1869 in literature

The year 1869 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * Macmillan Publishing opens first American office in New York City headed by George Edward Brett

New books

 * Louisa May Alcott - Good Wives
 * Thomas Bailey Aldrich - The Story of a Bad Boy
 * R M Ballantyne -Erling the Bold
 * Horatio Alger, Jr. - Luck and Pluck
 * R. D. Blackmore - Lorna Doone
 * Alexandre Dumas, père - The Knight of Sainte-Hermine
 * Gustave Flaubert - Sentimental Education
 * Émile Gaboriau - Monsieur Lecoq
 * Ivan Goncharov - The Precipice
 * Edmond de Goncourt & Jules de Goncourt -Madame Gervaisais
 * Victor Hugo - L'Homme Qui Rit
 * Sheridan Le Fanu - The Wyvern Mystery
 * Joaquim Manuel de Macedo - A Luneta Mágica
 * Hector Malot - Romain Kalbris
 * Hesba Stretton - Alone in London
 * Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace
 * Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
 * Charlotte Mary Yonge - The Chaplet of Pearls

Poetry

 * Henry Kendall -Leaves from Australian Forests

Non-fiction

 * Matthew Arnold - Culture and Anarchy
 * P. T. Barnum - Struggles and Triumphs
 * John Stuart Mill - The Subjection of Women
 * Richard Wagner - Das Judenthum in der Musik

Births

 * March 14 - Algernon Blackwood, writer (d. 1951)
 * July 8 - William Vaughn Moody, dramatist and poet (d. 1910)
 * July 29 - Booth Tarkington (d. 1946)
 * August 10 - Lawrence Binyon, poet and scholar (d. 1943)
 * October 6 - Bo Bergman, poet (d. 1967)
 * November 22 - André Gide, author (d. 1951)
 * December 22 - Edwin Arlington Robinson, poet (d. 1935)
 * December 30 - Stephen Leacock (d. 1944)

Deaths

 * January 20 - Carl Wilhelm Göttling, classical commentator
 * February 28 - Alphonse de Lamartine, poet
 * July 19 - Victor Aimé Huber, travel writer and literary historian
 * October 18 - Simon Jenko, poet
 * November 3 - Andreas Kalvos, dramatist