1861 in literature

The year 1861 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * October 20 - Poet and dramatist Apollo Korzeniowski is arrested for his political activities and placed in the infamous Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel.
 * Sheridan Le Fanu becomes editor of the Dublin University Magazine.
 * Gottfried Keller becomes municipal secretary of his home town of Zurich.
 * John Edward Taylor the younger becomes editor of the Manchester Guardian.
 * The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce becomes The Times of India.
 * Frederick James Furnivall becomes editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

New books

 * Mary Elizabeth Braddon
 * The Black Band
 * The Octoroon
 * Frances Browne - My Share of the World
 * Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
 * Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Insulted and Humiliated
 * George Eliot - Silas Marner
 * Harriet Ann Jacobs - Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
 * George Sand - Consuelo
 * Walter Chalmers Smith - The Bishop's Walk
 * William Makepeace Thackeray - The Adventures of Philip
 * Anthony Trollope - Orley Farm
 * George J. Whyte-Melville - Market Harborough
 * Mrs Henry Wood - East Lynne
 * Charlotte Mary Yonge - The Young Step-Mother

New drama

 * Léon Gozlan - La Pluie et le beau temps

Poetry

 * Charles Baudelaire - Les fleurs du mal, 2nd edition
 * Kalevipoeg (Estonian national epic)

Non-fiction

 * Isabella Beeton - Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management
 * Michael Faraday - The Chemical History of a Candle
 * Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - Writings on the U.S. Civil War

Births

 * March 1 - Henry Harland, novelist and editor (d. 1905)
 * April 15 - Bliss Carman, poet (d. 1929)
 * May 7 - Rabindranath Tagore, poet and novelist (d. 1941)
 * September 20 - Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress (d. 1955)
 * October 16 - J. B. Bury, historian (d. 1927)
 * May 13 - Margaret Marshall Saunders, author (d. 1947)
 * date unknown - Sir John Edward Lloyd, historian (d. 1947)

Deaths

 * January 28 - Henri Murger, novelist and poet
 * January 29, Catherine Gore, author
 * February 20 - Eugène Scribe, dramatist
 * April 1 - Lady Charlotte Bury, novelist
 * May 23 - Edward Cardwell, theologian
 * June 7 - Patrick Brontë, father of the Brontë sisters
 * June 29 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet
 * July 6 - Sir Francis Palgrave, historian
 * November 13 - Arthur Hugh Clough, poet
 * November 30
 * Alexander Gilchrist, biographer
 * Theodor Mundt, novelist and critic