1855 in literature

Events

• January – Samuel Orchart Beeton's weekly The Boys' Own Magazine, "an illustrated journal of fact, fiction, history and adventure", begins publication in London.
• January 5 – Anthony Trollope's novel The Warden, the first of his Chronicles of Barsetshire, is published in London by Longman as he begins to write the second, Barchester Towers.
• June 29 – The Daily Telegraph newspaper begins publication in London.
• July 4 – Walt Whitman's first edition of his book of poems titled Leaves of Grass is published in Brooklyn, New York.
• September 27 – Alfred Tennyson reads from his new book Maud and other poems at a social gathering in the home of Robert and Elizabeth Browning in London. Dante Gabriel Rossetti makes a sketch of him doing so.
• October – Victor Hugo moves to Hauteville House, Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, accompanied by his mistress, Juliette Drouet.
• December
• *Charles Dickens publishes the first instalment of Little Dorrit, which continues to appear into 1857.
• *Thomas Babington Macaulay's best-selling History of England in four volumes is completed.

• Alexander Afanasyev begins publication of his collection of Narodnye russkie skazki' .
• John Camden Hotten opens a bookselling business in London, which is the origin of the publisher Chatto & Windus.
• Faris al-Shidyaq publishes the metafiction Sâq 'ala al-sâq, the first modern Arabic novel, in Paris.
• The first Luxembourg novel in French, Marc Bruno, profil d'artiste, is published shortly after the death of its author, Félix Thyes. The comedy De Scholtschäin'', by Edmond de la Fontaine writing as Dicks, becomes the first play to be performed in the language of Luxembourg.
• Belarusian writer Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkyevich publishes «Гапон» in the Russian Empire, the first poem written wholly in modern Belarusian.

  New books

Fiction

• Cuthbert Bede – The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green
• Gustav Freytag – Debit and Credit
• Elizabeth Gaskell – North and South
• James Grant – The Yellow Frigate
• Mary Virginia Hawes – The Hidden Path
• Caroline Lee Hentz – Robert Graham
• Paul Heyse – "L'Arrabbiata"
• Washington Irving – Wolfert's Roost
• Gottfried Keller – Green Henry
• Charles Kingsley – Westward Ho!
• Herman Melville
• *Israel Potter
• *The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids
• *Benito Cereno
• Gérard de Nerval – Aurelia
• Giovanni Ruffini – Doctor Antonio
• Ann Sophia Stephens – The Old Homestead
• William Makepeace Thackeray – The Newcomes
• Félix Thyes – Marc Bruno, profil d'artiste
• Anthony Trollope – The Warden

  Children

• Božena Němcová – The Grandmother

  Drama

• Émile Augier – Le Mariage d'Olympe
• Dicks
• *De Scholtschäin
• *D'Mumm Sèiss
• Léon Gozlan – Le Gâteau des reines
• Henrik Ibsen – The Feast at Solhaug
• Andreas Munch – En Aften paa Giske
• Watts Phillips – Joseph Chavigny
• Ivan Turgenev – A Month in the Country

  Poetry

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Song of Hiawatha
• Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass

  Non-fiction

• David Brewster – Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton
• John Brown – Slave Life in Georgia
• Washington Irving – The Life of George Washington, Volumes 1 and 2
• George Sand – Histoire de ma vie
• William Smith – Latin–English Dictionary based upon the works of Forcellini and Freund
• Leo Tolstoy – Sevastopol Sketches
• Alfred Russel Wallace – On the Law Which has Regulated the Introduction of Species

  Births

• February 21 – Elizabeth Robins Pennell, American biographer and critic based in London
• April 4 – Manonmaniam Sundaram Pillai, Indian dramatist
• April 27 – Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, Irish novelist
• May 1 – Marie Corelli, English novelist
• May 21 – Emile Verhaeren, Belgian Symbolist poet writing in French
• May 24 – Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, English dramatist
• July 7 – Ludwig Ganghofer, German novelist
• July 19 – Alexander Ertel, Russian novelist and short story writer
• August 7 – Stanley J. Weyman, English novelist
• September 12 – William Sharp, Scottish poet and biographer
• September 22 – Alice Zimmern, English writer, translator and suffragist
• October 30 – Pyotr Gnedich, Russian writer and poet
• November 4 – William Ritchie Sorley, Scottish philosopher
• December 15 – Maurice Bouchor, French poet and sculptor
• December 28 – Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, Uruguayan poet

• Solomon Cleaver, Canadian story teller, novelist and pastor

  Deaths

• January 3 – János Majláth, Hungarian poet and historian
• January 10 – Mary Russell Mitford, English dramatist and novelist
• January 25 – Dorothy Wordsworth, English poet and diarist
• January 26 – Gérard de Nerval, French poet and essayist
• February 4 – Gottfried Christian Friedrich Lücke, German theologian
• March 31 – Charlotte Brontë, English novelist and poet
• June 29 – Delphine de Girardin, French poet and novelist
• July 12 – Karl Spindler, German novelist,
• September 4 – Emma Tatham, English poet
• September 27 – John Adamson, English antiquary and scholar of Portuguese
• November 11 – Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher
• November 19 – Mihály Vörösmarty, Hungarian poet and dramatist
• November 26 – Adam Mickiewicz, Poland's national poet
• December 3 – Robert Montgomery, English poet

• Sunthorn Phu, Thai poet