1883 in literature

Events

• January 13 – Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People gains its first performance at the Christiania Theatre.
• February – Carlo Collodi's children's story The Adventures of Pinocchio appears first in Italy complete in book form as Le avventure di Pinocchio.
• May 23 – Robert Louis Stevenson's children's pirate adventure novel Treasure Island first appears in book form from Cassell in London.
• June – Footlights, the University of Cambridge drama club in England, gives its first performance.
• June 4 – Mihai Eminescu reads his nationalist poem Doina to an enthusiastic crowd at Junimea in Iași. It is sometimes described as his last work before a mental breakdown later this year. Eminescu's host Ion Creangă recalls it being composed on the spot, but some researchers date it back to 1870.
• June 30–October 20 – Robert Louis Stevenson's novel is serialized in the British magazine Young Folks as by "Captain George North". Stevenson completes writing it at the end of the summer in France.
• July – The first issue of Fiamuri Arbërit, an Albanian literary and political magazine, is published from Cosenza. Managed by Girolamo de Rada, it promotes Ottomanism against Philhellenism.
• August – Ivan Turgenev dictates his last story, "An end", to Pauline Viardot on his deathbed at Bougival in France.
• August 29 – Dunfermline Carnegie Library, the first Carnegie library, opens in Andrew Carnegie's home town, Dunfermline, Scotland.
• October 3–9 – Turgenev's body is returned by train from Paris to Saint Petersburg with crowds turning out to honor him.
• December 27–28 – The Modern Language Association of America holds its first meeting.
• Uncertain dates
• *Mark Twain's memoirs Life on the Mississippi are published simultaneously in Boston and London, as the first major book submitted to a publisher in typescript.
• *Kisari Mohan Ganguli begins publication of the first English-language translation of the Mahabharata.
• *The Deutsches Theater company is formed in Berlin.

  New books

Fiction

• Emilia Pardo Bazán – La tribuna
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Phantom Fortune
• Rhoda Broughton – Belinda
• Hugh Conway – Called Back
• Wilkie Collins – Heart and Science
• Anne Elliot – Dr. Edith Romney
• Ludwig Ganghofer – The Hunter of Fall
• Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam – Contes cruels
• John Hay – The Bread-Winners
• Alexander Kielland – Poison
• Jonas Lie – Familien paa Gilje
• John Macnie – The Diothas; or, A Far Look Ahead
• Mary E. Mann – The Parish of Hilby
• Guy de Maupassant – Une Vie
• George A. Moore – A Modern Lover
• Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra
• Sir Thomas Wemyss Reid – Gladys Fane
• Charlotte Riddell – A Struggle for Fame
• Annie S. Swan – Aldersyde
• Giovanni Verga – Novelle rusticane
• Jules Verne – Kéraban the Inflexible

  Children and young people

• Carlo Collodi – The Adventures of Pinocchio
• George MacDonald – The Princess and Curdie
• Howard Pyle – The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
• Robert Louis Stevenson – Treasure Island

  Drama

• Frances Hodgson Burnett and William Gillette – Esmeralda
• François Coppée – Severo Torelli
• Imre Madách – The Tragedy of Man
• Edward Rose – Vice Versa
• George Robert Sims – In the Ranks
• August Strindberg – Lycko-Pers resa
• Oscar Wilde – Vera; or, The Nihilists
• William Young – The Rajah; or Wyncot's Ward

  Poetry

Non-fiction

• Mathilde Blind – George Eliot
• Hall Caine – Cobwebs of Criticism
• Thomas Hill Green – Prolegomena to Ethics
• J.-K. Huysmans – L'Art moderne
• Agnes Catherine Maitland – The Rudiments of Cookery: a Manual for Use in Schools and Homes
• William Robinson – The English Flower Garden
• J. R. Seeley – The Expansion of England
• Alfred Percy Sinnett – Esoteric Buddhism
• John Addington Symonds – A Problem in Greek Ethics: an inquiry into the phenomenon of sexual inversion, addressed especially to medical psychologists and jurists
• Mark Twain – Life on the Mississippi

  Births

• January 1 – Alberto Gerchunoff, Argentine writer
• January 6 – Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-born poet and novelist writing in Arabic and English
• January 10 – Aleksei Tolstoy, Russian writer
• January 20 – Forrest Wilson, American journalist and author
• January 21 – Olav Aukrust, Norwegian poet and teacher
• February 8 – Joseph Schumpeter, Austrian/American political economist
• February 15 – Sax Rohmer, English novelist
• February 20 – Naoya Shiga, Japanese novelist
• March 9 – Umberto Saba, Italian poet and novelist
• March 17 – Urmuz, Romanian short prose writer
• April 30 – Jaroslav Hašek, Czech novelist
• June 3 – Franz Kafka, Czech novelist writing in German
• June 4 – Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, English crime writer
• December 13 – Belle da Costa Greene, American librarian
• December 23 – Yoshishige Abe, Japanese philosopher and politician
• December 30 – Marie Gevers, Belgian novelist writing in French
• unknown date – May Edginton, English popular novelist

  Deaths

• January 21 – Anna Eliza Bray, English novelist and travel writer
• March 14 – Karl Marx, German philosopher
• April 24 – Jules Sandeau, French novelist
• May 15 – Mary Elizabeth Mohl, English-born literary salonnière
• May 23 – Cyprian Norwid, Polish poet, dramatist and artist
• June 20 – Gustave Aimard, French novelist
• July 16 – Edward Backhouse Eastwick, Anglo-Indian orientalist and translator
• August 31 – Levin Schücking, German novelist
• September 2 – Léon Halévy, French historian and dramatist
• September 3 – Ivan Turgenev, Russian novelist
• September 10 – Hendrik Conscience, Flemish novelist
• September 25 – George Ayliffe Poole, English writer and cleric
• November 26 – Sojourner Truth, African American abolitionist, women's rights activist, and author
• December 13 – Victor de Laprade, French poet and critic