1864 in literature

The year 1864 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * Ambrose Bierce is wounded at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain.
 * Charles Baudelaire leaves Paris for Belgium in the hope of resolving his financial difficulties.
 * Henrik Ibsen leaves Norway for Italy in a self-imposed exile that will last for 27 years.
 * A debate at the Royal Geographical Society between Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke fails to take place, owing to Speke's suicide (or accidental shooting).
 * Alexandre Dumas, fils marries Nadejda Naryschkine. His father, Alexandre Dumas, père, returns to Paris from Italy.
 * John Addington Symonds the younger marries Janet Catherine North.
 * James Payn publishes his most popular story, Lost Sir Massingberd, in Chambers's Journal.

New books

 * José de Alencar - Diva
 * Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly -Chevalier Destouches
 * R. D. Blackmore - Clara Vaughan
 * Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Henry Dunbar: the Story of an Outcast
 * Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes from Underground
 * George Eliot - "Brother Jacob"
 * Elizabeth Gaskell - Wives and Daughters
 * Edmond de Goncourt & Jules de Goncourt -Renée Mauperin
 * Sheridan Le Fanu
 * Uncle Silas
 * Wylder's Hand
 * George MacDonald - The Light Princess
 * Anthony Trollope - The Small House at Allington
 * Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth

New drama

 * Thomas William Robertson - David Garrick

Poetry

 * Robert Browning - Dramatis Personae
 * Alfred Tennyson - Enoch Arden
 * Alfred de Vigny - Les Destinées (posthumously published)

Non-fiction

 * American Dictionary of the English Language (Webster's), revised edition
 * George Perkins Marsh - Man and Nature
 * Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green, a Runaway Slave from Kentucky
 * John Henry Newman - Apologia Pro Vita Sua
 * John Ruskin - Cestus of Aglaia

Births

 * January 24 - Marguerite Durand, French actress, journalist, and feminist leader (d. 1936)
 * February 14 - Israel Zangwill, novelist and playwright, (d. 1926)
 * April 21 - Max Weber, sociologist (d. 1920)
 * July 20 - Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931)
 * October 14 - Stefan Żeromski, novelist, poet and dramatist (d. 1925)
 * November 11
 * Alfred Hermann Fried, pacifist writer, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1921)
 * Maurice Leblanc, novelist and crime writer (d. 1941)
 * December 12 - Paul Elmer More, critic and essayist (d. 1937)

Deaths

 * January 16 - Anton Felix Schindler, biographer of Beethoven (b. 1795)
 * January 29 - Lucy Aikin, historian (b. 1781)
 * February 2 - Adelaide Anne Procter, poet (b. 1825)
 * March 16 - Robert Smith Surtees, novelist and sports writer (b. 1805)
 * May 19 - Nathaniel Hawthorne, novelist (b. 1804)
 * May 20 - John Clare, poet (b. 1793)
 * May 26 - Charles Sealsfield, novelist (b. 1793)
 * July 4 - Thomas Colley Grattan, novelist (b. 1792)
 * August 7 - Janez Puhar, poet (b. 1814)
 * September - Antônio Gonçalves Dias, poet (b. 1823) (lost at sea)
 * September 17 - Walter Savage Landor, poet (b. 1775)
 * December 6 - Simonas Daukantas, Lithuanian ethnographer and historian (b. 1793)