The year 1878 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• January 28 - The Yale News becomes the first daily college newspaper in the United States.
• Guy de Maupassant becomes an employee of the Ministry of Public Instruction.

New books

• William Harrison Ainsworth - Beatrice Tyldesley
• Walter Besant and James Rice - The Monks of Thelema
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon - An Open Verdict
• Wilkie Collins - The Haunted Hotel
• Anna Katharine Green - The Leavenworth Case
• Thomas Hardy - The Return of the Native
• Henry James
  • Daisy Miller
  • The Europeans
• William Hurrell Mallock - The New Paul and Virginia
  • - The New Republic
• Hector Malot - Sans Famille
• Margaret Oliphant - The Primrose Path
• Jos Maria de E a de Queiroz - O Primo Bas lio
• Anne Eliza Smith - Seola
• Harriet Beecher Stowe - Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives
• Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
• Jules Verne - Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen
• mile Zola - Une Page d'amour

Non-fiction

• Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1st edition
• Friedrich Nietzsche - Human, All Too Human (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches)
• Robert Louis Stevenson - An Inland Voyage

Births

• January 6 - Carl Sandburg, poet, historian (died 1967)
• January 12 - Ferenc Moln r, writer (died 1952)
• June 1 - John Masefield, poet (died 1967)
• June 12 - James Oliver Curwood, American author (died 1927)
• September 20 - Upton Sinclair (died 1968)

Deaths

• February 1 - George Cruikshank, book illustrator (born 1792)
• April 24 - Heinrich Leo, historian (born 1799)
• April 25 - Anna Sewell, novelist (born 1820)
• July 1 - Catherine Winkworth, translator (born 1827)
• August 13 - George Gilfillan, poet and author (born 1813)
  • Elizabeth Prentiss, poet and hymn-writer (born 1818)
• November 17 - Karl Theodor Keim, theologian (born 1825)
• December 19 - Bayard Taylor, poet (born 1825)
• date unknown - George Whyte-Melville, novelist (born 1821)

Awards

• Newdigate prize - Oscar Wilde

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