1886 in literature

The year 1886 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * MLN: Modern Language Notes, an academic journal founded with the intention of introducing European literary criticism into American scholarship, is founded at the Johns Hopkins University.

Books

 * Louisa May Alcott - Jo's Boys
 * Edmondo De Amicis - Heart
 * Leon Bloy - Disperato
 * Rhoda Broughton - Doctor Cupid
 * Frances Hodgson Burnett - Little Lord Fauntleroy
 * Hall Caine - A Son of Hagar
 * Mary Cholmondeley - The Danvers Jewels
 * Wilkie Collins
 * The Evil Genius
 * The Guilty River
 * Marie Corelli - A Romance of Two Worlds
 * Thomas Hardy - The Mayor of Casterbridge
 * William Dean Howells - Indian Summer
 * Henry James - The Bostonians
 * Jerome K. Jerome - The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
 * Pierre Loti - Pêcheur d'Islande
 * Octave Mirbeau - Le Calvaire
 * George A. Moore
 * A Drama in Muslin
 * Confessions of a Young Man
 * Robert Louis Stevenson
 * The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
 * Kidnapped
 * August Strindberg - Married I-II (short stories)
 * Leo Tolstoy - The Death of Ivan Ilyich
 * Jules Verne
 * The Lottery Ticket
 * Robur the Conqueror
 * Philippe Villiers - Eva Futura

New drama

 * Anton Chekhov - On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco
 * Henrik Ibsen - Rosmersholm
 * William Butler Yeats - Mosada

Non-fiction

 * Edwin Abbott Abbott - The Kernel and the Husk
 * William Morris - A Dream of John Ball

Births

 * January 14 - Hugh Lofting, author (d. 1947)
 * March 1 - Oskar Kokoschka, poet and artist (d. 1980)
 * September 8 - Siegfried Sassoon, poet and memoirist (d. 1967)
 * September 20 - Charles Williams, British author and member of the Inklings (d. 1945)
 * November 1 - Hermann Broch, Modernist writer (d. 1951)
 * November 21 - Harold Nicolson, British author (d. 1968)
 * December 5 - Rose Wilder Lane, journalist (d. 1968)

Deaths

 * May 15 - Emily Dickinson, poet (b. 1830)
 * May 17 - Erskine May, constitutional theorist (b. 1815)
 * July 21 - Maximilian Wolfgang Duncker, historian (b. 1811)
 * August 9 - Samuel Ferguson, poet (b. 1810)
 * October 22 - Matilda Jane Evans, novelist (b. 1827)
 * November 22 - Mary Chesnut, diarist (b. 1823)
 * December 12 - Johan Nicolai Madvig, philologist (b. 1804)