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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1855.

Events

  • January – Samuel Orchart Beeton's weekly The Boys' Own Magazine, "an illustrated journal of fact, fiction, history and adventure", begins publication in London.
  • January 5 – Anthony Trollope's novel The Warden, the first of his Chronicles of Barsetshire, is published in London by Longman as he begins to write the second, Barchester Towers.
  • February 25 – The comedy De Scholtschäin, by Edmond de la Fontaine writing as Dicks, becomes the first play to be performed in the language of Luxembourg.
  • June 29 – The Daily Telegraph newspaper begins publication in London.
  • July 4 – Walt Whitman's first edition of his book of poems titled Leaves of Grass is published in Brooklyn, New York.
  • September 27 – Alfred Tennyson reads from his new book Maud and other poems at a social gathering in the home of Robert and Elizabeth Browning in London. Dante Gabriel Rossetti makes a sketch of him doing so.
  • October – Victor Hugo moves to Hauteville House, Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, accompanied by his mistress, Juliette Drouet.
  • December
  • Charles Dickens publishes the first instalment of Little Dorrit, which continues to appear into 1857.
  • Thomas Babington Macaulay's best-selling History of England in four volumes is completed.
  • unknown dates
  • Alexander Afanasyev begins publication of his collection of Narodnye russkie skazki [National Russian Tales].
  • John Camden Hotten opens a bookselling business in London, which is the origin of the publisher Chatto & Windus.
  • Faris al-Shidyaq publishes the metafiction Sâq 'ala al-sâq (Leg over Leg), the first modern Arabic novel, in Paris.
  • The first Luxembourg novel in French, Marc Bruno, profil d'artiste, is published shortly after the death of its author, Félix Thyes (born 1830).
  • Belarusian writer Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkyevich publishes «Гапон» (Hapon) in the Russian Empire, the first poem written wholly in modern Belarusian.

New books

Fiction

  • Gheorghe Asachi – Ziua din urmă a municipiului Iașenilor (The Last Day of Iași Municipality)
  • Dimitrie Bolintineanu – Manoil
  • Cuthbert Bede (pseudonym) – The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green (other volumes, 1856 and 1857)
  • Gustav Freytag – Debit and Credit (Soll und Haben)
  • Elizabeth Gaskell – North and South
  • James Grant – The Yellow Frigate (also entitled The Three Sisters)
  • Mary Virginia Hawes – The Hidden Path
  • Caroline Lee Hentz – Robert Graham
  • Paul Heyse – "L'Arrabbiata" (The Fury, short story)
  • Washington Irving – Wolfert's Roost
  • Gottfried Keller – Green Henry (Der grüne Heinrich)
  • Charles Kingsley – Westward Ho!
  • Herman Melville
  • Israel Potter
  • The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids
  • Benito Cereno
  • Gérard de Nerval – Aurelia
  • Giovanni Ruffini – Doctor Antonio
  • Ann Sophia Stephens – The Old Homestead
  • William Makepeace Thackeray – The Newcomes
  • Félix Thyes – Marc Bruno, profil d'artiste
  • Anthony Trollope – The Warden (first in the Chronicles of Barchester series of six books)

Children

  • Božena Němcová – The Grandmother

Drama

  • Émile Augier – Le Mariage d'Olympe
  • Dicks
  • De Scholtschäin
  • D'Mumm Sèiss
  • Léon Gozlan – Le Gâteau des reines
  • Henrik Ibsen – The Feast at Solhaug
  • Andreas Munch – En Aften paa Giske
  • Watts Phillips – Joseph Chavigny
  • Ivan Turgenev – A Month in the Country (published as Two Women)

Poetry

  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Song of Hiawatha
  • Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass

Non-fiction

  • David Brewster – Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton
  • John Brown – Slave Life in Georgia
  • Pedro Carolino – O novo guia da conversação em portuguez e inglez (translated as English as She is Spoke)
  • Frederick Douglass – "My Bondage and My Freedom"
  • Washington Irving – The Life of George Washington, Volumes 1 and 2
  • George Sand – Histoire de ma vie (The Story of My Life)
  • William Smith – Latin–English Dictionary based upon the works of Forcellini and Freund
  • Leo Tolstoy – Sevastopol Sketches (Севастопольские рассказы, Sevastopolskiye rasskazy)
  • Alfred Russel Wallace – "On the Law Which has Regulated the Introduction of Species" (in Annals and Magazine of Natural History, September)

Births

  • February 21 – Elizabeth Robins Pennell, American biographer and critic based in London (died 1936)
  • April 4 – Manonmaniam Sundaram Pillai, Indian dramatist (died 1897)
  • April 27 – Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, Irish novelist (died 1897)
  • May 1 – Marie Corelli (Mary Mackay), English novelist (died 1924)
  • May 14 – Eduard von Keyserling, Baltic German fiction writer and dramatist (died 1918)
  • May 21 – Emile Verhaeren, Belgian Symbolist poet writing in French (died 1916)
  • May 24 – Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, English dramatist (died 1934)
  • July 7 – Ludwig Ganghofer, German novelist (died 1920)
  • July 19 – Alexander Ertel, Russian novelist and short story writer (died 1908)
  • August 7 – Stanley J. Weyman, English novelist (died 1928)
  • September 12 – William Sharp, Scottish poet and biographer (died 1905)
  • September 22 – Alice Zimmern, English writer, translator and suffragist (died 1939)
  • October 26 – Jessie Wilson Manning, American author and lecturer (died 1947)
  • October 30 – Pyotr Gnedich, Russian writer and poet (died 1925)
  • November 4 – William Ritchie Sorley, Scottish philosopher (died 1935)
  • December 15 – Maurice Bouchor, French poet and sculptor (died 1929)
  • December 28 – Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, Uruguayan poet (died 1931)
  • unknown date
  • Solomon Cleaver, Canadian story teller, novelist and pastor (died 1939)
  • Florence Huntley, American journalist, editor, humorist and occult author (died 1912)

Deaths

  • January 3 – János Majláth, Hungarian poet and historian (born 1786)
  • January 10 – Mary Russell Mitford, English dramatist and novelist (born 1787)
  • January 25 – Dorothy Wordsworth, English poet and diarist (born 1771)
  • January 26 – Gérard de Nerval (Gérard Labrunie), French poet and essayist (suicide, born 1808)
  • February 4 – Gottfried Christian Friedrich Lücke, German theologian (born 1791)
  • March 31 – Charlotte Brontë, English novelist and poet (born 1816)
  • June 29 – Delphine de Girardin, French poet and novelist (born 1804)
  • July 12 – Karl Spindler, German novelist, (born 1796)
  • September 4 – Emma Tatham, English poet (born 1829)
  • September 27 – John Adamson, English antiquary and scholar of Portuguese (born 1787)
  • November 11 – Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher (born 1813)
  • November 19 – Mihály Vörösmarty, Hungarian poet and dramatist (born 1800)
  • November 26 – Adam Mickiewicz, Poland's national poet (cholera, born 1798)
  • December 3 – Robert Montgomery, English poet (born 1807)
  • unknown date – Sunthorn Phu, Thai poet (born 1786)

References