1878 in literature

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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1878.

Events

• January 28 – The Yale News becomes the first daily college newspaper in the United States. ^[1]
• June – Robert Louis Stevenson's three linked detective fiction short stories The Suicide Club featuring Prince Florizel begin publication in The London Magazine .
• June 10 – Konrad Korzeniowski, the future English-language novelist Joseph Conrad, sets foot on British soil for the first time, at Lowestoft from the SS Mavis.
• July – The Scottish poetaster William McGonagall, a self-described "poet and tragedian", journeys on foot from Dundee to Balmoral Castle over mountainous terrain and through a thunderstorm in a fruitless attempt to perform his verse before Queen Victoria. ^[2]
• August 3 – Guy de Maupassant writes to Gustave Flaubert, complaining about his monotonous life and his new job as an employee of the Ministry of Public Instruction in France. ^[3]
• October – The Peabody Institute Library (later George Peabody Library) opens to the public in Baltimore, Maryland. ^[4]
• December 30 – Henry Irving's production of Hamlet , with himself in the title rôle playing opposite Ellen Terry as Ophelia, opens at the Lyceum Theatre, London (of which they have taken over the management). ^[5]
• unknown dates
  • Anton Chekhov writes his first substantial play, known as Platonov , but it is not completed, titled, performed or published in his lifetime. ^[6]
  • The Johns Hopkins University Press is established in Baltimore, Maryland, as the University Publication Agency, making it the oldest continuously operating university press in the United States. ^[7]
  • The Remington No. 2 typewriter, the first with a shift key enabling production of lower as well as upper case characters, is introduced in the United States. ^[8]

New books

Fiction

• W. Harrison Ainsworth – Beatrice Tyldesley
• Rebecca Agatha Armour – Lady Rosamond's Secret. A Romance of Fredericton
• Walter Besant and James Rice – The Monks of Thelema
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – An Open Verdict
• Wilkie Collins – The Haunted Hotel
• José Maria de Eça de Queiroz – Cousin Bazilio (O Primo Basílio)
• Theodor Fontane – Vor dem Sturm (Before the Storm) ^[9]
• Anna Katharine Green – The Leavenworth Case
• Thomas Hardy – The Return of the Native (serialized in Belgravia )
• Henry James
  • Daisy Miller
  • The Europeans
• William Hurrell Mallock
  • The New Paul and Virginia
  • The New Republic
• Ellen Buckingham Mathews (as Helen Mathers) – Cherry Ripe
• Margaret Oliphant – The Primrose Path
• Anne Eliza Smith – Seola
• Robert Louis Stevenson
  • The Suicide Club
  • The Rajah's Diamond
• Harriet Beecher Stowe – Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives
• Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina («Анна Каренина», book publication)
• Anthony Trollope – Is He Popenjoy? (serialization concluded and book publication)
• Émile Zola – Une Page d'amour

Children and young people

• Randolph Caldecott – The House that Jack Built
• Hector Malot – Sans Famille (Nobody's Boy)
• Jules Verne – Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen (Un Capitaine de quinze ans) ^[10]
• Evelyn Whitaker – Miss Toosey's Mission. A Tale

Drama

• Ion Luca Caragiale – A Stormy Night (O noapte furtunoasă sau Numĕrul 9)
• José Echegaray – En el pilar y en la cruz (The Stake and the Cross) ^[11]
• W. S. Gilbert – The Ne'er-do-Weel ^[12]

Poetry

Main article: 1878 in poetry

• Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy – The Dream of Councillor Popov

Non-fiction

• François Callet – Tantara ny Andriana eto Madagasikara
• Richard Jefferies – The Gamekeeper at Home
• Friedrich Nietzsche – Human, All Too Human (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches)
• Robert Louis Stevenson – An Inland Voyage

Births

• January 4 – A. E. Coppard, English short story writer and poet (died 1957)
• January 6 – Carl Sandburg, American poet and historian (died 1967)
• January 12 – Ferenc Molnár (Ferenc Neumann), Hungarian playwright and novelist (died 1952)
• March 14 – Victor Bridges, English novelist, playwright and poet (died 1972)
• April 15 – Robert Walser, Swiss author and poet writing in German (died 1956)
• June 1 – John Masefield, English poet (died 1967)
• June 12 – James Oliver Curwood, American author (died 1927)
• August 2 – Berta Ruck, Indian-born Welsh romantic novelist (died 1978) ^[13]
• August 10 – Louis Esson, Scottish-born Australian poet and playwright (died 1943)
• September 20 – Upton Sinclair, American novelist (died 1968)
• September 22 – F. J. Harvey Darton English children's literature historian and publisher (died 1936)
• November 25 – Georg Kaiser, German dramatist (died 1945)
• December 15 – Hans Carossa, German novelist and poet (died 1956)

