1880 in literature explained

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1880.

Events

• February – The journal Science is first published in the United States, with financial backing from Thomas Edison.^[1]
• April – Publication in France of Les Soirées de Médan, a collection of six Naturalist short stories set during the Franco-Prussian War by six authors who frequent Émile Zola's home, including Guy de Maupassant's first, "Boule de Suif", which launches his career.^[2]
• April 20 (O. S.: April 8) – At the Romanian Academy, Titu Maiorescu announces a reformed Romanian alphabet, adopted by a commission also comprising George Bariț and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu.^[3] The rationalized spelling reflects ideas endorsed by Maiorescu since the 1860s, replacing the deep orthography favored by "Latinists".^[4]
• May – In the United States, the publishing business of Henry Oscar Houghton and George H. Mifflin is reconstructed as Houghton, Mifflin and Company.^[5]
• June 6 – Statue of Alexander Pushkin (d. 1837), sculpted by Alexander Opekushin, is unveiled in Strastnaya Square, Moscow.
• October – Henry James's novel The Portrait of a Lady begins serial publication in Macmillan's Magazine (U.K.) and The Atlantic Monthly (U.S.)
• December 15 – First performance of a play by Henrik Ibsen in English, The Pillars of Society (under the title Quicksands) at the Gaiety Theatre, London.^[6]

New books

Fiction

• Henry Adams (anonymously) –
• Rhoda Broughton – Second Thoughts
• Wilkie Collins – Jezebel's Daughter
• Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield – Endymion
• Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov (Братья Карамазовы, Brat'ya Karamazovy)
• Amelia Edwards – Lord Brackenbury
• Evelyn Everett-Green – Tom Tempest's Victory
• Theodor Fontane
  • Grete Minde
  • Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg
• George Gissing – Workers in the Dawn
• Walter T. Gray (Metta Victoria Fuller Victor) – A Bad Boy's Diary
• Percy Greg – Across the Zodiac
• Anna Katharine Green – A Strange Disappearance
• Thomas Hardy – The Trumpet-Major
• Henry Kendall – Songs from the Mountains
• Alexander Kielland – Garman og Worse
• Pierre Loti – Le Mariage de Loti (as Rarahu)
• Ouida – Moths
• Louisa Parr – Adam and Eve
• Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin – The Golovlyov Family (Господа Головлёвы, Gospoda Golovlyovy)
• Anthony Trollope – The Duke's Children
• Mark Twain – A Tramp Abroad
• Giovanni Verga – Vita dei campi (The Life of the Fields, short stories, including "Cavalleria rusticana" – "Rustic chivalry")
• Lew Wallace – Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
• Émile Zola – Nana

Children and young people

• Carlo Collodi – The Adventures of Pinocchio (Le avventure di Pinocchio)
• Evelyn Everett-Green – Tom Tempest's Victory
• Johanna Spyri – Heidi
• Jules Verne – The Steam House (La Maison à vapeur)

Drama

• Adolphe L'Arronge – The Lonei Household (Haus Lonei)
• Augustus Harris and Paul Meritt – The World
• Oscar Wilde – Vera; or, The Nihilists (privately printed)

Poetry

• Anne Evans (died 1870) – Poems and Music (with a memorial preface by Anne Isabella Thackeray)

Non-fiction

• Henry Charlton Bastian – The Brain as an Organ of Mind
• James Legge – The Religions of China
• Algernon Charles Swinburne – A Study of Shakespeare
• Charles Warren – The Temple or the Tomb. Giving further evidence in favour of the authenticity of the present site of the Holy Sepulchre

Births

• February 21 – Waldemar Bonsels, German writer (died 1952)
• February 27 – Angelina Weld Grimké, African-American playwright and poet (died 1958)
• March 1 – Lytton Strachey, English critic and biographer (died 1932)^[7]
• March 4 – Channing Pollock, American playwright and critic (died 1946)
• March 13 – Frank Thiess, German writer (died 1977)
• March 21 – E. H. Young, English novelist (died 1949)
• March 30 – Seán O'Casey, Irish dramatist (died 1964)^[8]
• June 10 – Margit Kaffka, Hungarian novelist, short story writer and poet (died 1918)
• June 17 – Carl Van Vechten, American writer (died 1964)
• June 27 – Helen Keller, American writer and lecturer (died 1968)^[9]
• July 4 – Anne Beffort, Luxembourg literary writer and biographer (died 1966)
• July 10 – Greye La Spina, American writer (died 1969)
• August 5 – Ruth Sawyer, American children's writer and novelist (died 1970)
• August 15 – Anna Rüling, German journalist, the first known lesbian activist (died 1953)^[10]
• August 26 – Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet and dramatist (died 1918)^[11]
• September 12 – H. L. Mencken, American journalist and English language scholar (died 1956)^[12]
• October 4 – Damon Runyon, American journalist and short-story writer (died 1946)^[13]
• October 17 – Vasile Cijevschi, Bessarabian Romanian soldier, journalist and short-story writer (died 1931)
• October 18 – Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Russian-born Zionist leader, novelist and poet (died 1940)
• November 1 – Grantland Rice, American sports writer (died 1954)
• November 6 – Robert Musil, Austrian novelist (died 1942)
• November 25 – Elsie J. Oxenham (Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley), English story writer for girls (died 1960)
• November 29 – N. D. Cocea, Romanian novelist, critic and journalist (died 1949)
• December 24 – Johnny Gruelle, American cartoonist and children's author (died 1938)^[14]

