1843 in literature

The year 1843 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * William Wordsworth (1770–1850) becomes Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.

New books

 * William Harrison Ainsworth - Windsor Castle
 * Edward George Bulwer-Lytton - The Last of the Barons
 * James Fenimore Cooper - Le Mouchoir; an Autobiographical Romance
 * Charles Dickens
 * A Christmas Carol
 * Martin Chuzzlewit
 * Alexandre Dumas, père - Georges
 * Catherine Gore - The Banker's Wife
 * Léon Gozlan - Aristide Froissart
 * Victor Hugo - Les Burgraves
 * Søren Kierkegaard - Diary of a Seducer (a literary novel included in Either/Or)
 * Frederick Marryat - Monsieur Violet
 * Edgar Allan Poe - "The Gold-Bug" (short story)
 * Eugène Sue - The Mysteries of Paris
 * Robert Smith Surtees - Handley Cross
 * Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna - Perils of the Nation

New drama

 * Eusebio Asquerino - Casada, vírgen y mártir
 * Nikolai Gogol - The Gamblers
 * W. T. Moncrieff - The Scamps of London

Poetry

 * Thomas Hood - Song of the Shirt
 * Richard Henry Horne - Orion
 * Edgar Allan Poe - The Conqueror Worm
 * Alfred Tennyson - Morte d'Arthur

Non-fiction

 * Paul Rudolf von Bilguer - Handbuch des Schachspiels (Handbook of Chess)
 * Thomas Carlyle - Past and Present
 * John Stuart Mill - A System of Logic
 * William H. Prescott - History of the Conquest of Mexico
 * Johannes de Silentio - Fear and Trembling (Frygt og Bæven)

Births

 * January 14 - Hans Forssell, historian (+ 1901)
 * April 15 - Henry James, writer (+  1916)
 * May 3 - Edward Dowden, poet and critic (+ 1913)
 * July 5 - Mandell Creighton, historian (+ 1901)
 * December 21 - Thomas Bracken, poet (+ 1898)
 * December 29 - Carmen Sylva (+ 1916)

Deaths

 * January 11 - Francis Scott Key, poet
 * March 21 - Robert Southey, poet
 * May 19 - Charles James Apperley ("Nimrod"), sports writer
 * May 28 - Noah Webster, lexicographer
 * June 6 - Friedrich Hölderlin, German poet, novelist, and dramatist
 * July 9 - Karoline Pichler, novelist
 * July 31 - William Thomas Lowndes, bibliographer
 * August 10 - Jakob Friedrich Fries, philosopher
 * October 21 - William Pinnock, publisher, bookseller and author
 * December 11 - Casimir Delavigne, poet and dramatist
 * date unknown - John Murray, publisher