1872 in literature

List of years in literature       (table)
... 1862 .  1863 .  1864 .  1865  . 1866  . 1867  . 1868 ... 1869 1870 1871 -1872- 1873 1874 1875 ... 1876 .  1877 .  1878 .  1879  . 1880  . 1881  . 1882 ...      In poetry: 1869 1870 1871 -1872- 1873 1874 1875
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The year 1872 in literature involved some significant literary events and new works.

Events

• July 7 - Paul Verlaine abandons his family to go to London with Arthur Rimbaud.
• December 3 - George Smith presents the first translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh to a meeting of the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London.
• The Federation of Madrid expels all signatories of a subversive article in La Emancipación (including Paul Lafargue).
• George MacDonald goes on a lecture tour of the United States.
• Rose la Touche rejects John Ruskin for the last time.
• Lafcadio Hearn becomes a reporter on the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer.

New books

• Machado de Assis - Ressurreição
• R. D. Blackmore - The Maid of Sker
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon - To the Bitter End
• Rhoda Broughton
  • Good-bye, Sweetheart!
  • Poor Pretty Bobby
• Samuel Butler -Erewhon
• Edward George Bulwer-Lytton - The Parisians
• Wilkie Collins - Poor Miss Finch
• Mary Coolidge - What Katy Did
• Alphonse Daudet - Tartarin de Tarascon
• Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Possessed
• Alexandre Dumas, père - Création et Rédemption
• Thomas Hardy - Under the Greenwood Tree
• Mór Jókai
  • The Dark Diamonds
  • The Man with the Golden Touch
• Sheridan Le Fanu -
  • Carmilla
  • In a Glass Darkly
• Margaret Oliphant - At His Gates
• Bayard Taylor - Beauty and The Beast, and Tales of Home
• Anthony Trollope - The Golden Lion of Granpere
• Jules Verne
  • The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa
  • The Fur Country
• Emile Zola - La Curée

New drama

• Prosper Mérimée - La Chambre bleue (published posthumously)
• August Strindberg - Master Olof
• Ivan Turgenev - A Month in the Country (first performed).

Non-fiction

• Friedrich Nietzsche - The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik)
• Henry Wilson - History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, vols. 1 & 2

Births

• January 31 - Zane Grey, Western novelist (died 1939)
• May 31 - Heath Robinson, British cartoonist/illustrator (died 1944)
• June 27 - Paul Laurence Dunbar, African-American poet, novelist, and playwright (died 1906)
• August 24 - Max Beerbohm, essayist and parodist (died 1956)

Deaths

• January 21 - Franz Grillparzer, Austrian poet and dramatist (born 1791)
• March 4 - Johannes Carsten Hauch, Danish poet (born 1790)
• March 10 - Giuseppe Mazzini, Italian philosopher, journalist and politician (born 1805)
• April 1 - Frederick Maurice, theologian (born 1805)
• April 20 - Ljudevit Gaj, Croatian linguist and journalist (born 1809)
• May 13 - Moritz Hartmann, German poet (born 1821)
• June 1 - Charles Lever, novelist (born 1806)
• August 8 - Heinrich Abeken, German theologian (born 1809)
• October 21 - Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné, Swiss historian (born 1794)
• November 16 - William Gilham, military writer (born 1818)
• December 23 - Théophile Gautier, poet, novelist (born 1811)