1871 in literature

List of years in literature (table)
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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1871.

Events

File:The-bells-1871.jpg

Programme for the opening night of The Bells

Henry Irving as Mathias in The Bells

• January 1 - The children's literary magazine Young Folks begins publication in the U.K. as Our Young Folks' Weekly Budget.
• January - John Ruskin begins publishing Fors Clavigera, his (originally) monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain".
• October - "Thomas Maitland" (i.e., Robert Williams Buchanan) attacks Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other members of what Buchanan calls the "Fleshly School" of English poetry in The Contemporary Review; on December 16 Rossetti replies in "The Stealthy School of Criticism" in the Athenaeum.
• November 25 - First performance of The Bells starring Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre, London, the actor's first great success. On the same night, he breaks up permanently with his wife when she criticises his choice of profession.
• December - Publication of George Eliot's novel Middlemarch in eight parts commences.
• George Allen and Sons, publishers, predecessors of Allen & Unwin, established in London.

New books

• Louisa M. Alcott - Little Men
• William Alexander - Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk (serialised in Aberdeen Free Press 1869-70)
• William Black - A Daughter of Heth
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Fenton's Quest
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton - The Coming Race
• Lewis Carroll - Through the Looking-Glass
• Vanchinbalyn Injinash - The Blue Chronicle (köke sudur, Хөх судар; completed in MS)
• Henry James - Watch and Ward
• George Meredith - The Adventures of Harry Richmond
• William Gifford Palgrave - Personal Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862–63)
• Johanna Spyri - A Leaf on Vrony's Grave
• Mark Twain
  • Eye Openers
  • Screamers
• Giovanni Verga - Storia di una capinera ("The Sparrow"; book publication)
• Jules Verne - A Floating City
• Émile Zola - La Fortune des Rougon

New drama

• W. S. Gilbert - Pygmalion and Galatea
• Leopold Davis Lewis - The Bells (adapted from Erckmann-Chatrian's Le Juif Polonais)
• Alexander Ostrovsky - The Forest (Russian: Лес, Les)
• Dobri Voynikov - The Phoney Civilization (Bulgarian: Криворазбраната цивилизация, Krivorazbranata tsivilizatsiya)

Non-fiction

• Charles Darwin - The Descent of Man
• Edward Burnett Tylor - Primitive Culture

Births

• February 22 – John Langalibalele Dube, Zulu writer (died 1946)
• March 27 – Heinrich Mann, German narrator, dramatist and essayist (died 1950)
• June 17 – James Weldon Johnson American writer and activist (died 1938)
• July 3 – W. H. Davies, Welsh poet (died 1940)
• July 10 – Marcel Proust, French novelist (died 1922)
• August 21 (August 9 OS) – Leonid Andreyev, Russian short story writer and playwright (died 1919)
• August 27 – Theodore Dreiser, American novelist (died 1945)
• September 27 – Grazia Deledda, Italian writer and Nobel Prize winner (died 1926)
• October 10 – Wickham Steed, English journalist, editor and historian (died 1956)
• October 30 – Paul Valéry, French poet (died 1945)
• November 1 – Stephen Crane, American novelist (died 1900)
• November 10 – Winston Churchill, American novelist (died 1947)

Deaths

• January 12 – Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois, French dramatist (born 1806)
• February 12 – Alice Cary, American poet (tuberculosis, born 1820)
• March 17 – Robert Chambers, Scottish writer and publisher (born 1802)
• July 31 – Phoebe Cary, American poet (born 1824)
• July 15 – Ján Chalupka, Slovak dramatist (born 1791)
• December 8 – Thomas Gaspey, English novelist and journalist (born 1788)