1837 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1837.

Events

• February 19 – The German writer Georg Büchner (born 1813) dies of typhus in Zurich, leaving his play Woyzeck unfinished.
• June 16 – Charles Dickens is introduced to the actor William Macready by John Forster backstage at a rehearsal of Othello.
• July – The English "peasant poet" John Clare first enters an asylum for the insane, at High Beach in Essex.
• September – In Burton's Gentleman's Magazine (Philadelphia), William Evans Burton publishes an early example of the detective story, "The Secret Cell", featuring a London police officer and his wife.
• October – The United States Magazine and Democratic Review is first published.
• October 4 – Andreas Munch's first play, Kong Sverres Ungdom, opens the Christiania Theatre´s new building in Norway.

Uncertain date

• The publishers Little, Brown and Company open their doors in Boston, Massachusetts.

New books

Fiction

• W. Harrison Ainsworth – Crichton
• Honoré de Balzac
  • Cesar Birotteau
  • Lost Illusions, Part I: The Two Poets
• Richard Harris Barham – The Ingoldsby Legends (serialization begins in Bentley's Miscellany)
• Robert Montgomery Bird – Nick of the Woods
• Sara Coleridge – Phantasmion
• Hendrik Conscience – In 't Wonderjaar 1566
• Charles Dickens
  • Oliver Twist (serialization begins in Bentley's Miscellany, February)
  • The Pickwick Papers (serialization completed in November; first book publication)
• Benjamin Disraeli
  • Henrietta Temple
  • Venetia
• Lady Mary Fox – An Account of an Expedition to the Interior of New Holland
• Phillipe-Ignace François Aubert du Gaspé – L'Influence d'un livre
• Jeremias Gotthelf – Bauernspiegel
• Nathaniel Hawthorne – Twice-Told Tales
• Julia Kavanagh – Adele
• Letitia Elizabeth Landon (writing as L.E.L.) – Ethel Churchill, or The Two Brides
• Catharine Maria Sedgwick – Live and Let Live
• Victor Séjour – Le Mulâtre (earliest known work of African American fiction, published in Revue des Colonies, March)
• Mary Shelley – Falkner

Children and young people

• Hans Christian Andersen
  • "The Little Mermaid" (Den lille havfrue) and "The Emperor's New Clothes" (Kejserens nye Klæder) in Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection (Eventyr, fortalte for Børn), Third Booklet, April 7
  • Only a Fiddler
• Georgiana Chatterton – Aunt Dorothy's Tales
• Frederick Marryat – Snarleyyow or the Dog Fiend
• George Ayliffe Poole – The Exile's Return; or a Cat's Journey from Glasgow to Edinburgh
• Robert Southey – "The Story of the Three Bears" (in The Doctor)

Drama

• Joanna Baillie – The Separation
• Manuel Bretón de los Herreros – Muérete y verás
• Robert Browning – Strafford: an historical tragedy
• Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch – Los Amantes de Teruel
• Henrik Hertz – Svend Dyrings Huus
• Alfred de Musset – Un caprice
• Jules-Édouard Alboize de Pujol – L'Idiote

Poetry

• José de Espronceda – El estudiante de Salamanca
• Alphonse de Lamartine – Chute d'un ange
• Alexander Pushkin – The Bronze Horseman (Медный всадник)
• See also 1837 in poetry

Non-fiction

• Charles Babbage – Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation
• Charles Ball – Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, A Black Man
• Bernard Bolzano – Wissenschaftslehre (Theory of Science)
• Thomas Carlyle – The French Revolution: A History
• Washington Irving – The Adventures of Captain Bonneville
• Harriet Martineau – Society in America
• William H. Prescott – The History of Ferdinand and Isabella
• Ferenc Pulszky – Aus dem Tagebuch eines in Grossbritannien reisenden Ungarns (From the Diary of a Hungarian Travelling in Britain)
• Martin Tupper – Proverbial Philosophy
• Andrew Ure – A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures and Mines
• Adelbert von Chamisso – Über die Hawaiische Sprache (On the Hawaiian Language)

Births

• January 16 – Ellen Russell Emerson, American author and ethnologist (died 1907)
• January 23 – Agnes Maule Machar, Canadian novelist (died 1927)
• February 13 – Emily St. John Bouton, American author, editor, and educator (died 1927)
• February 24 – Rosalía de Castro, Spanish Galician poet and writer (died 1885)
• March 1
  • Ion Creangă, Romanian raconteur (died 1889)
  • William Dean Howells, American realist novelist (died 1920)
• March 6 – Sully Prudhomme, French poet (died 1907)
• April 1 – Jorge Isaacs (Ferrer), Colombian writer, politician and explorer (died 1895)
• April 5 – Algernon Charles Swinburne, English poet (died 1909)
• April 7 – Lou Singletary Bedford, American author and editor (unknown year of death)
• June 9 – Anne Thackeray Ritchie, English novelist and essayist (died 1919)
• June 28 – Petre P. Carp, Romanian politician, polemicist, and translator (died 1919)
• July 13 – Mary Allen West, American writer, editor, and philanthropist (died 1892)
• August 24 – Bertha Jane Grundy, English novelist (died 1912)
• October 15 – Leo Königsberger, German historian of science (died 1921)
• October 21 – Mary Alice Fonda, American music critic and editor (died 1897)
• December 4 – Angelia Thurston Newman, American poet, author, and editor (died 1910)
• December 10 – Edward Eggleston, American novelist and historian (died 1902)
• December 11 – Esther Saville Allen, American author (died 1913)
• December 17 – Celia Logan, American actress and playwright (died 1904)

Uncertain dates

• Florence Caddy (née Tompson), English non-fiction writer (died 1923)
• Anna Augusta Truitt, American essayist, philanthropist, and reformer (died 1920)

Deaths

• January 29 – Alexander Pushkin, Russian poet (killed in duel, born 1799)
• February 12 – Ludwig Börne, German Jewish political writer and satirist (born 1786)
• March 9 – Alexandru Hrisoverghi, Moldavian writer and translator (tabes dorsalis, born 1811)
• March 15 – Lukijan Mušicki, Serbian poet (born 1777)
• June 12 – Carl Friedrich Ernst Frommann, German bookseller (born 1765)
• June 14 – Giacomo Leopardi, Italian poet (cholera, born 1798)
• September 21 – Georg Ludolf Dissen, German philologist (born 1784)
• October 19 – Hendrik Doeff, Dutch travel writer (born 1764)

In literature

• Jules Verne's novel Family Without a Name (Famille-sans-nom, 1889) is set during the Lower Canada Rebellion opening this year.