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1866 in literature

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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1866.

• January – Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel Crime and Punishment («Преступлéние и наказáние», Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) is serialized through the year in the monthly literary magazine Russkiy Vestnik («Русскій Вѣстникъ», The Russian Messenger).^[1][2] His novella The Gambler («Игрок», Igrok) is dictated to his future wife to meet a publisher deadline of November 1.^[3]
• July – Anthony Trollope's novel Nina Balatka: The Story of a Maiden of Prague is initially published anonymously (serialisation in Blackwood's Magazine July 1866–January 1867). Trollope is interested in discovering whether his books sell on their own merits or as a consequence of the author's name and reputation.
• September 8 – London publisher Samuel Orchart Beeton is obliged by the financial panic of 1866 to settle all his debts by selling his property.^[4] He sells his titles and name to Ward Lock &Co.
• November – The American magazine for children Children's Hour publishes its first issue.^[5]
• unknown dates
  • Ludwig Anzengruber returns to Vienna after working as a travelling actor.
  • Charles Baudelaire's collection Les Épaves is published in Belgium, containing poems from Les Fleurs du mal (Paris, 1857) that were suppressed for outraging public morality.^[6]
  • Luigi Capuana becomes a theatre critic for the Italian newspaper The Nation.
  • Josip Jurčič has Deseti brat ("The Tenth Brother") published, as the first full-length novel in Slovene.
  • Nandshankar Mehta publishes Karana Ghelo ("The Idiot King Karana"), the first novel in Gujarati.^[7]
  • Hesba Stretton's children's story Jessica's First Prayer is serialized in Sunday at Home (U.K.) As a book, it sells one and half million copies.^[8]
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne's first collection Poems and Ballads causes a sensation on publication in London, especially the ones written in homage to Sappho and the sadomasochistic "Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)". Under threat of prosecution, his original publisher, Moxon and Co., transfers publication rights to the more liberal John Camden Hotten.^[9][10][11]
  • The Stockholm Reading Parlor (Stockholms läsesalong) is co-founded by Sophie Adlersparre in Sweden; it becomes a free library for women to improve their access to education.^[12]
  • The first detective fiction by women authors is published: the dime novel The Dead Letter, an American Romance by "Seeley Regester" (Metta Victoria Fuller Victor) in New York City as the first full-length American work of crime fiction,^[13] having begun to appear serially in the January Beadle's Monthly; Mary Fortune's story "The Dead Witness, or the Bush waterhole" is published in the Australian Journal on January 20.^[14]
  • Charles Dickens publishes "Mugby Junction" as a Christmas supplement to his magazine All the Year Round (London), containing short stories by himself (including "The Signal-Man") and by Charles Collins, Amelia B. Edwards, Andrew Halliday and Hesba Stretton.

• Louisa May Alcott (as A. M. Barnard) – "Behind a Mask, or A Woman's Power" (novella published in The Flag of Our Union)
• R. D. Blackmore – Cradock Nowell
• Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay – Kapalkundala
• Wilkie Collins – Armadale (serialization completed and in book form)
• John Esten Cooke – Surry of Eagle's-Nest
• Alphonse Daudet – Letters From My Windmill (Lettres de mon moulin)
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
• Alexandre Dumas, fils – L'Affaire Clemenceau
• George Eliot – Felix Holt, the Radical^[15]
• Augusta Jane Evans – St. Elmo
• John William De Forest – Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
• Émile Gaboriau – L'Affaire Lerouge
• Elizabeth Gaskell (died 1865) – Wives and Daughters (serialization completed and in book form)
• Victor Hugo – Toilers of the Sea (Les Travailleurs de la mer)
• George MacDonald – Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood
• John Neal — Little Moccasin, or Along the Madawaska: A Story of Life and Love in the Lumber Region^[16]
• Mrs Oliphant – Miss Marjoribanks
• Ouida – Chandos
• Charles Reade – Griffith Gaunt
• Emmanuel Rhoides – Ἡ Πάπισσα Ἰωάννα (I Papissa Ioanna, Pope Joan)
• Felicia Skene (anonymously) – Hidden Depths
• Anthony Trollope – Nina Balatka
• José Milla y Vidaurre – La Hija del Adelantado

