1866 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1866.

Events

• Ludwig Anzengruber returns to Vienna after working as a travelling actor.
• Charles Baudelaire's collection Les Épaves is published in Belgium containing poems suppressed from Les Fleurs du mal (Paris, 1857) for outraging public morality.
• Luigi Capuana becomes theatre critic for Italian newspaper The Nation.
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel Crime and Punishment (Преступлéние и наказáние, Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) is serialized throughout the year in the monthly literary magazine Russkiy Vestnik (Русскій Вѣстникъ, "The Russian Messenger"). His novella The Gambler (Игрок, Igrok) is dictated to his future wife to meet a publisher deadline of November 1.
• Josip Jurčič publishes Deseti brat ("The Tenth Brother"), the first full-length Slovene language novel.
• Nandshankar Mehta publishes Karana Ghelo ("The Idiot King Karana"), the first Gujarati language novel.
• Hesba Stretton's children’s story Jessica's First Prayer is serialized in Sunday at Home (U.K.); as a book, it sells one and half million copies.
• Algernon Charles Swinburne's first collection Poems and Ballads causes a sensation on publication in London, especially the poems written in homage to Sappho and the sadomasochistic "Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)", and, under threat of prosecution, his original publisher, Moxon and Co., transfer publication rights to the more liberal John Camden Hotten.
• Anthony Trollope's novel Nina Balatka: The Story of a Maiden of Prague is initially published anonymously (serialization in Blackwood's Magazine July 1866–January 1867) – Trollope is interested in discovering whether his books sell on their own merits or as a consequence of the author's name and reputation.
• Publication of the first detective fiction by women authors: the dime novel The Dead Letter, an American Romance by 'Seeley Regester' (Metta Victoria Fuller Victor) is published in New York City as the first full-length American work of crime fiction, having begun to appear serially in the January Beadle’s Monthly; and Mary Fortune's story "The Dead Witness, or the Bush waterhole" is published in the Australian Journal on January 20.
• Former English chess master Howard Staunton publishes a facsimile of the Shakespeare First Folio by photolithography.
• London publisher Samuel Orchart Beeton is obliged (as a result of the financial panic of May/June) to sell his titles and name to Ward Lock & Co.
• The American magazine for children Children's Hour publishes its first issue.

New books

• Louisa May Alcott (as A. M. Barnard) - Behind a Mask, or A Woman's Power (novella published in The Flag of Our Union)
• R. D. Blackmore - Cradock Nowell
• Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay - Kapalkundala
• Wilkie Collins - Armadale (serialization completed & in book form)
• John Esten Cooke - Surry of Eagle's-Nest
• Alphonse Daudet - Letters From My Windmill (Lettres de mon moulin)
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
• Alexandre Dumas, fils - L'Affaire Clemenceau
• George Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical
• Augusta Jane Evans - St. Elmo
• John William De Forest - Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
• Émile Gaboriau - L'Affaire Lerouge
• Victor Hugo - Toilers of the Sea (Les Travailleurs de la Mer)
• George MacDonald - Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood
• Mrs Oliphant - Miss Marjoribanks
• Ouida - Chandos
• Charles Reade - Griffith Gaunt
• Emmanuel Rhoides - Ἡ Πάπισσα Ἰωάννα (I Papissa Ioanna, "Pope Joan")
• Felicia Skene (anonymously) - Hidden Depths
• Anthony Trollope - Nina Balatka
• José Milla y Vidaurre - La Hija del Adelantado

New drama

• Dion Boucicault - Rip van Winkle or The Sleep of Twenty Years
• Alexandre Dumas, fils - Heloise Paranquet
• Henrik Ibsen - Brand
• Dobri Voynikov - Princess Rayna

Poetry

• Charles Baudelaire - Les Épaves
• Algernon Charles Swinburne - Poems and Ballads
• Paul Verlaine - Poèmes saturniens, including "Chanson d'automne"

Non-fiction

• William Wells Brown - The Negro in the American Rebellion
• Friedrich Albert Lange - History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance (Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, published October 1865 but dated 1866)
• John Robert Seeley (anonymously) - Ecce Homo
• Charles Haddon Spurgeon - The Wordless Book
• Benjamin Thorpe assisted by Elise Otté (translator) - Edda Sæmundar Hinns Frôða: the Edda of Sæmund the Learned, from the old Norse or Icelandic

Births

• January 2 (December 21, 1865 OS) – Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică (Gheorghe Bogdan), Romanian literary critic (died 1934)
• January 29 – Romain Rolland, French dramatist, novelist and Nobel Prize-winner (died 1944)
• February 9 – George Ade, American columnist and playwright (died 1944)
• February 24 – Arthur Pearson, English writer and newspaper publisher (died 1921)
• March 2 – John Gray, English poet (died 1934)
• March 16 – E. K. Chambers, English literary scholar (died 1954)
• May 2 – Paul Kretschmer, German linguist (died 1956)
• July 28 – Beatrix Potter, English children's writer and illustrator (died 1943)
• August 12 – Jacinto Benavente, Spanish dramatist and Nobel Prize-winnter (died 1954)
• August 16 – Dora Sigerson, Irish poet (died 1918)
• September 7 – Tristan Bernard, French writer (died 1947)
• August 31 – Elizabeth von Arnim, née Mary Annette Beauchamp, Australian-born novelist (died 1941)
• September 21 – H. G. Wells, English novelist and social commentator (died 1946)
• October 28 – Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Spanish dramatist and novelist (died 1936)
• November 4 – Jane Findlater, Scottish novelist (died 1946)
• November 21 – Dusé Mohamed Ali, Egyptian-born political activist, journalist and dramatist (died 1945)

Deaths

• January 23 – Thomas Love Peacock, English satirist (born 1785)
• February 2 – François-Xavier Garneau, French Canadian historian and civil servant (born 1809)
• March 6 – William Whewell, English polymath and cleric (born 1794)
• March 29 – John Keble, English poet and cleric (born 1792)
• June 16 – Joseph Méry, French satirist and librettist (born 1797)
• August 1 – Luigi Carlo Farini, Italian historian (born 1812)
• August 12 – Philip Stanhope Worsley, English poet and translator (born 1835)
• September 10 – Charles Maclaren, Scottish founding editor of The Scotsman (born 1782)
• September 14 – Léon Gozlan, French novelist and dramatist (born 1803)
• September 19 – Christian Hermann Weisse, German philosopher (born 1801)
• December 20 – Ann Taylor, English poet and critic (born 1782)