1874 in literature

The year 1874 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * Arthur William à Beckett joins the staff of Punch.
 * Johan Nicolai Madvig loses his sight, forcing him to give up most of his research and writing.
 * Arthur Rimbaud goes to London with Germain Nouveau.
 * Alexandre Dumas, fils, is elected to the Académie française.

New books

 * Thomas Bailey Aldrich - Prudence Palfrey
 * José de Alencar - Ubirajara
 * Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly - Les Diaboliques
 * R M Ballantyne -The Pirate City
 * Ambrose Bierce - Cobwebs from an Empty Skull
 * Andrew Blair - Annals of the Twenty-Ninth Century
 * Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Lost For Love
 * William Wells Brown - The Rising Sun
 * Wilkie Collins - The Frozen Deep and Other Stories
 * Alphonse Daudet - Fromont jeune et Risler aîné
 * Amelia Edwards - A Night on the Borders of the Black Forest
 * Gustave Flaubert - The Temptation of Saint Anthony
 * Émile Gaboriau - Other People's Money
 * Thomas Hardy - Far From the Madding Crowd
 * Marie Howland - Papa's Own Girl
 * Victor Hugo - Ninety-Three
 * Joris-Karl Huysmans - Le drageoir aux epices
 * George Meredith - Beauchamp's Career
 * Margaret Oliphant - A Rose in June
 * Anthony Trollope
 * Harry Heathcote of Gangoil: A Tale of Australian Bush Life
 * Lady Anna
 * Jules Verne - The Mysterious Island
 * Mrs. Henry Wood -Johnny Ludlow
 * Edmund Yates - The Impending Sword
 * Émile Zola - La Conquête de Plassans

New drama

 * W.S. Gilbert - Charity

Poetry

 * Stéphane Mallarmé - L'après-midi d'un faune

Non-fiction

 * Franz Brentano - Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkte (Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint)
 * John William Draper - A History of the Conflict between Religion and Science
 * Antonio Raimondi - El Perú
 * Dorothy Wordsworth - Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A. D. 1803

Births

 * January 16 - Robert W. Service, poet (d. 1958)
 * January 25 - William Somerset Maugham, (d. 1965)
 * February 1 - Hugo von Hofmannsthal, writer (d. 1929)
 * February 3 - Gertrude Stein, writer and patron of the arts (d. 1946)
 * February 9 - Amy Lowell, poet (d. 1925)
 * February 11 - Elsa Beskow (Maartman), Swedish children's book/fairy tales author (d. 1953)
 * March 20 - Börries von Münchhausen, poet (d. 1945)
 * March 26 - Robert Frost, poet (d. 1963)
 * May 29 - G. K. Chesterton, writer (d. 1936)
 * June 20 - Trumbull Stickney, poet (d. 1904)
 * August 8 - Tristan Klingsor, poet (d. 1966)
 * November 30 - Lucy Maud Montgomery, novelist (d. 1942)

Deaths

 * February 8 - David Strauss, theologian (b. 1808)
 * February 9 - Jules Michelet, historian (b. 1798)
 * February 23 - Shirley Brooks, journalist and novelist (b. 1816)
 * March 3 - Francis Mason, grammarian and translator (b. 1799)
 * March 4 - Ada Clare, journalist (b. 1834)
 * June 19 - Jules Janin, critic (b. 1804)
 * July 7 - John Heneage Jesse, historian (b. 1815)
 * July 8 - Agnes Strickland, popular historian (b. 1796)
 * July 12 - Fritz Reuter, novelist (b. 1810)
 * August 8 - Augustin Theiner, theologian and historian (b. 1804)
 * October 5 - Bryan Procter, poet (b. 1787)
 * October 24 - Thomas Miller, poet (b. 1807)
 * November 20 - Tom Hood, humorist (b. 1835)
 * date unknown
 * Giuseppe Rovani, novelist (b. 1818)
 * Victor Séjour, novelist and dramatist (b. 1817)
 * Joseph Tracy, newspaper editor and historian (b. 1793)