1887 in literature explained

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1887.

Events

• February – Oscar Wilde publishes "The Canterville Ghost", his first short story, in The Court and Society Review.^[1]
• March 30 – Théâtre Libre, established by André Antoine to promote naturalism in theatre, gives its first performances in Paris, originally as an amateur ensemble.^[2]
• April 22 – Syracuse University in New York State purchases the Ranke Library from the estate of historian Leopold von Ranke, outbidding the Prussian government.
• November – Arthur Conan Doyle's first detective novel, A Study in Scarlet, is published in Beeton's Christmas Annual by Ward Lock & Co. in London, introducing the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend and chronicler Dr. Watson (illustrated by D. H. Friston).
• December 5 – The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886) comes into effect.
• December 15 – The Romanian literary magazine Revista Nouă is launched in Bucharest by Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, who answers a request made by Ioan Bianu, Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, Alexandru Vlahuță and others. The first issue, illustrated by George Demetrescu Mirea, hosts Delavrancea's Hagi Tudose and Petre Ispirescu's Sarea în bucate^[3] (a localized folkloric version of the King Leir myth).^[4]
• unknown dates
  • Futabatei Shimei writes and begins to publish The Drifting Cloud (浮雲, Ukigumo), the first modern novel in Japan.
  • George Hutchinson establishes Hutchinson & Co. as a publisher in London.
  • John Lane and Elkin Mathews set up in partnership under the name The Bodley Head in London, originally as antiquarian booksellers.

New books

Fiction

• Herman Bang – Stucco (Stuk)
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Cut by the County
• Hall Caine – The Deemster^[5]
• Marie Corelli – Thelma
• F. Marion Crawford – Saracinesca
• José Maria de Eça de Queiroz – A Relíquia (The Relic)
• Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea – Hagi Tudose
• Anna Bowman Dodd – The Republic of the Future
• Arthur Conan Doyle – A Study in Scarlet
• Édouard Dujardin – Les Lauriers sont coupés (early example of Stream of consciousness, narrative mode)
• Benito Pérez Galdós – Fortunata y Jacinta (publication completed)
• Enrique Gaspar – El anacronópete, first fiction to feature a time machine^[6]
• George Gissing – Thyrza
• H. Rider Haggard
  • Allan Quatermain
  • Jess
  • She
• Thomas Hardy – The Woodlanders
• W. H. Hudson – A Crystal Age
• Joris-Karl Huysmans – En rade (Becalmed; serialization concludes, book publication)
• Petre Ispirescu – Sarea în bucate
• Pierre Loti – Madame Chrysanthème
• Paolo Mantegazza – Testa
• William Morris – The Tables Turned, Or, Nupkins Awakened: A Socialist Interlude^[7]
• Appu Nedungadi – Kundalatha (കുന്ദലത)
• Bolesław Prus – The Doll (Lalka; serialization begins)
• José Rizal – Noli Me Tangere
• William James Roe (as Hudor Genone) –
• Mark Rutherford (pseudonym of Hale White) – Revolution in Tanner's Lane
• Futabatei Shimei – The Drifting Cloud
• August Strindberg – The People of Hemsö (Hemsöborna)
• Jules Verne
  • The Flight to France (Le Chemin de France)^[8]
  • Texar's Revenge, or, North Against South (Nord contre Sud)
• Émile Zola – La Terre (The Earth)

Children and young people

• Palmer Cox – The Brownies, Their Book
• Robert Louis Stevenson – The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables

Drama

• Anton Chekhov – Ivanov
• Arthur Wing Pinero – Dandy Dick
• Victorien Sardou – La Tosca
• August Strindberg – The Father
• Thomas Russell Sullivan – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, adapted from 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Non-fiction

