The year 1874 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• Arthur William Beckett joins the staff of Punch.
• Johan Nicolai Madvig loses his sight, forcing him to give up most of his research and writing.
• Arthur Rimbaud goes to London with Germain Nouveau.
• Alexandre Dumas, fils, is elected to the Acad mie fran aise.

New books

• Thomas Bailey Aldrich - Prudence Palfrey
• Jos de Alencar - Ubirajara
• Jules Am d e Barbey d'Aurevilly - Les Diaboliques
• R M Ballantyne -The Pirate City
• Ambrose Bierce - Cobwebs from an Empty Skull
• Andrew Blair - Annals of the Twenty-Ninth Century
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Lost For Love
• William Wells Brown - The Rising Sun
• Wilkie Collins - The Frozen Deep and Other Stories
• Alphonse Daudet - Fromont jeune et Risler a n
• Amelia Edwards - A Night on the Borders of the Black Forest
• Gustave Flaubert - The Temptation of Saint Anthony
• mile Gaboriau - Other People's Money
• Henry Glapthorne (d. c.1643) - The Plays and Poems of Henry Glapthorne: Now first collected with illustrative notes and a memoir of the Author
• Thomas Hardy - Far From the Madding Crowd
• Marie Howland - Papa's Own Girl
• Victor Hugo - Ninety-Three
• Joris-Karl Huysmans - Le drageoir aux epices
• George Meredith - Beauchamp's Career
• Margaret Oliphant - A Rose in June
• Anthony Trollope
  • Harry Heathcote of Gangoil: A Tale of Australian Bush Life
  • Lady Anna
• Jules Verne - The Mysterious Island
• Mrs. Henry Wood -Johnny Ludlow
• Edmund Yates - The Impending Sword
• mile Zola - La Conqu te de Plassans

New drama

• W. S. Gilbert - Charity

Poetry

• St phane Mallarm - L'apr s-midi d'un faune

Non-fiction

• Franz Brentano - Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkte (Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint)
• John William Draper - A History of the Conflict between Religion and Science
• Antonio Raimondi - El Per
• Dorothy Wordsworth - Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A. D. 1803

Births

• January 16 - Robert W. Service, poet (died 1958)
• January 25 - William Somerset Maugham, (died 1965)
• February 1 - Hugo von Hofmannsthal, writer (died 1929)
• February 3 - Gertrude Stein, writer and patron of the arts (died 1946)
• February 9 - Amy Lowell, poet (died 1925)
• February 11 - Elsa Beskow (Maartman), Swedish children's book/fairy tales author (died 1953)
• March 20 - B rries von M nchhausen, poet (died 1945)
• March 26 - Robert Frost, poet (died 1963)
• May 29 - G. K. Chesterton, writer (died 1936)
• June 20 - Trumbull Stickney, poet (died 1904)
• August 8 - Tristan Klingsor, poet (died 1966)
• November 30 - Lucy Maud Montgomery, novelist (died 1942)

Deaths

• February 8 - David Strauss, theologian (born 1808)
• February 9 - Jules Michelet, historian (born 1798)
• February 23 - Shirley Brooks, journalist and novelist (born 1816)
• March 3 - Francis Mason, grammarian and translator (born 1799)
• March 4 - Ada Clare, journalist (born 1834)
• June 19 - Jules Janin, critic (born 1804)
• July 7 - John Heneage Jesse, historian (born 1815)
• July 8 - Agnes Strickland, popular historian (born 1796)
• July 12 - Fritz Reuter, novelist (born 1810)
• August 8 - Augustin Theiner, theologian and historian (born 1804)
• October 5 - Bryan Procter, poet (born 1787)
• October 24 - Thomas Miller, poet (born 1807)
• November 20 - Tom Hood, humorist (born 1835)
• date unknown
  • Giuseppe Rovani, novelist (born 1818)
  • Victor S jour, novelist and dramatist (born 1817)
  • Joseph Tracy, newspaper editor and historian (born 1793)

Awards

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