1877 in literature

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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1877.

Events

• January 24 – Émile Zola's L'Assommoir (sometimes translated as "The Dram Shop"), seventh in his novel sequence Les Rougon-Macquart, is first published in book format a few weeks after its serialisation ends in Le Bien public (Paris). It sells more than 50,000 copies by the end of the year.
• February 24–March 17 – Robert Louis Stevenson's first published work of fiction, the novella "An Old Song", appears anonymously in four episodes in the magazine London.
• July – The ending of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is published in Russkiy vestnik.
• July 15 – "Coppino Law" in Italy makes elementary schools mandatory, free and secular.
• October – Robert Louis Stevenson publishes the short story "A Lodging for the Night" (in Temple Bar magazine), later collected in New Arabian Nights.
• October 15 – Edward L. Wheeler's first story featuring Deadwood Dick, set on the American frontier, opens the first number of Beadle's Half-Dime Library, published in New York.
• November 5 – The Mitchell Library is established in Glasgow.
• November 14 – Henrik Ibsen's first contemporary realist drama The Pillars of Society is premièred at the Odense Teater (having been first published on October 11 in Copenhagen).
• November 24 – Anna Sewell's novel Black Beauty, his grooms and companions: the autobiography of a horse "translated from the equine" is published by Jarrolds of Norwich in England. Her only book, published five months before her death arising from long-standing illness, it rapidly establishes its position as an all-time bestseller, going on to sell fifty million copies and becoming the sixth best seller in the English language.
• December 30 – Swedish dramatist August Strindberg marries his mistress, the divorced actress Siri von Essen, a member of the Finnish-Swedish minor nobility.

New books

Fiction

• R. M. Ballantyne – The Settler and the Savage
• R. D. Blackmore – Erema; or, my father's sin
• Ned Buntline – Buffalo Bill Trails the Devil Head
• Bankim Chatterjee
  • Chandrasekhar
  • Rajani
• Ion Creangă – Harap Alb
• Fyodor Dostoevsky – "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" (Сон смешного человека, short story)
• Maria Fetherstonhaugh – Kilcorran
• Gustave Flaubert – Three Tales
• Henry James – The American
• Jan Neruda – Povídky malostranské (Tales of the Little Quarter)
• Margaret Oliphant – Carità
• William Clark Russell – The Wreck of the Grosvenor
• Theodor Storm – Aquis Submersus
• Anthony Trollope
  • The American Senator
  • Is He Popenjoy?
• Jacint Verdaguer – L'Atlàntida
• Jules Verne
  • Hector Servadac
  • Les Indes noires
• Émile Zola – L'Assommoir

Children and young people

• Louisa May Alcott – Under the Lilacs
• Mary Louisa Molesworth (Mrs. Molesworth) – The Cuckoo Clock
• Anna Sewell – Black Beauty
• Amy Catherine Walton (Mrs. O. F. Walton) – A Peep Behind the Scenes

Drama

• James Albery – The Pink Dominos
• José Echegaray – Saint or Madman? (O locura o santidad)
• W. S. Gilbert – Engaged
• Henrik Ibsen – The Pillars of Society (Samfundets støtter)
• Adolphe L'Arronge – Hasemann's Daughters

Poetry

• Edward Lear – Laughable Lyrics (published December 1876, dated 1877)

Non-fiction

• Henry Spencer Ashbee (as Pisanus Fraxi) – Index Librorum Prohibitorum: being Notes Bio- Biblio- Icono- graphical and Critical on Curious and Uncommon Books
• Helena Blavatsky – Isis Unveiled
• Florence Caddy – Household Organisation
• Amelia Edwards – A Thousand Miles up the Nile
• Henry Miers Elliot (ed. by John Dowson) – The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians
• Kenneth Mackenzie – Royal Masonic Cyclopedia
• Lewis H. Morgan – Ancient Society
• Shen Fu (沈復) – Six Records of a Floating Life (autobiography; first printed edition)

Births

• January 4 – Sextil Pușcariu, Romanian linguist, philologist and journalist (died 1948)
• February 7 – Alfred Williams, English "hammerman poet" (died 1930)
• April 14 – Donald Maxwell, English travel writer and illustrator (died 1936)
• April 29 – Henri Stahl, Romanian historian, short story writer, memoirist and stenographer (died 1942)
• June 11 – Renée Vivien, born Pauline Mary Tarn, English-born French-language Symbolist poet (died 1909)
• July 2 – Hermann Hesse, German-Swiss poet, novelist and painter (died 1962)
• August 27 – Lloyd C. Douglas, American novelist and pastor (died 1951)
• September 1 – Rex Beach, American novelist and playwright (died 1949)
• September 9 – James Agate, English diarist and critic (died 1947)
• November 15 – William Hope Hodgson, English fiction writer (killed in action 1918)

Deaths

• April – Ernst Moritz Ludwig Ettmüller, German philologist (born 1802)
• June 15 – Caroline Norton (née Caroline Sheridan), English poet, pamphleteer and social reformer (born 1808)
• June 17 – John Stevens Cabot Abbott, American historian and pastor (born 1805)
• September 12 – Emily Pepys, English child diarist (born 1833)
• October 10 – Johann Georg Baiter, Swiss philologist and critic (born 1801)
• October 16 – Théodore Barrière, French dramatist (born 1823)
• October 28 – Julia Kavanagh, Irish novelist (born 1824)
• December 12 – José de Alencar, Brazilian novelist (born 1829)