• Mikhail Bakunin – God and the State
• Hall Caine – Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Charles Darwin (died 1882) – The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
• Julius Dresser – The True History of Mental Science^[9]
• Friedrich Engels (translated by Florence Kelley) – The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (first English language edition)
• George William Foote – Royal Paupers: a radical's contribution to the Jubilee
• Franz Hartmann – The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, better known by the name of Paracelsus, and the substance of his teachings
• David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross - The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland
• Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers – The Kabbalah Unveiled
• Friedrich Nietzsche – On the Genealogy of Morality
• Marius Nygaard, Jan Johanssen and Emil Schreiner – Latinsk Ordbog
• E. J. Richmond – Woman, First and Last, and What She has Done
• A. E. Waite – The Real History of the Rosicrucians
• Mary Allen West –
• L. L. Zamenhof – Unua Libro

Births

• January 2 – Dmitrii Milev, Soviet Moldovan shorty story writer and critic (died 1937)
• January 7 – Oskar Luts, Estonian author and playwright (died 1953)
• January 10 – Robinson Jeffers, American poet (died 1962)
• January 22 – Helen Hoyt, American poet (died 1972)
• February 1 – Charles Nordhoff, English-born author (died 1947)^[10]
• February 3 – Georg Trakl, Austrian poet (died of overdose 1914)^[11]
• February 4 – Sheila Kaye-Smith, English writer (died 1955)^[12]
• February 11 – John van Melle, South African writer (died 1953)
• February 20 – Carl Ebert, German theatre and opera director (died 1980)^[13]
• March 9 – Ion Buzdugan, Romanian poet and political figure (died 1967)
• March 14 – Sylvia Beach (Nancy Woodbridge Beach), American publisher and memoirist (died 1962)^[14]
• May 15 – Edwin Muir, Scottish poet and translator (died 1959)^[15]
• May 31 – Saint-John Perse, French diplomat, writer and Nobel Prize laureate (died 1975)^[16]
• June 2 – Orrick Glenday Johns, American poet and playwright (died 1946)^[17]
• June 25 – George Abbott, American playwright, director and screenwriter (died 1995)^[18]
• July 1 – Amber Reeves, New Zealand-born English scholar, feminist and novelist (died 1981)
• July 6 – Walter Flex, German war writer (died 1917)^[19]
• August 3 – Rupert Brooke, English poet (died 1915)^[20]
• August 17 – Marcus Garvey, African American publisher, entrepreneur and Pan Africanist (died 1940)^[21]
• August 28  - István Kühár, Prekmurje Slovene poet, writer and politician (died 1922)
• September 1 – Blaise Cendrars (Frédéric-Louis Sauser), Swiss-born French writer (died 1961)^[22]
• September 8 – Constantin Beldie, Romanian literary promoter and memoirist (died 1954)
• September 26 – Edwin Keppel Bennett, British writer (died 1958)
• October 1 – Barbu Nemțeanu, Romanian poet and translator (died 1919)
• October 22  - John Reed, American journalist and poet (died 1920)^[23]
• November 10  - Arnold Zweig, German novelist (died 1968)^[24]
• December 15 – A. de Herz, Romanian playwright and journalist (died 1936)

Deaths

• February 10 – Mrs Henry Wood (Ellen Wood), English novelist (born 1814)
• February 11 – François Laurent, Belgian historian (born 1810)^[25]
• February 19 – Multatuli (Eduard Douwes Dekker), Dutch-born writer (born 1820)^[26]
• February 21 – Elizabeth Caroline Gray, historian and travel author (born 1800)^[27]
• March 20 – Pavel Annenkov, Russian critic and memoirist (born 1813)
• April 23 – John Ceiriog Hughes, Welsh poet and folk song collector (born 1832)^[28]
• May 4 – William Murdoch, Scottish-born Canadian poet (born 1823)
• May 5 – James Grant, Scottish novelist and historian (born 1822)
• August 20 – Jules Laforgue, French poet (born 1860)^[29]
• August 25 – Emma Jane Guyton (Worboise), English novelist and magazine editor (born 1825)
• September 14 – Friedrich Theodor Vischer, German novelist, poet, playwright and art theorist (born 1807)
• September 27 – Mikalojus Akelaitis, Lithuanian writer, linguist and publicist (born 1829)
• October 12 – Dinah Craik, English novelist and poet (born 1826)^[30]
• November 2 – Alfred Domett, English-born New Zealand poet and politician (born 1811)^[31]
• November 19 – Emma Lazarus, American poet (born 1849)^[32]
• December 5 – Eliza Roxcy Snow, American poet (born 1804)^[33]

