1875 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1875.

Events

January 16 – Henry James Byron's comedy Our Boys opens at the Vaudeville Theatre in London. It becomes the world's longest-running play so far, with 1,362 performances up to April 1879.^[1] It also opens this year in New York, at the New Fifth Avenue Theatre.
February/March – Arthur Rimbaud meets Paul Verlaine in Stuttgart, Germany, after Verlaine's release from prison, and gives him the manuscript of his poems Illuminations. Rimbaud stops writing literature entirely at the age of 20.
February 12 – Robert Louis Stevenson is introduced (by Leslie Stephen) to fellow writer W. E. Henley, at the time (August 1873–April 1875) a patient of surgeon Joseph Lister in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. He will be the model for Long John Silver. Henley also meets his future wife while in hospital and writes the poems collected as In Hospital.^[2]
October 1 – American poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe is reburied in Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, Baltimore, Maryland, with a larger memorial marker. Controversy arises years later as to whether the correct body was exhumed.
December 5–6 – The German emigrant ship SS Deutschland runs aground in the English Channel, causing the death of 157 passengers and crew and inspiring Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem The Wreck of the Deutschland. This introduces his innovative sprung rhythm and metre, but is rejected for publication in 1876. It will not appear finally until 1918.

Uncertain dates

The Flammarion publishing firm is founded in Paris, France.
Isaac K. Funk establishes the U.S. publisher I. K. Funk & Company, predecessor of Funk & Wagnells.
Caroline M. Hewins begins a children's library in Hartford, Connecticut.
Nebelspalter is founded by Jean Nötzli of Zürich (Switzerland) as an "illustrated humorous political weekly".

W. Harrison Ainsworth – The Goldsmith's Wife
R. D. Blackmore – Alice Lorraine
Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Hostages to Fortune
Wilkie Collins – The Law and the Lady
Alphonse Daudet – Contes du Lundi
Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Raw Youth
Bonifaciu Florescu – Etiam contra omnes (Even against All)
Benito Pérez Galdós – Saragossa
William Dean Howells – A Foregone Conclusion
Henry James – Roderick Hudson
Julia Kavanagh – John Dorrien
Helen Mathers – Comin' thro' the Rye^[3]
Karl May – Old Firehand
George Meredith – Beauchamp's Career
José Maria de Eça de Queiroz – O Crime do Padre Amaro (The Crime of Father Amaro: Scenes of Religious Life)
Anthony Trollope – The Way We Live Now (serial publication ends in September; publication in two book volumes in June)
Jules Verne – The Survivors of the Chancellor (Le Chancellor: Journal du passager J.-R. Kazallon)
Edmund Yates – Two, by Tricks
Charlotte Mary Yonge – The Brother's Wife
Émile Zola – La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret (The Sin of Father Mouret)

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. 1
Swami Dayanand – Satyarth Prakash
Bartolomé de las Casas (died 1566) – History of the Indies (written 1527–61)
Edward Dowden – Shakspere: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art
Mary Baker Eddy – Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
Warren Felt Evans – Soul and Body
Francis Galton – "The History of Twins, as a criterion of the relative powers of nature and nurture" (Fraser's Magazine, vol. 12, pp. 566–76)
Mark Pattison – Isaac Casaubon, 1559–1614
Baron Jules Dupotet de Sennevoy – La Magie dévoilée
Lysander Spooner – Vices Are Not Crimes, A Vindication of Moral Liberty
John Addington Symonds
- The Age of the Despots (first volume of Renaissance in Italy)
- Picturesque Europe

January 4 – William Williams (Crwys), Welsh poet (died 1968)
February 8 – Valentine O'Hara, Irish author and authority on Russia and Baltic (died 1945)
March 30 – Edmund Clerihew Bentley, English writer (died 1956)
April 1 – Edgar Wallace (Richard Horatio Edgar), English thriller writer (died 1932)
April 9 – Jacques Futrelle, American author (died in Titanic 1912)
April 18
- Oskar Ernst Bernhardt (Abdruschin), German author (died 1941)
- Katherine Thurston (Katherine Cecil Madden), Irish novelist (died 1911)
June 6 – Thomas Mann, German novelist and Nobel Prize winner (died 1955)
June 24 – Forrest Reid, Irish novelist and literary critic (died 1947)
July 9 – W. W. Greg, English literary scholar (died 1959)
July 19 – Alice Dunbar Nelson African American poet, journalist and political activist of the Harlem Renaissance (died 1935)
July 26 – Antonio Machado, Spanish poet (died 1939)
August 21 – Winnifred Eaton, Canadian author (died 1954)
August 26 – John Buchan, Scottish novelist and diplomat (died 1940)
September 1 – Edgar Rice Burroughs, American popular novelist (died 1950)
October 13 – Armand Praviel, French poet, novelist, and journalist (died 1944)
October – George Ranetti, Romanian humorist and playwright (died 1928)
December 4 – Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet (died 1926)

Uncertain date

January 3 – Pierre Larousse, French grammarian and lexicographer (born 1817)
January 23 – Charles Kingsley, English novelist and cleric (born 1819)
March 1 – Tristan Corbière, French poet (born 1845)
March 25 – Louis Amédée Achard, French novelist (born 1814)
June 2 – Józef Kremer, Polish philosopher (born 1806)
June 4 – Eduard Mörike, German poet (born 1804)
June 18 – António Feliciano de Castilho, Portuguese poet and author (born 1800)
August 4 – Hans Christian Andersen, Danish fairy-tale writer (born 1805)
August 12 – János Kardos, Slovenian Evangelical priest, teacher, and writer (born 1801)
August 19 – Robert Elis (Cynddelw), Welsh writer (born 1812)
October 10 – Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Russian poet, novelist and dramatist (born 1817)
October 24 – Jacques Paul Migne, French priest, theologian, and publisher (born 1800)
November 17 – Hilario Ascasubi, Argentine poet (born 1807)

Uncertain date

^ Michael R. Booth, Review of plays by H. J. Byron including Our Boys in Modern Language Review, 82:3, pp. 716–717 (July 1987: Modern Humanities Research Association).
^ Mehew, Ernest (2004). "Henley, William Ernest (1849–1903)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33817. Retrieved 2014-05-29. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
^ Leavis, Q. D. (1965). Fiction and the Reading Public (2nd ed.). London: Chatto & Windus.