1876 in literature

	… 1866; 1867; 1868; 1869; 1870; 1871; 1872; ; 1873; 1874; 1875; 1876; 1877; 1878; 1879; ; 1880; 1881; 1882; 1883; 1884; 1885; 1886 …;
	In poetry 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879
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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1876.

Events

February 24 – Premiere of first stage production of the verse-play Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (published 1867) with incidental music by Edvard Grieg, in Christiania, Norway.
February/March – The Harvard Lampoon humor magazine is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
March 14 – Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma established in Rome.
March – American librarian Melvil Dewey first publishes the Dewey Decimal Classification system.^[1]
April – Émile Zola's L'Assommoir begins serialization in Le Bien public. Its low-life themes cause this to be suspended after 6 episodes and serialization resumes in July in La République des lettres.
July – William Heffer takes over his first bookshop in Cambridge (England), primarily as a stationer at this date.^[2]
December – The first United States edition of Mark Twain's first individual extended work of fiction, the Bildungsroman The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, illustrated by True Williams, is published by the American Publishing Company; an authorised un-illustrated British edition has appeared in early June from Chatto & Windus in London (with the first review appearing on June 24 in a British magazine) and pirated editions have already appeared in Canada and Germany.
Discovery of the first (1594) edition of Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II.^[3]
Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord opened in Paris.

January 4 – Paola Drigo, Italian writer (died 1938)
January 12 – Jack London, American writer (died 1916)
February 16 – G. M. Trevelyan, English historian (died 1962)
March 4 – Léon-Paul Fargue, French poet (died 1947)
April 13 – Sidney Bradshaw Fay American historian (died 1967)
April 22 – Ole Edvart Rolvaag, Norwegian-American writer (died 1931)
May 10 – Ivan Cankar, Slovene dramatist and poet (died 1918)
June 2 – Konstantin Trenyov, Russian dramatist (died 1945)
July 1 – Susan Glaspell, American playwright and novelist (died 1948)
July 12 – Max Jacob, French poet (died 1944)
September 13 – Sherwood Anderson, American novelist (died 1941)
October 31 – Natalie Clifford Barney, American writer and patron (died 1972)
November 1 – Anne de Noailles, French writer (died 1933)
December 22 – Thomas Mofolo, Sotho novelist (died 1948)
Unknown date – Mary Frances Dowdall, English novelist and non-fiction writer (died 1939)

January 7 – Juste Olivier, Swiss poet (born 1807)
January 19 – George Julius Poulett Scrope, English political economist (born 1797)
February 3 – Gino Capponi, Italian historian (born 1792)
February 6 – Georgiana Chatterton, English novelist and travel writer (born 1806)
February 27 – Afanasy Shchapov, Russian historian (born 1830)
March 2 – Johannes Falke, German historian (born 1823)
May 7 – William Buell Sprague, American biographer (born 1795)
May 24 – Henry Kingsley, English novelist (born 1830)
May 26 – František Palacký, Czech historian (born 1798)
June 8 – George Sand, French novelist (born 1804)
June 14 – Catherine Crowe, English novelist and children's writer (born 1803)
June 27 – Harriet Martineau, English philosopher and social theorist (born 1802)
July 14 – James Henry, Irish poet and scholar (born 1798)
July 24 – John William Kaye, English military historian (born 1814)
July 25 – Robert Caesar Childers, French-born English orientalist (born 1838)
October 7 – Georg Heinrich Pertz, German historian (born 1795)
November 24 – Maria Francesca Rossetti, English critic and translator (born 1827)
November 28 – Chandos Wren-Hoskyns, English agricultural writer and landowner (born 1812)
December 30 – Christian Winther, Danish lyric poet (born 1796)
Unknown date
- Joshua Hobson, English pamphleteer (born 1810)
- Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai, Tamil scholar and poet (born 1815)

The following novels are set during this year
- Pierre Loti – Aziyadé (1879)
- Gore Vidal – 1876 (1976)
- Boris Akunin – The Winter Queen (Азазель, Azazel', 1998)
- M. K. Hobson – The Native Star (2010)

^ Dewey, Melvil (1876). A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library. OCLC 78870163. Retrieved 2012-07-31.
^ Bounford, Julie E. (2016). This Book is About Heffers, The Bookshop That is Known All Over the World. Gottahavebooks. ISBN 9780993378133.
^ The Atheneum, No. 2562, 2 December 1876.
^ Leavis, Q. D. (1965). Fiction and the Reading Public (2nd ed.). London: Chatto & Windus.
^ ^a ^b Everett, Jason M., ed. (2006). "1876". The People's Chronology. Thomson Gale.
^ "A Chronology of Edward Lear's Life". Edward Lear Home Page. nonsenselit.org. 2012-08-10. Retrieved 2017-02-24.