1894 in literature

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The year 1894 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• Robert Frost sells his first poem, "My Butterfly", to The New York Independent for fifteen dollars.
• Hermann Hesse begins his apprenticeship at a factory in Calw.
• Lafcadio Hearn begins working as a journalist for the English-language Kobe Chronicle.
• Claude Debussy writes his Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, a free interpretation of Stéphane Mallarmé's 1876 poem, "L'après-midi d'un faune".
• Mary Antin emigrates from Belarus to the USA with her family.

New books

• Gabriele D'Annunzio - The Triumph of Death
• Richard Doddridge Blackmore -Perlycross
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon - The Christmas Hirelings
• Walter Browne - 2894
• Hall Caine - The Madhi: or Love and Race, A Drama in Story
  • The Manxman
• Kate Chopin - Bayou Folk
• Ella Hepworth Dixon - The Story of a Modern Woman
• Arthur Conan Doyle - The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
• George du Maurier - Svengali's Web
  • Trilby
• Theodor Fontane - Effi Briest
• Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Pembroke
• George Gissing - In the Year of Jubilee
• H. Rider Haggard - The People of the Mist
• Knut Hamsun - Pan
• Anthony Hope - The Prisoner of Zenda
• William Dean Howells - A Traveler from Altruria
• Jerome K. Jerome - John Ingerfield: And Other Stories
• Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book
• Selma Lagerlöf - The Story of Gosta Berling
• Sheridan Le Fanu - The Watcher and Other Weird Stories
• Arthur Machen - The Great God Pan (in book form, with "The Innermost Light")
• George A. Moore - Esther Waters
• William Morris - The Wood Beyond the World
• Arthur Morrison - Martin Hewitt: Investigator
• John Muir - The Mountains of California
• Gustavus W. Pope - Journey to Mars
• Jules Renard - Poil de carotte (Carrot Head)
• Margaret Marshall Saunders - Beautiful Joe
• Solomon Schindler - Young West
• Stendhal - Lucien Leuwen
• Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne - The Ebb-Tide
• Mark Twain - Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • Tom Sawyer Abroad
• Jules Verne - Captain Antifer
• Mary Augusta Ward - Marcella
• Israel Zangwill - The Bachelors' Club
• Emile Zola - Lourdes

New drama

• Henry Arthur Jones - The Case of Rebellious Susan
• Maurice Maeterlinck - The Death of Tintagiles

Poetry

• Bliss Carman - Low Tide on Grande Pre: A Book Of Lyrics
• Pierre Louÿs - Songs of Bilitis
• Rainer Maria Rilke - Leben und Lieder

Non-fiction

• Edward Carpenter - Homogenic love and its place in a free society
• King Gillette - The Human Drift
• Karl Marx - Das Kapital
• Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Short stories

• Kate Chopin - "The Story of an Hour"
• H. G. Wells - "The Red Room"

Births

• January 1 - Aurora Nilsson, writer (died 1972)
• March 17 - Paul Green, novelist, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright (died 1981)
• July 9 - Phelps Putnam, poet (died 1948)
• July 26 - Aldous Huxley, poet (died 1963)
• October 9 - Agnes von Krusenstjerna, writer (died 1940)
• October 14 - E. E. Cummings, American poet (died 1962)
• October 26 - Eugene Jolas, writer, literary translator and critic (died 1952)

Deaths

• February 8 - R.M. Ballantyne, author (born 1825)
• April 8 - Bankim Chatterjee, novelist (born 1838)
• July 30 - Walter Horatio Pater, author (born 1839)
• October 8 - Oliver Wendell Holmes, writer (born 1809)
• December 3 - Robert Louis Stevenson, author (born 1850)

Awards