1860 in literature

Events

• January
• *The first issue of the Cornhill Magazine appears in London. It serializes Anthony Trollope's Framley Parsonage throughout the year.
• *Mrs. Henry Wood's "sensation novel" East Lynne begins serialization in The New Monthly Magazine. Her first full-length novel, Danesbury House, also appears this year.
• *Approximate date – The Catholic newspaper L'Univers is suppressed by the French government.
• January 28 – The first of Charles Dickens' literary sketches generally titled The Uncommercial Traveller appears in his magazine All the Year Round.
• February – Mary Elizabeth Braddon gives up her acting career to write. In the same year she meets her future husband John Maxwell.
• March 27 – The Irish melodrama The Colleen Bawn, or The Brides of Garryowen, written by and starring Dion Boucicault, is first performed at Miss Laura Keene's theatre, New York.
• April 4 – George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss is published by John Blackwood in three volumes.
• June 9 – Ann S. Stephens' , a tale of the American frontier, becomes the first Beadle's dime novel, published in cheap paperback book format by Irwin P. Beadle & Co. in New York City.
• June 30 – In the 1860 Oxford evolution debate, Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley debate the theories of Charles Darwin at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Lewis Carroll is among the audience.
• August 25 – Wilkie Collins' sensation novel The Woman in White, an early example of mystery fiction, completes its serialization in All the Year Round. It appears in book form in London around August 15.
• c. September 3 – Charles Dickens burns most of his private papers at his home in Kent, Gads Hill Place, having taken up regular residence there this year.
• December 1 – Charles Dickens's Bildungsroman Great Expectations begins serialization in All the Year Round.

• Alexander Bain is appointed to the chair of logic and English literature at the University of Aberdeen.
• Vasil Drumev, later Metropolitan Kliment of Tarnovo and Bulgaria's Prime Minister, brings out the first original story in the Bulgarian language, "A Woeful Family", in the Istanbul journal Bâlgarski knižitsi.
• Andreas Munch becomes the first person granted a poet's pension by the Parliament of Norway.

  New books

Fiction

• R. M. Ballantyne – The Dog Crusoe and his Master
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Three Times Dead
• Wilkie Collins – The Woman in White
• Mrs V. G. Cowdin – Ellen; or, The Fanatic's Daughter
• Charles Dickens – Great Expectations
• George Eliot – The Mill on the Floss
• Mrs G. M. Flanders – The Ebony Idol
• The Goncourt brothers – Charles Demailly
• Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Marble Faun
• Mór Jókai – Poor Rich
• George Meredith – Evan Harrington
• Multatuli – Max Havelaar
• Thomas Love Peacock – Gryll Grange
• Charles Reade – The Cloister and the Hearth
• Mary Howard Schoolcraft –
• Ann S. Stephens – Malaeska
• Robert Smith Surtees – Plain or Ringlets?
• Anthony Trollope – Castle Richmond
• Ivan Turgenev – First Love
• Charlotte M. Yonge
• *Hopes and Fears
• *Kenneth

  Drama

• Dion Boucicault – The Colleen Bawn
• Louise Granberg – Johan Fredman

  Poetry

• Michael Madhusudan Dutt – Tilottama Sambhab Kabya
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – "Paul Revere's Ride"
• See also 1860 in poetry

  Non-fiction

• Jacob Burckhardt – The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
• Mordecai Cubitt Cooke –
• Ralph Waldo Emerson – The Conduct of Life
• Gray's Anatomy
• Eliphas Lévi – Histoire de la magie
• Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux – La Magie au dix-neufième siècle
• J. W. Parker – Essays and Reviews
• John Ruskin – Modern Painters IV

  Births

• January 10 – Charles G. D. Roberts, Canadian poet
• January 29 – Anton Chekhov, Russian short story writer, novelist and dramatist
• February 11 – Rachilde, French author
• April 8 – Catherine Isabella Dodd, English education writer and novelist
• April 9 – Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, English writer of romances and children's books
• May 9 – J. M. Barrie, Scottish-born novelist and dramatist
• June 1 – Hugh Thomson, Irish-born illustrator
• June 6 – William Inge, English theologian
• July 3 – Charlotte Perkins Gilman, American novelist, short story writer and social reformer
• July 7 – Abraham Cahan, American Jewish journalist and novelist
• July 14 – Owen Wister, American Western fiction writer and historian
• July 18 – Herbert Kelly, English religious writer and cleric
• August 18 – Kristína Royová, Slovak novelist, religious writer and poet
• September 13 – Ralph Connor, Canadian novelist
• September 14 – Hamlin Garland, American novelist, poet and essayist
• October 6 – Rosamund Marriott Watson, born Rosamund Ball and writing as Graham R. Tomson, English poet
• October 23 – Molly Elliot Seawell, American novelist and dramatist
• December 8 – Amanda McKittrick Ros, born Anna McKittrick, Irish novelist and poet noted for her purple prose
• December 11 – Leonard Huxley, English writer and editor

• Harriet Theresa Comstock, American children's author

  Deaths

• January 29 – Ernst Moritz Arndt, German poet
• February 9 – William Evans Burton, English dramatist, theatre manager and publisher
• February 25 – Chauncey Allen Goodrich, American lexicographer
• March 17 – Anna Brownell Jameson, Irish-born essayist, travel writer and editor
• May 9 – Samuel Griswold Goodrich, American children's author
• May 16 – Anne Isabella Byron, Baroness Byron, English memoirist
• May 23 – Albert Richard Smith, English journalist and humorist
• August 25
• *Christian Lobeck, German classicist
• *Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Danish poet and critic
• September 21 – Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher
• December 2 – Ferdinand Christian Baur, German theologian
• December 11 – Anne Knight, English children's writer and educationist

  Awards

• Newdigate Prize – John Addington Symonds

  In literature

• F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" opens in this year.
• Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel The Leopard opens in May–November of this year.
• Bram Stoker's horror novel The Lair of the White Worm is set in this year.