Notes and References

1. Book: Oscar Wilde. The Canterville Ghost Annotated. 16 February 2021. Independently Published. 9798709933033. 11 April 2021. 13 April 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413181244/https://books.google.com/books?id=x6M9zgEACAAJ. live.
2. Book: Claude Schumacher. John Northam. Glynne W. Wickham. Naturalism and Symbolism in European Theatre 1850-1918. 26 September 1996. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-23014-8. 301. 11 April 2021. 13 April 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413181217/https://books.google.com/books?id=tanPYs6ArLIC&pg=PA301. live.
3. Eugeniu . Sperantia . Eugeniu Sperantia . Reviste de altădată: Revista Nouă . Steaua . 1 . 1967 . 48–49 . Romanian.
4. Cernătescu . Radu . 2013 . Shakespeare și colindele românilor . . Romanian . 50 . 2023-04-13 . 2023-04-13 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171313/https://arhiva.romanialiterara.com/index.pl/shakespeare_i_colindele_romnilor . live .
5. Book: Ernest Franklin Bozman. Everyman's Encyclopaedia. 1967. Dent. 11. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413181253/https://books.google.com/books?id=vwMZAQAAMAAJ. live.
6. Web site: Kathryn. Westcott. HG Wells or Enrique Gaspar: Whose time machine was first?. BBC News. 2011-04-09. 2011-04-09. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171305/https://www.bbc.com/news. live.
7. Book: The Victorian Period: Excluding the Novel. 1 April 1983. Macmillan International Higher Education. 978-1-349-17060-9. 148.
8. Book: Boston Public Library. Works of Fiction in the French Language: Together with Translations from the French, in the Bates Hall of the Public Library of the City of Boston. 1892. The Trustees. 56. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171341/https://books.google.com/books?id=D0Q-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PP56. live.
9. Book: Annetta Gertrude Dresser. The Philosophy of P. P. Quimby: With Selections from His Manuscripts and a Sketch of His Life. 1895. G. H. Ellis. 5. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171224/https://books.google.com/books?id=10UXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA5. live.
10. Book: Lesley Henderson. D. L. Kirkpatrick. Twentieth-century Romance and Historical Writers. 1990. St. James Press. 978-0-912289-97-7. 486. 2021-04-12. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171241/https://books.google.com/books?id=zs4KAQAAMAAJ. live.
11. Book: Georg Trakl. Robin Skelton. Dark Seasons: A Selection of Poems. 1994. Broken Jaw Press. 978-0-921411-22-2. 9. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171246/https://books.google.com/books?id=q5SLUMh-2gcC&pg=PA9. live.
12. Book: Mary R. Reichardt. Catholic Women Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook. 2001. Greenwood Publishing Group. 978-0-313-31147-5. 193. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171247/https://books.google.com/books?id=mpc53LXRvIQC&pg=PA193. live.
13. Book: Peter Ebert. In this Theatre of Man's Life: The Biography of Carl Ebert. 1999. Book Guild. 978-1-85776-347-8. 1. 2021-04-12. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171248/https://books.google.com/books?id=SooIAQAAMAAJ. live.
14. Book: Bruce Kellner. A Gertrude Stein Companion: Content with the Example. 1988. Greenwood Press. 978-0-313-25078-1. 153. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171249/https://books.google.com/books?id=Ui7uAAAAMAAJ. live.
15. Book: Robert B. Hollander. A Textual and Bibliographical Study of the Poems of Edwin Muir. 1962. Columbia University. 176. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171253/https://books.google.com/books?id=HTMoAQAAIAAJ. live.
16. Book: Bernard S. Schlessinger. June H. Schlessinger. The Who's Who of Nobel Prize Winners, 1901-1990. 1991. Oryx Press. 978-0-89774-599-4. 74. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171300/https://books.google.com/books?id=qFRqAAAAMAAJ. live.
17. Book: William Stanley Braithwaite. Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913-29 and Yearbook of American Poetry. 1917. G. Sully. 398. 2021-04-12. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171302/https://books.google.com/books?id=yGIoAAAAYAAJ. live.
