1855 in literature

The year 1855 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * July 4 - In Brooklyn, New York, Walt Whitman's first edition of his book of poems titled Leaves of Grass is published.
 * Thomas Babington Macaulay's best-selling History of England in four volumes is completed.
 * Charles Dickens publishes the first installment of Little Dorrit (in installments through 1857).
 * The Daily Telegraph newspaper begins publication.

New books

 * Gustav Freytag - Debit and Credit
 * Elizabeth Gaskell - North and South
 * Mary Virginia Hawes - The Hidden Path
 * Caroline Lee Hentz - Robert Graham
 * Washington Irving - Wolfert's Roost
 * Charles Kingsley - Westward Ho!
 * Herman Melville
 * Israel Potter
 * The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids
 * Gérard de Nerval - Aurelia
 * Ann Sophia Stephens - The Old Homestead
 * William Makepeace Thackeray - The Newcomes
 * Leo Tolstoy - Sebastopol Sketches
 * Anthony Trollope - The Warden

New drama

 * Émile Augier - Ménage d'Olympe
 * Léon Gozlan - Le Gâteau des reines
 * Henrik Ibsen - The Feast at Solhaug
 * Ivan Turgenev - A Month in the Country

Poetry

 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Song of Hiawatha
 * Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

Non-fiction

 * David Brewster - Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton
 * Washington Irving - The Life of George Washington, Volumes 1 and 2
 * Eliphas Levi - Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie
 * George Sand - The Story of My Life (Histoire de ma vie)
 * Alfred Russel Wallace - On the Law Which has Regulated the Introduction of Species

Births

 * May 1 - Marie Corelli (Mary Mackay) (+ 1924)
 * May 21 - Emile Verhaeren, Symbolist poet (+ 1916)
 * May 24 - Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, dramatist (+ 1934)
 * July 7 - Ludwig Ganghofer, novelist (+ 1920)
 * September 12 - William Sharp, poet and biographer (+ 1905)
 * November 4 - William Ritchie Sorley, philosopher (+ 1935)
 * December 15 - Maurice Bouchor, poet and sculptor (+ 1929)
 * December 28 - Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, poet
 * date unknown - Solomon Cleaver, storyteller and novelist

Deaths

 * January 10 - Mary Russell Mitford, English writer
 * January 25 - Dorothy Wordsworth, poet and diarist, sister of William Wordsworth
 * January 26 - Gérard de Nerval, poet and essayist
 * February 4 - Gottfried Christian Friedrich Lücke, theologian
 * March 31 - Charlotte Brontë, novelist and poet
 * June 29 - Delphine de Girardin, poet and novelist
 * November 11 - Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher
 * November 26 - Adam Mickiewicz, Poland's greatest poet
 * date unknown - Robert Montgomery, poet