1848 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1848.

Events

• January 22 – Second edition of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is published, with a dedication to Thackeray.^[1] It is also first published this year in the United States.
• February 21 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto (Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) in London.
• March 15 – Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire: Ferdinand I of Austria abolishes censorship.^[2]
• March 18 – The Boston Public Library is founded by an act of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts.
• April 1 – Charles Dickens's novel Dombey and Son concludes its serial publication.
• April 10 – John Ruskin marries Effie Gray.^[3]
• May 5 – Poet Alfred de Musset is dismissed as librarian of the Ministry of the Interior under the French Second Republic.
• c.June 27 – Publication (as by "Acton Bell") in London of Anne Brontë's second and final novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which sells out in six weeks, requiring a reissue.^[1]
• July – William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair concludes serial publication in Punch magazine and is first published in book format (from the same typesetting) by Bradbury and Evans in London with illustrations by the author.
• September 24 – Branwell Brontë dies, probably of tuberculosis, at Haworth Parsonage, aged 31.^[1]
• October – Publication (anonymously) in London of Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life.
• c.October – The first frescoes of scenes from English literature in the Poets' Hall of the Palace of Westminster^[4] are completed: Charles West Cope's Griselda's first Trial of Patience (based on Chaucer's The Clerk's Tale) and John Callcott Horsley's Satan touched by Ithuriel's Spear while whispering evil dreams to Eve (based on Milton's Paradise Lost).
• November
  • William Makepeace Thackeray's novel The History of Pendennis begins its serial publication.
  • London publisher George Routledge begins publishing the Railway Library series of cheap reprint novels, pioneering the yellow-back genre with an edition of James Fenimore Cooper's The Pilot.^[5]
• December 19 – Emily Brontë dies of tuberculosis at Haworth Parsonage, aged 30.^[1]

New books

Fiction

• W. Harrison Ainsworth – The Lancashire Witches (serialised in The Sunday Times)
• R. M. Ballantyne – Life in the Wilds of North America
• Anne Brontë – The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton – Harold, the Last of the Saxons
• William Carleton – The Emigrants of Ahadarra
• Charles Dickens
  • Dombey and Son
  • The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
• Fyodor Dostoevsky – White Nights
• Alexandre Dumas, fils – La Dame aux caméllias
• Elizabeth Gaskell – Mary Barton
• Geraldine Jewsbury – The Half Sisters
• Julia Kavanagh – Madeleine, a Tale of Auvergne
• Charles Kingsley – Yeast
• Frederick Marryat
  • The Little Savage
  • Valerie
• Henri Murger – Scènes de la vie de Bohème
• John Henry Newman – Loss and Gain: the story of a convert
• G. W. M. Reynolds
  • The Coral Island, or the Hereditary Curse
  • Wagner the Wehr-Wolf
• George Sand – François le champi (François the Waif)
• Adele Schopenhauer – Eine dänische Geschichte (A Danish Story)
• William Makepeace Thackeray – The Book of Snobs
• Anthony Trollope – The Kellys and the O'Kellys

Children and young adults

• Catherine Crowe
  • The Night-side of Nature
  • Pippie's Warning, or, Mind Your Temper

Drama

• Émile Augier – L'Aventurière
• Alfred de Musset – André del Sarto

Poetry

• Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander – Hymns for Little Children, including "All Things Bright and Beautiful" and "Once in Royal David's City"
• William Edmonstoune Aytoun – Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton – King Arthur (1848-9)
• James Russell Lowell – A Fable for Critics, The Biglow Papers

Non-fiction

• Jacob Grimm – Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (History of the German Language)
• Benjamin Randell Harris – The Recollections of Rifleman Harris
• Søren Kierkegaard – The Point of View of My Work as an Author (Om min Forfatter-Virksomhed)
• Thomas Babington Macaulay – The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, Vols 1–2
• Harriet Martineau – Household Education
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – The Communist Manifesto
• John Stuart Mill – Principles of Political Economy
• Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis – Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley

Births

• February 5 – Joris Karl Huysmans (Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans), French novelist (died 1907)
• February 16 – Octave Mirbeau, French travel writer, novelist and playwright (died 1917)
• February 24 – Grant Allen, Canadian novelist and science writer (died 1899)
• March 9 – George Panu, Romanian memoirist, critic, and politician (died 1910)
• May – Bonifaciu Florescu, Wallachian and Romanian polygraph (died 1899)
• August 14 – Mary E. Mann (Mary Rackham), English novelist and short story writer (died 1929)
• August 16 – Francis Darwin, English botanist and academic (died 1925)
• October 25 – Karl Emil Franzos, Austrian novelist (died 1904)
• Unknown date – Maryana Marrash, Syrian writer and salonist (died 1919 in literature)
• Unknown date, probable year of birth – Bithia Mary Croker, Irish novelist (died 1920)

Deaths

• January 19 – Isaac D'Israeli, English scholar and man of letters (born 1766)
• February 9 – Ann Batten Cristall, English poet (born 1769)
• February 13 – Sophie von Knorring, Swedish novelist (born 1797)
• July 4 – François-René de Chateaubriand, French historian, politician and diplomat (born 1768)
• July 6 – He Changling (賀長齡), Chinese scholar and writer on governance (born 1785)
• August 9 – Frederick Marryat (Captain Marryat), English novelist and children's writer (born 1792)
• September 24 – Branwell Brontë, English painter, writer and poet (tuberculosis, born 1817)
• December 19 – Emily Brontë, English novelist and poet (tuberculosis, born 1818)

Awards

References