February 24 – Nikolai Gogol burns some of his manuscripts, including most of the second part of Dead Souls, telling acquaintances the action is a practical joke played on him by the Devil. He takes to his bed and dies a few days later.
March – Serialization of Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House begins; the September installment introduces the first detective in an English novel.[1]
April 24 – Wilkie Collins' first contribution to Household Words, "The traveller's story of a terribly strange bed", is an early example of crime fiction involving the (Paris) police.[5]
Leo Tolstoy's debut novel, Childhood («Детство», Detstvo), is published under the initials L. N. in this month's issue of the Saint Petersburg literary journal Sovremennik.
Hanah Mullens' Karuna O Phulmonir Bibaran is the first Bengali novel.[8] The first publication of Bengali plays also takes place this year: C. C. Gupta's Kirtivilas and Taracharan Sikdar's Bhadrarjun.
Leopold von Ranke – Französische Geschichte, vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (History of France, Principally in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; publication begins)
^Smith, Gail K. (2001). "The Sentimental Novel: The Example of Harriet Beecher Stowe". In Bauer, Dale M.; Gould, Philip (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Women's Writing. Cambridge University Press. p. 221. ISBN0521660033.
