1839 in literature

List of years in literature (table)
	... 1829 . 1830 . 1831 . 1832 . 1833 . 1834 . 1835 ...; 1836 1837 1838 -1839- 1840 1841 1842; ... 1843 . 1844 . 1845 . 1846 . 1847 . 1848 . 1849 ... In poetry: 1836 1837 1838 -1839- 1840 1841 1842
	Art . Archaeology . Architecture . Literature . Music . Science +...

The year 1839 in literature involved some significant new books.

[edit] Events

Washington Irving begins contributing regularly to The Knickerbocker, and will publish thirty new pieces in the magazine — including "The Creole Village," in which he will coin the phrase "the almighty dollar" — through March 1841.
John Roberton's pseudo-medical work On Diseases of the Generative System (1811) is declared to be indecent and becomes the centre of the important British constitutional case of Stockdale v. Hansard.

January 7 - Ouida, English novelist (died 1908)
February 1 - James Herne, American dramatist (died 1901)
February 22 - Francis Pharcellus Church, American editor and publisher (died 1906)
March 16 - Sully Prudhomme, French poet and essayist, winner of the first Nobel Prize in Literature (died 1907)
April 18 - Henry Kendall, Australian poet (died 1882)
June 21 - Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Brazilian poet and novelist (died 1908)
August 4 - Walter Pater, English writer (died 1894)
August 9 - Gaston Paris, French writer and scholar (died 1903)
September 10 - Charles Sanders Peirce, American philosopher (died 1914)
November 29 - Ludwig Anzengruber, Austrian dramatist (died 1889)