1885 in literature

The year 1885 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * February 18 - Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published for the first time
 * May 19 - Revised Version Old Testament published.
 * Thomas Hardy moves to Max Gate.
 * John Ormsby's English translation of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote is published. For many years it is regarded as the most accurate translation of the novel.

New books

 * Hall Caine
 * She's All the World to Me
 * The Shadow of a Crime
 * Lewis Carroll - A Tangled Tale
 * H. Rider Haggard - King Solomon's Mines
 * William Dean Howells - Rise of Sylas Lapham
 * Richard Jefferies - After London
 * Jerome K. Jerome - On the Stage—and Off
 * Guy de Maupassant - Bel-Ami
 * George Meredith - Diana of the Crossways
 * Daniel Owen - Rhys Lewis
 * Walter Pater - Marius the Epicurean
 * Robert Louis Stevenson - Prince Otto
 * Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
 * Jules Vallés - Jacques Vingtras
 * Jules Verne - Mathias Sandorf
 * Émile Zola - Germinal
 * Sir Richard Burton - The Arabian Nights

Non-fiction

 * Anténor Firmin - De l'Égalité des Races Humaines (On the Equality of Human Races)

Births

 * January 16 - Zhou Zuoren, Chinese vernacular writer (d. 1967)
 * February 7 - Sinclair Lewis, novelist (d. 1951)
 * February 21 - Sacha Guitry, dramatist and screenwriter (d. 1957)
 * March 6 - Ring Lardner, writer (d. 1933)
 * May 2 - Hedda Hopper, columnist (d. 1966)
 * September 11 - D. H. Lawrence, novelist and short-story writer (d. 1930)
 * October 3 - Sophie Treadwell, dramatist and journalist (d. 1970)
 * October 11 - François Mauriac, novelist (d. 1970)
 * October 30 - Ezra Pound, poet (d. 1972)
 * December 8 - Kenneth Roberts, novelist (d. 1957)

Deaths

 * February 14 – Jules Vallés, French writer (b. 1832)
 * April 8 - Susanna Moodie, English-born author of "Canadiana" (b. 1803)
 * April 18 - Marc Monnier, author and translator (b. 1827)
 * May 22 - Victor Hugo, poet and novelist (b. 1802)
 * June 18 - Louis Segond, theologian (b. 1810)
 * July 13 - Augusto Vera, philosopher (b. 1813)
 * September 18 - John Campbell Shairp, critic (b. 1819)
 * November 29 - Anne Gilchrist, critic and biographer (b. 1828)