1857 in literature

The year 1857 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * Jules Verne marries Honorine de Viane Morel.
 * The illustrated weekly, Über Land and Meer, is founded by Friedrich Wilhelm Hackländer and Edmund von Zoller.
 * Obscene Publications Act 1857 is passed in the United Kingdom, placing severe restrictions on the content of published books until the act is replaced with a less stringent one in 1959.

New books

 * Hans Christian Andersen - To Be or Not to Be
 * Robert Michael Ballantyne
 * The Coral Island
 * Ungava: a Tale of Eskimo Land
 * George Borrow - The Romany Rye
 * Charlotte Brontë - The Professor
 * Wilkie Collins - The Dead Secret
 * Dinah Craik - John Halifax, Gentleman
 * Charles Dickens - Little Dorrit
 * Alexandre Dumas, père - The Wolf Leader
 * Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary
 * Catherine Gore - The Two Aristocracies
 * Thomas Hughes - Tom Brown's Schooldays
 * Fitz Hugh Ludlow - The Hasheesh Eater
 * Herman Melville - The Confidence-Man
 * G. W. M. Reynolds - The Necromancer
 * Joseph Xavier Saintine - Seul
 * Catharine Maria Sedgwick - Married or Single?
 * Adalbert Stifter - Der Nachsommer
 * William Makepeace Thackeray - The Virginians
 * Anthony Trollope - Barchester Towers

New drama

 * Wilkie Collins (with Charles Dickens) - The Frozen Deep
 * Liautaud Ethéart - Le Monde de Chez Nous
 * Henrik Ibsen - The Vikings at Helgeland

Poetry

 * Charles Baudelaire - Les Fleurs du mal

Non-fiction

 * Delia Bacon - The Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays
 * Elizabeth Gaskell - The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Smith, Elder & Co., biography
 * Philip Gosse - Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot
 * Hinton Rowan Helper - The Impending Crisis of the South
 * Washington Irving - The Life of George Washington, Volume 4
 * Allan Kardec - The Spirits' Book

Births

 * February - Arthur Tolkien, father of J. R. R. Tolkien
 * February 23 - Margaret Deland (+ 1945)
 * July - Adriana Porter, Wicca "poet" (+ 1946)
 * July 24 - Henrik Pontoppidan, Nobel Prize-winning author (+ 1943)
 * September 30 - Hermann Sudermann, dramatist and novelist (+ 1928)
 * October 31 - Axel Munthe, doctor and author (+ 1949)
 * November 22 - George Gissing (+  1903)
 * November 26 - Ferdinand de Saussure, Swiss linguist (+ 1913)
 * December 3 - Joseph Conrad  (+  1924)
 * date unknown - Benjamin Eli Smith, editor of reference books (+ 1913)

Deaths

 * January 5 - Albert Schwegler, philosopher and theologian (b. 1819)
 * February 3 - Robert Isaac Wilberforce, historian and religious writer (b. 1802)
 * March 11 - Manuel José Quintana, poet (b. 1772)
 * March 26 - John Mitchell Kemble, historian (b. 1807)
 * May 2 - Alfred de Musset, novelist and poet (b. 1810) (heart failure)
 * June 8 - Douglas William Jerrold, dramatist (b. 1803)
 * June 25 - Isabella Kelly, novelist and poet (b. 1759)
 * July 29, James Holman, travel writer (b. 1786)
 * August 3 - Eugène Sue, novelist (b. 1804)
 * August 10 - John Wilson Croker, political writer (b. 1780)
 * September 5 - Auguste Comte, French philosopher (b. 1798)
 * September 18 - Jean Baptiste Gustave Planche, critic (b. 1808)
 * November 26 - Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, poet and novelist (b. 1788)
 * December 13 - Richard Furness, poet (b. 1791)