This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1879.
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- January 1 – Benjamin Henry Blackwell opens the first Blackwell's bookshop, in Oxford.[1]
- January 11 – During construction of an extension to Birmingham Central Library in England, a fire destroys 50,000 books and the original manuscript of the Coventry Mystery Plays (including the "Coventry Carol").
- September – The English critic and poet Theodore Watts-Dunton takes the alcoholic poet Algernon Charles Swinburne into permanent care at his Putney home.[2]
- September 6 – Arthur Conan Doyle has his first story, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", published anonymously in Chambers's Journal.
- October 10 – The collected works of the American poet Ethel Lynn Beers are published as All Quiet Along The Potomac and Other Poems. The title poem is her best-known work. On the following day she dies aged 52 at Orange, New Jersey.
- December – Walter Besant persuades Thomas Hardy to become a founder-member of The Rabelais Club in London, which holds a literary dinner once every two months. Other members include the novelists Henry James, Bret Harte, Oliver Wendell Holmes and George du Maurier.[3]
- December 21 – The first production of Henrik Ibsen's controversial "modern drama" A Doll's House takes place at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen, after publication there on December 4.
- unknown dates
Children and young people
Drama
We must come to a final settlement, Torvald. During eight whole years. . . we have never exchanged one serious word about serious things.
Nora, in Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879)
- January 1 – E. M. Forster, English novelist and critic (died 1970)
- January 26 – Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, German-born English historian and political scientist (died 1957)
- February 2 – I. C. Vissarion, Romanian novelist, dramatist, poet and science writer (died 1951)
- February 13 – Sarojini Naidu (née Chattopadhyay), Indian poet and politician (died 1949)
- February 17 – Dorothy Canfield Fisher, American activist and novelist (died 1958)
- March 9 – Agnes Miegel, German author, journalist and poet (died 1964)
- March 14 – Harold Monro, English poet and promoter of poetry (died 1932)
- March 28 – Terence MacSwiney, Irish playwright, poet and politician (died on hunger strike 1920)
- April 14 – James Branch Cabell, American novelist (died 1958)
- May 8 – Ioan C. Filitti, Romanian historian, political theorist and essayist (died 1945)
- June 4 – Percy Lubbock, English essayist, critic and biographer (died 1965)
- July 19 – Ferenc Móra, Hungarian children's writer and editor (died 1934)
- July 20 – Claude Scudamore Jarvis, English writer, Arabist and naturalist (died 1953)
- August 19 – Lascăr Vorel, Romanian visual artist and short story writer (died 1918)
- September 19 – Louis Joseph Vance, American novelist (died 1933)
- October 2 – Wallace Stevens, American poet (died 1955)
- November 19 – Mait Metsanurk, Estonian author and playwright (died 1957)
- December 3 – Kafū Nagai (永井 荷風), Japanese novelist (died 1959)
- December 24 – Émile Nelligan, French Canadian poet (died 1941)[6]
- January 16 – Octave Crémazie, "the father of French Canadian poetry" (born 1827)
- February 28 – Hortense Allart, French feminist novelist (born 1801)[7]
- March 3
- March 9 – Mark Prager Lindo, Dutch historian (born 1819)
- March 19 – Claire Clairmont, English-born diarist and correspondent (born 1798)[8]
- April 8 – Anthony Panizzi, Italian-born English librarian (born 1797)
- April 21 – George Hadfield, English radical author and politician (born 1787)
- April 25 – Charles Tennyson Turner, English poet (born 1808)
- April 30 – Sarah Josepha Hale, American novelist and poet (born 1788)[9]
- June 1 – Louisa Caroline Huggins Tuthill, American children's author (born 1799)[10]
- June 3 – Frances Ridley Havergal, English religious poet (born 1836)[11]
- June 19 – George W. M. Reynolds, English popular novelist (born 1814)
- July 4 – Sarah Dorsey, American novelist and historian (born 1829)
- July 30 – Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, Norwegian poet and journalist (born 1818)
- September 20 – Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon, Canadian novelist and poet (born 1829)
- September 23 – Francis Kilvert, English diarist and cleric (born 1840)
- October 11 – Ethel Lynn Beers, American poet (born 1827)
- October 13 – Henry Charles Carey, American economist (born 1793)
- October 28 – Marie Roch Louis Reybaud, French political economist (born 1799)
- October 31
- November 23 – Louisa Susannah Cheves McCord, American political essayist (born 1810)[12]
- December 27 – William Hepworth Dixon, English historian, traveller and journal editor (born 1821)[13]
Leavis, Q. D. (1965). Fiction and the Reading Public (2nd ed.). London: Chatto & Windus.
Ehrlich, Eugene and Gorton Carruth. The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982: 205. ISBN 0-19-503186-5
Humphreys, Maggie (1997). Dictionary of composers for the Church in Great Britain and Ireland. London Herndon, VA: Mansell. p. 152. ISBN 9780720123302.
Fraser, Jessie Melville (1920). Bulletin. Vol. 91 (Public domain ed.). The University of South Carolina. p. 1.