1879 in literature

The year 1879 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * The Rabelais Club is founded in London, holding a literary dinner once every two months. High-profile members included novelists Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Bret Harte, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Walter Besant, and George du Maurier.

New books

 * William Harrison Ainsworth - Beau Nash
 * Louisa May Alcott - Jack and Jill: A Village Story
 * Ethel Lynn Beers - "All Quiet Along The Potomac" and Other Poems
 * Mary Elizabeth Braddon - The Cloven Foot
 * Vixen
 * Edward William Cole - Cole's Funny Picture Book
 * Wilkie Collins - The Fallen Leaves
 * A Rogue's Life
 * Alphonse Daudet - Kings in Exile
 * Joris-Karl Huysmans - Les Soeurs Vatard
 * Henry James - Daisy Miller
 * Pierre Loti - Aziyadé
 * George Meredith - The Egoist
 * John Boyle O'Reilly - Moondyne
 * Samuel Vedanayakam Pillai - Prathapa Mudaliar Charithram
 * August Strindberg - The Red Room (Roda Rummet)
 * Anthony Trollope - Cousin Henry
 * The Duke's Children
 * John Caldigate
 * Jules Verne - The Begum's Fortune
 * Tribulations of a Chinaman in China

New drama

 * James Herne - Hearts of Oak
 * Henrik Ibsen - A Doll's House
 * George Robert Sims - Crutch and Toothpick

Non-fiction

 * Lewis Carroll - Euclid and his Modern Rivals
 * Gottlob Frege - Begriffsschrift
 * Robert Louis Stevenson - Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

Births

 * January 1 - E. M. Forster (d. 1970)
 * April 14 - James Branch Cabell, novelist (d. 1958)
 * October 2 - Wallace Stevens, poet (d. 1955)
 * December 24 - Émile Nelligan, poet (d. 1941)

Deaths

 * February 11 - Willem J van Zeggelen, Dutch author
 * March 3 - Annie Keary, novelist (b. 1825)
 * March 9 - Mark Prager Lindo, historian (b. 1819)
 * March 19 - Claire Clairmont, lover of Lord Byron (b. 1798)
 * April 8 - Anthony Panizzi, librarian (b. 1797)
 * April 21 - George Hadfield, Radical author and politician (b. 1787)
 * April 25 - Charles Tennyson Turner, poet (b. 1808)
 * July 4 - Sarah Dorsey, novelist and historian (b. 1829)
 * July 30 - Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, poet and journalist (b. 1818)
 * September 23 - Francis Kilvert, diarist (b. 1840)
 * October 13 - Henry Charles Carey, economist (b. 1793)
 * October 28 - Marie Roch Louis Reybaud, political economist
 * October 31 - Jacob Abbott, writer (b. 1803)
 * John Baldwin Buckstone, dramatist (b. 1802)