1878 in literature

The year 1878 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * January 28 - The Yale News becomes the first daily college newspaper in the United States.
 * Guy de Maupassant becomes an employee of the Ministry of Public Instruction.

New books

 * William Harrison Ainsworth - Beatrice Tyldesley
 * Walter Besant and James Rice - The Monks of Thelema
 * Mary Elizabeth Braddon - An Open Verdict
 * Wilkie Collins - The Haunted Hotel
 * Anna Katharine Green - The Leavenworth Case
 * Thomas Hardy - The Return of the Native
 * Henry James
 * Daisy Miller
 * The Europeans
 * William Hurrell Mallock - The New Paul and Virginia
 * - The New Republic
 * Hector Malot - Sans Famille
 * Margaret Oliphant - The Primrose Path
 * José Maria de Eça de Queiroz - O Primo Basílio
 * Anne Eliza Smith - Seola
 * Harriet Beecher Stowe - Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives
 * Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
 * Jules Verne - Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen
 * Émile Zola - Une Page d'amour

Non-fiction

 * Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1st edition
 * Friedrich Nietzsche - Human, All Too Human (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches)
 * Robert Louis Stevenson - An Inland Voyage

Births

 * January 6 - Carl Sandburg, poet, historian (d. 1967)
 * January 12 - Ferenc Molnár, writer (d. 1952)
 * June 1 - John Masefield, poet (d. 1967)
 * June 12 - James Oliver Curwood, American author (d. 1927)
 * September 20 - Upton Sinclair (d. 1968)

Deaths

 * February 1 - George Cruikshank, book illustrator (b. 1792)
 * April 24 - Heinrich Leo, historian (b. 1799)
 * April 25 - Anna Sewell, novelist (b. 1820)
 * July 1 - Catherine Winkworth, translator (b. 1827)
 * August 13 - George Gilfillan, poet and author (b. 1813)
 * Elizabeth Prentiss, poet and hymn-writer (b. 1818)
 * November 17 - Karl Theodor Keim, theologian (b. 1825)
 * December 19 - Bayard Taylor, poet (b. 1825)
 * date unknown - George Whyte-Melville, novelist (b. 1821)

Awards

 * Newdigate prize - Oscar Wilde