18. Book: Donald W. Whisenhunt. Encyclopedia USA: Abbe, Robert-Alexander, Robert Evans. 1997. Academic International Press. 978-0-87569-076-6. 4–5. 2021-04-12. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171305/https://books.google.com/books?id=RIkIAQAAMAAJ. live.
19. Book: Tim Cross. The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets & Playwrights. 1989. University of Iowa Press. 978-0-87745-264-5. 185. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171318/https://books.google.com/books?id=z5FZAAAAMAAJ. live.
20. Book: John Lehmann. Rupert Brooke: His Life and His Legend. 1980. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 978-0-297-77757-1. 20. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171342/https://books.google.com/books?id=5FFaAAAAMAAJ. live.
21. Book: Marcus Garvey. Robert A. Hill. Marcus Garvey Life and Lessons: A Centennial Companion to the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. 17 August 1987. University of California Press. 978-0-520-06265-8. 35. 11 April 2021. 13 April 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171449/https://books.google.com/books?id=47UwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA35. live.
22. Book: John Flower. Historical Dictionary of French Literature. 17 January 2013. Scarecrow Press. 978-0-8108-7945-4. 118. 11 April 2021. 13 April 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171312/https://books.google.com/books?id=Kd6tAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA118. live.
23. Book: New Times. September 1987. Trud.. 28. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171317/https://books.google.com/books?id=afkSAQAAMAAJ. live.
24. Book: Irene Harand. His Struggle (an Answer to Hitler). 1937. Artcraft Press. 240. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171231/https://books.google.com/books?id=tQZ02whlxZoC. live.
25. Laurent, François . 16 . 284; line four . ...until his death on the 11th of February 1887.
26. Book: Frank Northen Magill. Masterplots: Cyclopedia of world authors; seven hundred fifty three novelists, poets, playwrights from the world's fine literature. 1958. Salem Press. 777. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171231/https://books.google.com/books?id=fe_XAAAAMAAJ. live.
27. Encyclopedia: Gray, Rev. John Hamilton . Boase . Frederic . Modern English Biography . 1 . 1892 . http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55059/55059-h/55059-h.htm . . 2021-04-11 . 2021-04-11 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210411150119/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55059/55059-h/55059-h.htm . live .
28. s-HUGH-CEI-1832. Hughes, John (Ceiriog; 1832-1887), poet. David Gwenallt Jones. 2 November 2020.
29. Book: St James Press. Anthony Levi. Guide to French Literature: 1789 to the Present. 1992. St. James Press. 978-1-55862-086-5. 345. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171246/https://books.google.com/books?id=WFkOAQAAMAAJ. live.
30. Book: August Nemo. Dinah Craik. Essential Novelists - Dinah Craik: The Ideals of English Middle-class Life. 1 July 2019. Tacet Books. 978-85-7777-325-1. 3. 11 April 2021. 13 April 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171255/https://books.google.com/books?id=dPqfDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT3. live.
31. Book: Claudia Orange. The Story of a Treaty. 21 December 2015. Bridget Williams Books. 978-1-927131-34-3. 269. 11 April 2021. 13 April 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413181319/https://books.google.com/books?id=vQs9CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA269. live.
32. Book: Emma Lazarus. The Poems of Emma Lazarus. 1888. Houghton, Mifflin. 1. 2021-04-11. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413171422/https://books.google.com/books?id=XL04AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1. live.
33. Book: Claudia L. Bushman. Mormon Sisters: Women in Early Utah. 1997. Utah State University Press. 978-0-87421-233-4. 39. 2020-11-02. 2023-04-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230413181425/https://books.google.com/books?id=XV4qAAAAYAAJ. live.