgang Duncker, historian (born 1811)
• August 9 - Samuel Ferguson, poet (born 1810)
• October 22 - Matilda Jane Evans, novelist (born 1827)
• November 22 - Mary Chesnut, diarist (born 1823)
• December 12 - Johan Nicolai Madvig, philologist (born 1804)

Awards