1870 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1870.

Events

CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• January 19 – Ivan Turgenev attends and writes about the public execution by guillotine of the spree killer Jean-Baptiste Troppmann outside the gates of La Roquette Prisons in Paris.<ref>Template:Citation.</ref>
• March 7 – Thomas Hardy meets his first wife, Emma Gifford, in Cornwall.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• March 28 – Serialisation of Kenward Philp's The Bowery Detective in The Fireside Companion (New York) begins, the first known story to include the word detective in the title.
• April–September – The serialisation of Charles Dickens' last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, is left unfinished on his death on June 9 at Gads Hill Place in Kent, from a stroke, aged 58.<ref>Obituary, The Times (London), August 1870.</ref>
• May – Karl May begins a second four-year prison sentence for thefts and frauds, at Waldheim, Saxony.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Spring – Serial publication begins of Aleksis Kivi's only novel Seitsemän veljestä ("Seven Brothers"), the first notable novel in the Finnish language.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• August 24/25 – Libraries of the University of Strasbourg and the City of Strasbourg at Temple Neuf are destroyed by fire during the Siege of Strasbourg in the Franco-Prussian War, resulting in the loss of 3,446 medieval manuscripts, including the original 12th-century Hortus deliciarum compiled by Herrad of Landsberg, the Apologist codex containing the only text of the early Epistle to Diognetus, and rare Renaissance books.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• September 17 – The first performance of Alexander Pushkin's play Boris Godunov (1825) is given at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg by members of the Alexandrinsky Theatre.
• c. September 20 – Friedrich Engels moves permanently to London from Manchester.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• December 18 – The Russian literary weekly Niva («Ни́ва», "Cornfield") is first published by Adolf Marks in Saint Petersburg.<ref>Template:Cite book Template:ISBN</ref>
• unknown date – Construction of the David Sassoon Library in Bombay, India, is completed.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

New books

Fiction

• William Harrison Ainsworth - Talbot Harland
• Thomas Bailey Aldrich – The Story of a Bad Boy
• Thomas Archer – The Terrible Sights of London
• Rhoda Broughton – Red as a Rose is She
• Wilkie Collins – Man and Wife
• Annie Denton Cridge - Man's Rights; Or, How Would You Like It? Comprising Dreams
• José Maria de Eça de Queiroz and Ramalho Ortigão – Template:Ill (The Mystery of the Sintra Road)
• Charles Dickens – The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• Benjamin Disraeli – Lothair
• Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Eternal Husband («Вечный муж», Vechny muzh)
• Edward Jenkins – Ginx's Baby: his birth and other misfortunes
• Mór Jókai – Fekete gyémántok (Black Diamonds, i. e. coal)
• Aleksis Kivi – Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers)
• Jonas Lie – Den Fremsynte (The Visionary or Pictures From Nordland)
• George Meredith – The Adventures of Harry Richmond (begins serial publication)
• William Morris – The Earthly Paradise
• Charles Reade - Put Yourself in His Place<ref>Template:NIE</ref>
• Leopold von Sacher-Masoch – Venus in Furs (Venus im Pelz)
• Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin – The History of a Town («История одного города», Istoriya odnogo goroda)
• Bayard Taylor – Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania
• Anthony Trollope – The Vicar of Bullhampton<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Ivan Turgenev – Stepnoy korol Lir (Степной король Лир); novella, English translation: King Lear of the Steppes'
• Jules Verne – Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
• Charlotte M. Yonge – The Caged Lion

Children and young people

• John Neal — Great Mysteries and Little Plagues<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Drama

• James Albery – Two Roses
• Ludwig Anzengruber (as L. Gruber) – Der Pfarrer von Kirchfeld (The Priest of Kirchfeld)
• Henry James Byron – Uncle Dick's Darling
• Pietro Cossa – Nero
• Lydia Koidula
  • Maret ja Miina (or Kosjakased; The Betrothal Birches)
  • Saaremaa Onupoeg (The Cousin from Saaremaa)
• Lord Newry – Ecarte
• George Sand and Sarah Bernhardt – L'Autre
• Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy – Tsar Boris («Царь Борис», published)

Poetry

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}}

Lear's illustration of The Owl and the Pussycat from Nonsense Songs

• Bret Harte – The Heathen Chinee
• Edward Lear – Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets (dated 1871),<ref name=cocel>Template:Cite book</ref> including "The Owl and the Pussycat"
• Giovanni Marradi – Canzone moderne
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Poems,<ref name=cocel/> including "Jenny" and a fragment of "The House of Life"

Non-fiction

• J. E. Austen-Leigh – A Memoir of Jane Austen
• Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1st edition)
• Richard William Church – Life of St. Anselm
• Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Army Life in a Black Regiment
• Hargrave Jennings – The Rosicrucians, their Rites and Mysteries
• Henry Maudsley – Body and Mind
• Dadabhai Naoroji – The Wants and Means of India
• William Robinson – The Wild Garden
• Charles Dudley Warner - My Summer in a Garden and Calvin, A Study of Character

Births

• January 3 – Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson), Australian novelist (died 1946)
• February 16 – Henric Streitman, Romanian essayist and journalist (died 1950)<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• March 5 – Frank Norris, American novelist (died 1902)
• April 7 – Gustav Landauer, German philosopher and revolutionary (murdered 1919)
• June 25 – Erskine Childers, Irish novelist (executed 1922)
• July 27 – Hilaire Belloc, French-born English writer, poet and satirist (died 1953)
• October 18 – Petre P. Negulescu, Romanian philosopher (died 1951)
• October 22 (October 10 OS) – Ivan Bunin, Russian-born writer, recipient of Nobel Prize in Literature (died 1953)
• October 29 – Gerald Duckworth, English publisher (died 1937)
• December 17 – Ioan A. Bassarabescu, Romanian short story writer and politician (died 1952)
• December 18 – Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), English short story writer and dramatist (killed in action 1916)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Deaths

• January 21 – Alexander Herzen, Russian writer (born 1812)
• February 25 – Henrik Hertz, Danish poet (born 1797)
• April 16 – Rallou Karatza, Greek Wallachian translator and theatrical promoter (born 1799)
• April 24 – Louisa Stuart Costello, Irish writer on history and travel (born 1799)
• June 9 – Charles Dickens, English novelist (born 1812)<ref>Template:Cite DNB</ref>
• June 11 – William Gilmore Simms, American poet, novelist and historian (born 1806)
• June 24 – Adam Lindsay Gordon, Australian poet (born 1833)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• July 19 – Benjamin Thorpe, scholar of Old English (born Template:Circa)
• July 20 – Jules de Goncourt, French novelist and critic (syphilis, born 1830)<ref>Pages from the Goncourt Journals (2006). NYRB Classics. Template:ISBN.</ref>
• July 24 – Anders Abraham Grafström, Swedish poet and historian (born 1790)
• July 30 – Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, Norwegian journalist and poet (born 1818)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• September 12 – Fitz Hugh Ludlow, American author and explorer (born 1836)<ref>Template:Cite wikisource</ref>
• September 23 – Prosper Mérimée, French writer (b. 1803)<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref>
• November 4 – Comte de Lautreamont (Isidore Lucien Ducasse), French poet and writer (born 1846)<ref>Bachelard, Gaston (1986). "Lautréamont". Dallas Institute.</ref>
• December 5 – Alexandre Dumas, père, French novelist (born 1802)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>