• Anna Harriett Drury – The Three Half-Crowns : a story for boys
• James Greenwood – The True History of a Little Ragamuffin
• Hesba Stretton – Jessica's First Prayer

• Dion Boucicault – Rip van Winkle or The Sleep of Twenty Years
• Alexandre Dumas, fils – Heloise Paranquet
• Henrik Ibsen – Brand
• T. W. Robertson – Ours
• Dobri Voynikov – Princess Rayna

• Charles Baudelaire – Les Épaves
• Algernon Charles Swinburne – Poems and Ballads
• Paul Verlaine – Poèmes saturniens, including "Chanson d'automne"

• Teodor Boldur-Lățescu – Adivărul adivărat (Truth and Nothing But)
• William Wells Brown – The Negro in the American Rebellion
• Edward Bruce Hamley – The Operations of War Explained and Illustrated
• Friedrich Albert Lange – History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance (Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, published October 1865 but dated 1866)
• Edward A. Pollard – The Lost Cause
• John Robert Seeley (anonymously) – Ecce Homo: A Survey in the Life and Work of Jesus Christ^[17]
• Charles Haddon Spurgeon – The Wordless Book
• Benjamin Thorpe assisted by Elise Otté (translator) – Edda Sæmundar Hinns Frôða: the Edda of Sæmund the Learned, from the old Norse or Icelandic

• January 2 (December 21, 1865 OS) – Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică (Gheorghe Bogdan), Romanian literary critic (died 1934)
• January 29 – Romain Rolland, French dramatist, novelist and Nobel Prize-winner (died 1944)
• February 9 – George Ade, American columnist and playwright (died 1944)
• February 24 – Arthur Pearson, English writer and newspaper publisher (died 1921)
• March 2
  • John Gray, English poet (died 1934)
  • Sibyl Marvin Huse, French-born American author and teacher (died 1939)
• March 16 – E. K. Chambers, English literary scholar (died 1954)
• May 2 – Paul Kretschmer, German linguist (died 1956)
• July 28 – Beatrix Potter, English children's writer and illustrator (died 1943)^[18]
• August 12 – Jacinto Benavente, Spanish dramatist and Nobel Prize-winner (died 1954)
• August 16 – Dora Sigerson, Irish poet (died 1918)
• September 7 – Tristan Bernard, French writer (died 1947)
• August 31 – Elizabeth von Arnim, née Mary Annette Beauchamp, Australian-born novelist (died 1941)
• September 21 – H. G. Wells, English novelist and social commentator (died 1946)
• October 28 – Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Spanish dramatist and novelist (died 1936)
• November 4 – Jane Findlater, Scottish novelist (died 1946)
• November 21 – Dusé Mohamed Ali, Egyptian-born political activist, journalist and dramatist (died 1945)
• unknown date – Edith Escombe, English fiction writer and essayist (died 1950)

• January 23 – Thomas Love Peacock, English satirical novelist (born 1785)
• February 2 – François-Xavier Garneau, French Canadian historian and civil servant (born 1809)
• March 6 – William Whewell, English polymath and cleric (born 1794)
• March 29 – John Keble, English poet and cleric (born 1792)
• May 5 – John Critchley Prince, English poet (born 1808)
• June 16 – Joseph Méry, French satirist and librettist (born 1797)
• August 1 – Luigi Carlo Farini, Italian historian (born 1812)
• August 12 – Philip Stanhope Worsley, English poet and translator (born 1835)
• September 10 – Charles Maclaren, Scottish founding editor of The Scotsman (born 1782)
• September 14 – Léon Gozlan, French novelist and dramatist (born 1803)
• September 19 – Christian Hermann Weisse, German philosopher (born 1801)
• September 26 – Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, Swedish-born novelist (born 1793)
• October – Evan Bevan, Welsh writer of satirical verse (born 1803)
• December 20 – Ann Taylor, English poet and critic (born 1782)

• Newdigate Prize – George Yeld