1840 in literature

The year 1840 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * Novelist Fritz Reuter is freed from the fortress of Dömitz after two years' imprisonment on a charge of high treason.
 * The first edition of Peter Parley's Annual, a periodical for children, is published.

New books

 * William Harrison Ainsworth - The Tower of London
 * Henry Cockton - Valentine Vox
 * James Fenimore Cooper - The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea
 * Richard Henry Dana, Jr. - Two Years Before the Mast
 * Alexandre Dumas, père - Otho the Archer
 * Thomas Ingoldsby - The Ingoldsby Legends
 * Mikhail Lermontov - A Hero of Our Time
 * Frederick Marryat
 * Olla Podrida
 * Poor Jack
 * Harriet Martineau - The Hour and the Man
 * Prosper Mérimée - Colomba
 * Edgar Allan Poe - Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
 * William Makepeace Thackeray - Catherine
 * Edward William Lane publishes an English version of The Arabian Nights

New drama

 * Christian Hebbel - Judith
 * Jose Zorilla - El Zapatero y el Rey

Poetry

 * Victor Hugo - Les Rayons et les Ombres
 * Mikhail Lermontov - The Novice

Non-fiction

 * Pierre-Joseph Proudhon - What is Property?
 * Alexis de Tocqueville - Democracy in America (vol. 2)

Births

 * January 18 - Henry Austin Dobson, English author
 * April 2 - Emile Zola, writer (+ 1902)
 * June 2 - Thomas Hardy, novelist and poet (+ 1928)
 * November 29 - Rhoda Broughton (+  1920

Deaths

 * January 6 - Fanny Burney, novelist