1871 in literature

The year 1871 involved saw some significant events relevant to literature.

New books

 * Louisa May Alcott - Little Men
 * Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Fenton's Quest
 * Edward George Bulwer-Lytton - The Coming Race
 * Lewis Carroll - Through the Looking-Glass
 * George Eliot - Middlemarch
 * Henry James - Watch and Ward
 * George Meredith - The Adventures of Harry Richmond
 * Johanna Spyri - A Leaf on Vrony's Grave
 * Mark Twain
 * Eye Openers
 * Screamers
 * Jules Verne - A Floating City
 * Émile Zola - La Fortune des Rougon

New drama

 * W.S. Gilbert - Pygmalion and Galatea

Non-fiction

 * Charles Darwin - The Descent of Man

Births

 * March 27 - Heinrich Mann, narrator, dramatist and essayist (d. 1950)
 * June 17 - James Weldon Johnson (d. 1938)
 * July 3 - W. H. Davies, poet (d. 1940)
 * July 10 - Marcel Proust, novelist (d. 1922)
 * August 27 - Theodore Dreiser, novelist (d. 1945)
 * September 27 - Grazia Deledda, (Italian) writer - Nobel prize winner (d. 1926)
 * October 30 - Paul Valéry, French poet (d. 1945)
 * November 1 - Stephen Crane, novelist (d. 1900)
 * November 10 - Winston Churchill, American novelist (d. 1947)

Deaths

 * February 12 - Alice Cary, poet (b. 1820)
 * March 17 - Robert Chambers, Scottish writer, publisher (b. 1802)
 * July 31 - Phoebe Cary, poet (b. 1824)