1842 in literature

Events

• January 3 – Charles Dickens sets sail for the United States.
• February 14 – Washington Irving is one of the hosts at a public dinner for Charles Dickens in New York.
• March – The Book of Abraham by Joseph Smith is presented as being "a translation of some ancient records... purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus." It is published in two installments in the Mormon periodical Times and Seasons.
• c. March 7 – Charles Dickens meets Edgar Allan Poe in Philadelphia.
• March 28 – The Teatr Skarbkowski in Lviv opens with the performance of a play by Franz Grillparzer.
• June 7 – Charles Dickens leaves New York to return to Britain.
• June 19 – Eugène Sue's fictional The Mysteries of Paris begins to be serialized in the newspaper Journal des débats.
• July 1 – The Copyright Act in the United Kingdom provides for authors' copyrights in books to endure for the remainder of the author's life and a further seven years; if this period is less than 42 years from the date of first publication, then the copyright will persist for a full 42 years.
• unknown dates
• *Portions of Fanny Burney's diary and letters are posthumously published.
• *Julius Springer establishes a bookshop in Berlin which is the origin of Springer Science+Business Media.

  New books

Fiction

• Honoré de Balzac – La Rabouilleuse
• Edward Bulwer – Zanoni
• James Fenimore Cooper – The Two Admirals
• Nikolai Gogol
• *Dead Souls
• *"The Overcoat"
• Catherine Gore – The Ambassador's Wife
• Jeremias Gotthelf -The Black Spider
• Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch – Primero, yo
• Samuel Lover – Handy Andy
• George Sand – Consuelo
• Albert Smith – The Adventures of Mr Ledbury

  Children

• Frederick Marryat – Percival Keene

  Drama

• Nikolai Gogol – Marriage
• Johann Nestroy – Einen Jux will er sich machen
• Eugène Scribe
• *Une Chaine
• *Le Verre d'eau

  Poetry

• Aloysius Bertrand – Gaspard de la Nuit
• Robert Browning – Dramatic Lyrics
• Thomas Babington Macaulay – Lays of Ancient Rome
• Alfred Tennyson – Poems

  Non-fiction

• Charles Dickens – American Notes
• Ralph Waldo Emerson – The Transcendentalist
• Victor Hugo – Le Rhin
• Udney Hay Jacob – Peace Maker
• George Sand – :fr:Un hiver à Majorque|Un Hiver à Majorque
• William Smith – A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
• Henry David Thoreau – A Walk to Wachusett

  Births

• January 26 – Hattie Tyng Griswold, American author
• February 4 – Arrigo Boito, Italian poet
• February 25 – Karl May, German popular novelist
• March 4 – Evelyn Magruder DeJarnette, American author
• March 18 – Stéphane Mallarmé, French Symbolist poet
• March 25 – Antonio Fogazzaro, Italian novelist
• June 24 – Ambrose Bierce, American writer
• July 7 – William Hastie, Scottish scholar
• July 11 – Henry Abbey, American poet
• December 23 – Frances Augusta Hemingway Conant, American journalist and editor

  Deaths

• March 23 – Stendhal, French novelist
• May 23 – José de Espronceda, Spanish poet
• June 5 – Thomas Henry Lister, English novelist and Registrar General
• June 17 – Frances Jacson, English novelist
• July 28 – Clemens Brentano, German poet and novelist
• October 23 – Wilhelm Gesenius, German Biblical commentator
• November 6 – William Hone, English satirist and bookseller
• December 7 – Thomas Hamilton, Scottish novelist and philosopher