Contents

1878 in literature

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

• 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 DundeetoBalmoral 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 TerryasOphelia, opens at the Lyceum Theatre, London (of which they have taken over the management).^[5]
• unknown dates
  • 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.^[6]
  • 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.^[7]

• 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
• Ellen Buckingham Mathews (pseudonym Helen Mathers) – Cherry Ripe
• Wilkie Collins – The Haunted Hotel
• Theodor Fontane – Vor dem Sturm (Before the Storm)^[8]
• 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
• Margaret Oliphant – The Primrose Path
• José Maria de Eça de Queiroz – Cousin Bazilio (O Primo Basílio)
• Anne Eliza Smith – Seola
• Robert Louis Stevenson – "The Suicide Club"
• 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

• 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)^[9]
• Evelyn Whitaker – Miss Toosey's Mission. A Tale

• 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)^[10]
• W. S. Gilbert – The Ne'er-do-Weel^[11]

• Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy – The Dream of Councillor Popov

• 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

• 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)^[12]
• 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)

• January 8 – Nikolay Nekrasov, Russian poet (born 1821)^[13]
• 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)^[14]
• July 17 – Aleardo Aleardi, Italian poet (born 1812)^[15]
• 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)^[16]
• 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)

• Newdigate prize – Oscar Wilde, "Ravenna"^[17]