Deaths

• January 12 – Ida, Countess von Hahn-Hahn, German author (born 1805)
• February 12 – Karl Eduard von Holtei, German poet and dramatist (born 1798)
• February 17 – James Lenox, American bibliophile (born 1800)
• April 9 – Louis Edmond Duranty, French novelist and critic (born 1833)
• April 16 – Edward Vaughan Hyde Kenealy, Irish writer and barrister (born 1819)
• April 18 – Costache Aristia, Wallachian translator, poet, dramatist and actor (born 1800)
• May 2 – Eunice Hale Cobb, American writer, public speaker, and activist (born 1803)
• May 5 – Andrei Mocioni, Hungarian-Romanian journalist and literary patron (born 1812)
• May 6 – Ivan Surikov, Russian poet (born 1841)
• May 8 – Gustave Flaubert, French novelist (born 1821)^[15]
• May 30 – James Planché, English dramatist (born 1796)
• June 7 – Karl Christian Planck, German philosopher (born 1819)
• July 7 – Lydia Maria Child, American writer and abolitionist (born 1802)
• July 12 – Tom Taylor, English dramatist and journalist (born 1817)
• September 23 – Geraldine Jewsbury, English novelist and woman of letters (born 1812)
• December 22 – George Eliot (Mary Anne Cross), English novelist (born 1819)^[16]

Awards

• Commander, First Class of the Order of St. Olav – Andreas Munch
• Newdigate Prize – Rennell Rodd, "Raleigh"^[17]

Notes and References

1. . 7 February 1947 . Thomas A. Edison and the Founding of Science: 1880 . Science . 105 . 2719 . 142–148 . 10.1126/science.105.2719.142 . 17813458 . 1947Sci...105..142. .
2. Book: M. Paul Holsinger. Mary Anne Schofield. Visions of War: World War II in Popular Literature and Culture. 1992. Popular Press. 978-0-87972-556-3. 192.
3. Book: Urziceanu, Florentina. Titu Maiorescu 1840–1917. Bio-bibliografie selectivă. Aman County Library. Craiova. 2005. 12.
4. Book: Ivașcu, George. George Ivașcu

   . George Ivașcu. Cioculescu. Șerban. Șerban Cioculescu. Papadima. Ovidiu. Ovidiu Papadima. Piru. Alexandru. Alexandru Piru. Istoria literaturii române. III: Epoca marilor clasici. Editura Academiei. Bucharest. 1973. 95–99, 129. Titu Maiorescu.

5. Book: Henry James. The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1880–1883: Volume 1. 15 October 2016. U of Nebraska Press. 978-0-8032-8827-0. 207.
6. Web site: English first performances. Ibsen.net. 2004-05-12. 2013-02-08.
7. S. P. Rosenbaum, 'Strachey, (Giles) Lytton (1880–1932)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, May 2006
8. Web site: Sean O'Casey - Irish dramatist. Encyclopedia Britannica. 7 July 2017. en.
9. The Southern Ties of Helen Keller. 2007. Nielsen. Kim E.. Journal of Southern History. 73. 4. 783–806. registration. 10.2307/27649568. 27649568. March 15, 2016. January 9, 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20220109211522/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242408791_The_Southern_Ties_of_Helen_Keller. live.
10. Book: Rowold, Katharina. The Educated Woman: Minds, Bodies, and Women's Higher Education in Britain, Germany, and Spain, 1865-1914 . Routledge. 2011. 978-1134625840. 146.
11. Web site: Annette Becker. Apollinaire, Guillaume. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
12. Encyclopedia: Evans . Rod L. . Rod L. Evans . Ronald . Hamowy . Ronald Hamowy . The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism . Mencken, H. L. (1880–1956). https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/libertarianism/n196.xml. https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC . 2008 . Sage. Thousand Oaks, CA . 978-1-4129-6580-4 . 750831024 . 2008009151 . 324–325 . 10.4135/9781412965811.n196.
13. News: Birth Announcement . The (Manhattan, Kansas) Nationalist . October 7, 1880.
14. Book: Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy . Patricia Hall . . 1993. 978-0882899084. 25–26. September 14, 2018.
15. [Edmund Gosse]
16. Book: Nancy Henry. The Cambridge Introduction to George Eliot. 7 April 2008. Cambridge University Press. 978-1-139-46968-5. 13.
17. Book: T. Bose. R. N. Colbeck. A Bookman's Catalogue Vol. 2 M-End: The Norman Colbeck Collection of Nineteenth-Century and Edwardian Poetry and Belles Lettres. 1 November 2011. UBC Press. 978-0-7748-4481-9. 677.