1858 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1858.

Events

January 3 – The English critic John Ruskin first meets at her London home 10-year-old Rose La Touche, who becomes his muse.^[1]
April 29 – Charles Dickens embarks on his first professional tour giving readings from his works. This will involve 129 appearances in 49 towns throughout the British Isles.^[2]
May 15 – The third Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, designed by Edward Middleton Barry, opens, having been rebuilt after its second destruction by fire in 1856.
June 18 – Henrik Ibsen marries Suzannah Thoresen, in the same year that he becomes creative director of Oslo's National Theater.
September – Charles Baudelaire's study on Théophile Gautier is published in Revue contemporaine.
October 15 – The farce Our American Cousin by the English playwright Tom Taylor is first performed at Laura Keene's Theatre in New York City, with the American Joe Jefferson in the title rôle and the English actor Edward Askew Sothern as Lord Dundreary.

Uncertain dates

Khachatur Abovian's historical novel Wounds of Armenia: Lamentation of a Patriot (Վերք Հայաստանի. ողբ հայրենասերի, Verk Hayastani), written in the Yerevan dialect in 1841, appears in Tiflis a decade after the author's presumed death; it is seen as the first Armenian novel^[3] and the first modern Eastern Armenian literary work.^[4]^[5]

William Harrison Ainsworth – The Life and Adventures of Mervyn Clitheroe
Élie Berthet – La Bête du Gévaudan
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson – Arne
Robert Barnabas Brough – The Life of Sir John Falstaff (novel)
George Eliot – Scenes of Clerical Life (January; first published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine the previous year as three short stories)
Octave Feuillet – Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre (Novel of a poor young man)
Paul Féval – Le Bossu (The hunchback)
Ernest-Aimé Feydeau – Fanny
Elizabeth Gaskell – My Lady Ludlow
Ivan Goncharov – Frigate "Pallada" («Фрегат "Паллада"»)
Catherine Gore – Heckington
Bernardo Guimarães – Inspirações da Tarde
Louise de Broglie, Countess d'Haussonville – Robert Emuret
George MacDonald – Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
Abraham Mapu – Ayit Tzavua (Hypocrite Eagle)
Aleksey Pisemsky
- Boyarschina
- One Thousand Souls
Thomas Mayne Reid – Oceola
John Hovey Robinson – Nick Whiffles or The Trapper Guide. A Tale of the North West
Catharine Maria Sedgwick – Memoir of Joseph Curtis
Anthony Trollope – Doctor Thorne

Thomas Holley Chivers – The Sons of Usna: a Tragic Apotheosis in Five Acts (published)
John Oxenford – Porter's Knot
Tom Taylor – Our American Cousin

John Brown – Horas Subsecivae (Leisure Hours, three volumes)
Gray's Anatomy, 1st edition
William Carew Hazlitt – The History of the Origin and Rise of the Republic of Venice
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. – The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table
William H. Prescott – History of Philip II, volume 3
Charles Piazzi Smyth – Teneriffe: An Astronomer's Experiment (illustrated by stereoscopic photographs)
Alfred Russel Wallace – On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type

January 22 – Beatrice Webb (Beatrice Potter), English political writer (died 1943)
January 24 – Constance Naden, English poet and philosopher (died 1889)
March 12 – Adolph Ochs, American newspaper publisher (died 1935)
April 15 – Émile Durkheim, French sociologist (died 1917)
June 20 – Charles W. Chesnutt, American writer (died 1932)
June 25 – Georges Courteline, French dramatist and novelist (died 1929)
July 24 – Wolfgang Kapp, Prussian journalist (died 1922)
August 2 – William Watson, English poet (died 1935)
August 3 – Paul Sabatier, French religious writer (died 1928)
August 15 – E. Nesbit, English children's author (died 1924)^[6]
November 20 – Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish writer (died 1940)^[7]
December 26 – Owen Morgan Edwards, Welsh historian and educator (died 1920)

^ Hewison, Robert (2004). "Ruskin, John (1819–1900)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/24291. Retrieved 2014-03-19.(subscription or UK public library membership required)
^ Hobsbaum, Philip (1998) [1972]. A Reader's Guide to Charles Dickens. Syracuse University Press. p. https://archive.org/details/readersguidetoch00hobs/page/270]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0475-4. Retrieved 2012-04-20.
^ Hacikyan, Agop Jack; Basmajian, Gabriel; Franchuk, Edward S.; Ouzounian, Nourhan (2005). The Heritage of Armenian Literature: From the eighteenth century to modern times. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. p. 213. ISBN 9780814332214.
^ Nichanian, Marc (2002). Writers of Disaster: Armenian Literature in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Gomidas Institute. p. 87. ISBN 9781903656099.
^ Kazanjian, David (2003). Loss: The Politics of Mourning. Los Angeles: University of California Press. p. 144. ISBN 9780520232365.
^ "E. Nesbit | English author". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 31 March 2019.
^ "Selma Lagerlöf | Swedish author". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 24 April 2020.