Deaths

• January 8 – Nikolay Nekrasov, Russian poet (born 1821) ^[14]
• January 19 – Ede Szigligeti, Hungarian dramatist (born 1814)
• February 1 – George Cruikshank, English illustrator (born 1792)
• April 24 – Heinrich Leo, Prussian historian (born 1799)
• April 25 – Anna Sewell, English novelist (born 1820)
• May 28 – Sophie de Choiseul-Gouffier, Lithuanian novelist (born 1790)
• July 1 – Catherine Winkworth, English translator (born 1827) ^[15]
• July 17 – Aleardo Aleardi, Italian poet (born 1812) ^[16]
• August 13
  • George Gilfillan, Scottish poet and author (born 1813)
  • Elizabeth Prentiss, American poet and hymnist (born 1818)
• November 3 – Frances Freeling Broderip (née Hood), English children's writer
• November 17 – Karl Theodor Keim, German theologian (born 1825)
• November 20 – William Thomas, Welsh-language poet (born 1832) ^[17]
• December 5 – George Whyte-Melville, Scottish-born novelist (hunting accident, born 1821)
• December 19 – Bayard Taylor, American poet (born 1825)
• December 31 – Giulietta Pezzi, Italian novelist, journalist, and poet (born 1810)

Awards

• Newdigate prize – Oscar Wilde, "Ravenna" ^[18]

References

1. "Yale Daily News Historical Archive". Yale University Library. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
2. Autobiographical account published in his More Poetic Gems.
3. Barnes, Julian (2009-11-05). "On We Sail". London Review of Books . 31 (21). Retrieved 2015-12-17.
4. "History". The George Peabody Library. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. 2005. Archived from the original on 2010-06-04. Retrieved 2013-11-29.
5. Shearer, Moira (1998). Ellen Terry. Pocket Biographies. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. p. 69. ISBN   0-7509-1526-9.
6. Cody, Gabrielle H.; Sprinchorn, Evert, eds. (2007). The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. Vol. 2. Columbia University Press. p. 1077. ISBN   978-0-231-14424-7.
7. Camhi, Jeff (2013). A Dam in the River: Releasing the Flow of University Ideas. New York: Algora Publishing. p. 149. ISBN   978-0-87586-989-6 . Retrieved 2013-08-31.
8. Charles Kendall Adams (1899). Johnson's Universal Cyclopædia: A New Edition. D. Appleton. p. 329.
9. Fontane, Theodor (2011). Hehle, Christine (ed.). Vor dem Sturm. Roman aus dem Winter 1812 auf 13. Große Brandenburger Ausgabe, Das erzählerische Werk, Bd. 1 und 2 (in German). Berlin. ISBN   978-3-351-03114-5.
10. Gondolo della Riva, Piero (1977). Bibliographie analytique de toutes les œuvres de Jules Verne. Vol. I. Société Jules Verne.
11. Horst Frenz (1999). Literature, 1901-1967. World Scientific. p. 34. ISBN   978-981-02-3413-3.
12. • Knight, Joseph. Theatrical Notes, (Lawrence & Bullen: 1893), pp. 206–15
13. "Authors: Ruck, Berta: SFE: Science Fiction Encyclopedia". www.sf-encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
14. Lebedev, Yu, V. (1990). "Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseyevich". Russian Writers. Biobibliographical Dictionary. Vol. 2. Ed. P.A.Nikolayev. Moscow. Prosveshchenye Publishers. Retrieved 1 May 2014.
15. "Catherine Winkworth - The Center For Church Music, Songs and Hymns". songsandhymns.org. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
16. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Aleardi, Aleardo"  . Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 538.
17. David Gwenallt Jones (1959). "Thomas, William (Islwyn;1832-1878), Calvinistic Methodist minister and poet". Dictionary of Welsh Biography . National Library of Wales . Retrieved 10 March 2023.
18. Wilde, Oscar (1878), Ravenna, archived from the original on 2015-12-05, retrieved 2015-12-17.