1850 in literature

Events

• January – The collected works of Edgar Allan Poe begin posthumous publication, co-edited by Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who contributes a memoir denigrating Poe's reputation, based partly on forged evidence.
• January–April – The Germ, a periodical of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood edited by William Michael Rossetti, is published.
• March – The weekly Household Words, "conducted by Charles Dickens," begins publication in London.
• March 14 – Honoré de Balzac marries Ewelina Hańska at Berdyczów. The marriage ends with his death only five months later.
• March 16 – Nathaniel Hawthorne's historical novel The Scarlet Letter is published by William Ticknor and James Thomas Fields in Boston, Massachusetts, where it is set. It sells 2,500 copies in ten days. A second edition appears by the end of the month.
• May 1 – The earliest surviving mention of the composition of Moby-Dick appears in a letter Herman Melville writes to Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
• May – Alfred Tennyson's poem In Memoriam A.H.H., commemorating the death of his friend and fellow poet Arthur Hallam in 1833, is published by Edward Moxon in London. The writer's anonymity is broken on June 1 by The Publishers' Circular.
• June 13 – Alfred Tennyson marries his childhood friend Emily Sellwood at Shiplake.
• July – William Wordsworth's The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind: An Autobiographical Poem, on which he has worked since 1798, is first published about three months after his death by Edward Moxon in London in 14 books, with the title supplied by the poet's widow, Mary.
• August 5 – Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville meet for the first time, together with Oliver Wendell Holmes and publisher James Thomas Fields, on a picnic expedition to Monument Mountain.
• September 26 – The first play by Henrik Ibsen to be performed, The Burial Mound , opens at the Christiania Theatre under the pseudonym Brynjolf Bjarme. His first written play, Catiline, completed this year, will not be performed until 1881.
• November
• *A new edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poems is published by Chapman & Hall in London, including in volume 2 her Sonnets from the Portuguese, written during her courtship by Robert Browning in about 1845–1846. The most famous will be No. 43
• *Salford Museum and Art Gallery opens as "The Royal Museum & Public Library", as England's first unconditionally free public library.
• November 1 – Charles Dickens's novel David Copperfield – The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery – concludes serial publication and on appears complete in book form from Bradbury and Evans in London.
• November 19 – Alfred Tennyson is named Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom to succeed William Wordsworth, but only after Samuel Rogers has declined the offer because of his age and Tennyson is assured that birthday odes will not be required of him.
• Ivan Turgenev completes the writing of his play A Month in the Country as The Student in Paris, but it is rejected by the Saint Petersburg censor and will not be published until 1855 or performed until 1872.

  New books

Fiction

• Wilkie Collins – Antonina, or The Fall of Rome
• Charles Dickens – David Copperfield
• Alexandre Dumas, fils – Tristan le Roux
• Alexandre Dumas, père – The Black Tulip
• Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter
• Caroline Lee Hentz
• *Linda
• *Rena, the Snowbird
• Jón Thoroddsen – Piltur og Stúlka
• Herman Melville – White-Jacket
• Alexei Pisemsky – The Simpleton
• Catharine Maria Sedgwick – Tales of City Life
• Frank Smedley – Frank Fairleigh
• William Makepeace Thackeray – Pendennis
• Anthony Trollope – La Vendée
• Ivan Turgenev – The Diary of a Superfluous Man
• Jemima von Tautphoeus – The Initials
• Susan Warner – The Wide, Wide World

  Drama

• Christian Friedrich Hebbel – Herodes and Mariamne
• Paul Heyse – Francesca von Rimini
• Henrik Ibsen
• *Catiline
• *The Burial Mound
• Otto Ludwig – Der Erbförster
• Ivan Turgenev – A Month in the Country

  Poetry

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Sonnets from the Portuguese
• Robert Browning – Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
• Alfred Tennyson – In Memoriam A.H.H.
• William Wordsworth – The Prelude

  Non-fiction

• Ivar Aasen – Dictionary of the Norwegian Dialects
• Mary Anne Atwood – A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery
• Frédéric Bastiat – The Law
• Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men
• Friedrich Engels – The Peasant War in Germany
• Alexander Herzen – From Another Shore
• Washington Irving – Mahomet and His Successors
• Julia Kavanagh – Women in France during the Eighteenth Century
• Søren Kierkegaard – Practice in Christianity

  Births

• January 14 – Pierre Loti, French novelist
• January 15 – Mihai Eminescu, Romanian poet, novelist and journalist
• February 8 – Kate Chopin, American writer
• February 24 – Mary de Morgan, English children's writer and suffragist
• March 26 – Edward Bellamy, American Utopian novelist and socialist
• April 12 – Agnes Catherine Maitland, English academic, novelist and cookery writer
• April 13 – Bernhard Alexander, Hungarian philosopher and polymath
• April 16 – :de:Auguste Groner|Auguste Groner, Austrian detective fiction writer
• April 30 – Ieronim Yasinsky, Russian novelist, poet, critic and essayist
• June 27 – Lafcadio Hearn, Greek-born Irish American scholar and writer on Japan
• July 2 – Dumitru C. Moruzi, Russian-born Romanian political figure and social novelist
• July 9 – Ivan Vazov, Bulgarian poet, novelist and playwright
• August 5 – Guy de Maupassant, French novelist and short story writer
• September 2 – Eugene Field, American poet and essayist
• November 5 – Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American writer and poet
• November 13 – Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer
• Unknown date – Annie Armitt, English novelist and poet

  Deaths

• January 20 – Adam Oehlenschläger, Danish poet and dramatist
• April 7 – William Lisle Bowles, English poet and critic
• April 23 – William Wordsworth, English poet
• May 24 – Jane Porter, Scottish novelist and dramatist
• May 31 – Giuseppe Giusti, Italian poet
• July 6 – Alexander Jamieson, Scottish textbook writer, schoolmaster and rhetorician
• July 14 – August Neander, German theologian
• July 19 – Margaret Fuller, American journalist and critic
• August 18 – Honoré de Balzac, French novelist
• August 22 – Nikolaus Lenau, Austrian poet
• November 4 – Gustav Schwab, German writer and publisher
• November 10 – Lumley Skeffington, English playwright and fop
• December 24 – Frédéric Bastiat, French political philosopher

  Awards

• Chancellor's Gold Medal – Julian Fane, "Monody on the death of Adelaide, the Queen Dowager"
• Newdigate Prize – Frederick William Faber, "The Knights of St John"