1844 in literature

The year 1844 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * The first volumes of the Patrologia Latina, a 217 volume collection of works in Latin, are published in Paris by Jacques Paul Migne. The initial volumes include the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian, among other authors.

New books

 * José de Alencar - Os contrabandistas (unpublished, lost)
 * Honoré de Balzac - Les Paysans
 * Charles Dickens - The Chimes
 * Benjamin Disraeli - Coningsby
 * Alexandre Dumas, père
 * The Count of Monte Cristo
 * The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires)
 * Heinrich Hoffmann - Struwwelpeter
 * Charles Lever - Tom Burke of Ours
 * Joaquim Manuel de Macedo - A Moreninha
 * Frederick Marryat - Settlers in Canada
 * G. W. M. Reynolds - The Mysteries of London
 * Eugène Sue - Le Juif Errant
 * Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna - The Wrongs of Women
 * William Makepeace Thackeray - The Luck of Barry Lyndon

New drama

 * Christian Friedrich Hebbel - Maria Magdalene
 * José Zorilla - Don Juan Tenorio

Poetry

 * Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Poems
 * Heinrich Heine - Neue Gedichte
 * James Russell Lowell - Poems
 * Coventry Patmore - Poems

Non-fiction

 * Robert Chambers(published anonymously) -Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
 * Friedrich Engels - Condition of the Working Classes in England
 * Søren Kierkegaard - The Concept of Anxiety
 * Karl Marx - On the Jewish Question
 * John Stuart Mill - Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy
 * Arthur Penrhyn Stanley - Life of Arnold
 * Max Stirner - The Ego and Its Own
 * William Henry Fox Talbot - The Pencil of Nature (first book illustrated with photographs)

Births

 * March 30 - Paul Verlaine, lyric poet (d. 1896)
 * April 2 - George Haven Putnam, American author, publisher (d. 1930)
 * April 16 - Anatole France, writer (d. 1924)
 * April 28 - Thomas Jones (Tudno), Welsh-language poet (d. 1895)
 * July 28 - Gerard Manley Hopkins, poet (d. 1889)
 * August 29 - Edward Carpenter, Socialist poet (d. 1929)
 * September 9 - Maurice Thompson, novelist (d. 1901)
 * October 15 - Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher (d. 1900)
 * October 23 - Robert Bridges, poet (d. 1930)
 * October 27 - Klas Pontus Arnoldson, Swedish writer and pacifist (d. 1916)

Deaths

 * January 27 - Charles Nodier, writer (b. 1780)
 * February 11 - Tamenaga Shunsui, Japanese novelist (b. 1790)
 * June 11 - Urban Jarnik, Slovene poet and historian (b. 1784)
 * June 15 - Thomas Campbell, poet (b. 1777)
 * July 11 - Evgeny Baratynsky, poet and philosopher (b. 1800)
 * August 14 - Henry Cary, author and translator (b. 1772)
 * September 18 - John Sterling, novelist and poet (b. 1806)
 * October 25 - William Miller, publisher (b. 1769)
 * November 21 - Ivan Krylov, fable-writer (b. 1769)