1853 in literature

The year 1853 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * Charles Dickens writes Bleak House, the first English novel to feature a detective.
 * William Wells Brown becomes the first African American novelist to be published.

New books

 * Charlotte Brontë - Villette
 * William Wells Brown - Clotel; or, The President's Daughter
 * Martha Haines Butt - Antifanaticism: A Tale of the South
 * Philip J. Cozans - Little Eva: The Flower of the South
 * Charles Dickens - Bleak House
 * Alexandre Dumas, père - The Countess de Charny
 * Elizabeth Gaskell
 * Cranford
 * Ruth
 * Sarah Josepha Hale - Liberia; or, Mr. Peyton's Experiments
 * Caroline Lee Hentz - Helen and Arthur
 * Victor Hugo - Les Châtiments
 * Charles Kingsley - Hypatia
 * Sheridan Le Fanu - An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
 * Maria McIntosh - The Lofty and the Lowly, or Good in All and None All Good
 * Herman Melville - Bartleby, the Scrivener
 * Susanna Moodie - Life in the Clearings
 * J. W. Page - Uncle Robin, in His Cabin in Virginia, and Tom Without One in Boston
 * Charles Reade - Peg Woffington
 * Robert Smith Surtees - Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour
 * Vidi - Mr. Frank, the Underground Mail-Agent
 * George J. Whyte-Melville - Digby Grand
 * Charlotte Mary Yonge - The Heir of Redclyffe

New drama

 * Gustav Freytag - Die Journalisten
 * Charles Reade - Gold

Poetry

 * Álvares de Azevedo - Lira dos Vinte Anos (published posthumously)
 * Matthew Arnold - The Scholar Gipsy

Non-fiction

 * Johann Herzog - Encyclopedia of Protestant Theology
 * Theodor Mommsen - History of Rome
 * Karl Rosenkrantz - Aesthetic of Ugliness
 * Hippolyte Taine - Essai sur les fables de La Fontaine

Births

 * April 23 - Thomas Nelson Page, novelist (+  1922)
 * May 3 - Edgar Watson Howe, author and editor (+ 1937)
 * May 14 - Hall Caine, author  (+  1931)
 * William Herrick Macaulay

Deaths

 * January 3 - János Majláth, poet and historian
 * January 26 - Sylvester Judd, novelist
 * February 3 - August Kopisch, poet
 * April 4 - James Scholefield, classicist
 * April 28 - Ludwig Tieck, poet, novelist and translator
 * May 3 - Juan Donoso Cortés, political author
 * September 5 - Georges Depping, historian
 * October 29 - Thomas Jonathan Wooler, satirist
 * December 2 - Amelia Opie, poet and novelist