1845 in literature

Events

• January 10 – Robert Browning begins his correspondence with his future wife, fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett. On May 20 they meet for the first time. She begins writing her Sonnets from the Portuguese.
• January 29 – Edgar Allan Poe first publishes the narrative poem "The Raven", under his own name in The Evening Mirror of New York, of which he is a staff critic until February. It is rapidly reprinted across the United States and appears in book form by the end of the year.
• March- Walt Whitman publishes a short story, "Arrow-Tip".
• April – Nathaniel Hawthorne first publishes the short story "P.'s Correspondence", a pioneering example of alternate history, in which deceased writers and political figures are described as still living, and vice versa. The story appears in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review and features in Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse.
• April 24 – Alfred de Musset and Honoré de Balzac are awarded the French Legion of Honour.
• Spring–Summer – The essays in Thomas de Quincey's Suspiria de Profundis appear in Blackwood's Magazine.
• October 1 – Prosper Mérimée's novella Carmen appears in its original form in Revue des deux Mondes. Book publication follows in 1846.
• December – The future American President Brevet Second Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant plays Desdemona in an amateur production of Othello at Corpus Christi, Texas.
• December 30 – The American actress Charlotte Cushman plays Romeo to her sister Susan's Juliet in a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Haymarket Theatre in London.

• Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales are first translated into English, beginning with "The Little Mermaid" in Bentley's Miscellany.
• Benjamin Disraeli's "Young England" roman à thèse, Sybil; or, The Two Nations, is published in London; he receives a £10,000 advance.

  New books

Fiction

• James Fenimore Cooper
• *The Chainbearer
• *Satanstoe
• Charles Dickens – The Cricket on the Hearth
• Benjamin Disraeli – Sybil
• Alexandre Dumas, père
• *Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge
• *The Corsican Brothers
• *The Count of Monte Cristo
• *The Regent's Daughter
• *La Reine Margot
• *Twenty Years After
• József Eötvös – A falu jegyzője
• Catherine Gore – The Snowstorm: A Christmas Story
• Nathaniel Hawthorne – P.'s Correspondence
• Geraldine Jewsbury – Zoe, A History of Two Lives
• Joaquim Manuel de Macedo – O moço loiro
• Frederick Marryat – The Mission, or Scenes in Africa
• Prosper Mérimée – Carmen
• J. M. Rymer – Ada the Betrayed; or, The Murder at the Old Smithy
• Adele Schopenhauer – Anna: Ein Roman aus der nächsten Vergangenheit
• William Sewell – Hawkstone: a tale of and for England
• Robert Smith Surtees – Hillingdon Hall

  Children

• Ludwig Bechstein – Deutsches Märchenbuch
• Heinrich Hoffmann – Der Struwwelpeter

  Drama

• Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch – La Jura en Santa Gadea
• Henrik Hertz – King René's Daughter
• Anna Cora Mowatt –
• Martins Pena – first performances
• *As Casadas Solteiras
• *O caixeiro da taverna
• *O diletante
• *:pt:O Noviço|O Noviço
• *Os dois ou O inglês maquinista
• *Os três médicos
• José Zorrilla – Traidor, inconfeso y mártir

  Poetry

• Edgar Allan Poe – "The Raven"

  Non-fiction

• Eliza Acton – Modern Cookery for Private Families
• Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly – On Dandyism and George Brummell
• Thomas Carlyle – Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches
• Frederick Douglass – Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
• Encyclopædia Metropolitana
• Friedrich Engels – The Condition of the Working Class in England
• Richard Ford – A Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain, and readers at home
• Margaret Fuller – Woman in the Nineteenth Century
• François-Xavier Garneau – Histoire du Canada, vol. 1
• Justinus Kerner – The Seeress of Prévorst: being revelations concerning the inner-life of man, and the inter-diffusion of a world of spirits in the one we inhabit
• Søren Kierkegaard – Stages on Life's Way
• Domingo Sarmiento – Facundo
• Max Stirner – ''The Ego and Its Own

  Births

• January 8 – Minnie Willis Baines Miller, American author
• January 21 – Lepha Eliza Bailey, American author, lecturer, and social reformer
• March 21 – Emily Thornton Charles, American poet, journalist, editor, and newspaper founder
• April 4 – Emma B. Alrich, American journalist, author, and educator
• April 17 – Lucy Bethia Walford, Scottish novelist and artist
• April 24 – Carl Spitteler, Swiss poet
• April 30 – Alexander Anderson, Scottish poet
• May 9 – Georgina Castle Smith, English children's writer
• May 14 – L. S. Bevington, English anarchist poet and essayist
• May 16 – Amy Dillwyn, Welsh novelist
• May 17 – Jacint Verdaguer, Catalan poet
• June 3 – Estelle Mendell Amory, American educator and author
• June 15 – Jennie McCowen, American physician, writer, and medical journal editor
• June 17 – Emily Lawless, Irish modernist novelist and poet
• July 18 – Tristan Corbière, French poet
• July 26 – Martina Swafford, American poet
• August 10 – Abai Qunanbaiuly, Kazakh poet, philosopher and cultural reformer
• August 11 – Addie C. Strong Engle, American author and publisher
• August 27 – Martha Capps Oliver, American poet and hymnwriter
• September 3 – Louise Herschman Mannheimer, Czech-American author, school founder, and inventor
• September 20 – Sarah Dyer Hobart, American author
• October 14 – Olindo Guerrini, Italian poet
• October 25 – Rebecca Agatha Armour, Canadian novelist
• November 19 – Agnes Giberne, English children's writer
• November 25 – José Maria de Eça de Queirós, Portuguese novelist

  Deaths

• February 22 – Rev. Sydney Smith, English writer and wit
• May 3 – Thomas Hood, English poet and humorist
• May 12
• * János Batsányi, Hungarian poet and anti-Habsburg activist
• * August Wilhelm Schlegel, German poet and translator
• May 26 – Jónas Hallgrímsson, Icelandic poet
• June 17 – Rev. Richard Harris Barham English comic poet
• July 12 – Henrik Wergeland, Norwegian poet and dramatist
• October 26 – Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne, Scottish songwriter and collector
• November 11 – Maria Gowen Brooks, American poet