The year 1885 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• February 18 - Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published for the first time
• May 19 - Revised Version Old Testament published.
• Thomas Hardy moves to Max Gate.
• John Ormsby's English translation of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote is published. For many years it is regarded as the most accurate translation of the novel.

New books

• Hall Caine
  • She's All the World to Me
  • The Shadow of a Crime
• Lewis Carroll - A Tangled Tale
• H. Rider Haggard - King Solomon's Mines
• William Dean Howells - Rise of Sylas Lapham
• Richard Jefferies - After London
• Jerome K. Jerome - On the Stage and Off
• Guy de Maupassant - Bel-Ami
• George Meredith - Diana of the Crossways
• Daniel Owen - Rhys Lewis
• Walter Pater - Marius the Epicurean
• Robert Louis Stevenson - Prince Otto
• Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Jules Vall s - Jacques Vingtras
• Jules Verne - Mathias Sandorf
• mile Zola - Germinal
• Sir Richard Burton - The Arabian Nights

Poetry

• See 1885 in poetry

Non-fiction

• Ant nor Firmin - De l' galit des Races Humaines (On the Equality of Human Races)

Births

• January 16 - Zhou Zuoren, Chinese vernacular writer (died 1967)
• February 7 - Sinclair Lewis, novelist (died 1951)
• February 21 - Sacha Guitry, dramatist and screenwriter (died 1957)
• March 6 - Ring Lardner, writer (died 1933)
• May 2 - Hedda Hopper, columnist (died 1966)
• September 11 - D. H. Lawrence, novelist and short-story writer (died 1930)
• October 3 - Sophie Treadwell, dramatist and journalist (died 1970)
• October 11 - Fran ois Mauriac, novelist (died 1970)
• October 30 - Ezra Pound, poet (died 1972)
• December 8 - Kenneth Roberts, novelist (died 1957)

Deaths

• February 14 Jules Vall s, French writer (born 1832)
• April 8 - Susanna Moodie, English-born author of "Canadiana" (born 1803)
• April 18 - Marc Monnier, author and translator (born 1827)
• May 22 - Victor Hugo, poet and novelist (born 1802)
• June 18 - Louis Segond, theologian (born 1810)
• July 13 - Augusto Vera, philosopher (born 1813)
• September 18 - John Campbell Shairp, critic (born 1819)
• November 29 - Anne Gilchrist, critic and biographer (born 1828)

Awards

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