1884 in literature

Events

• January – Arthur Conan Doyle's anonymous story "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" appears in the Cornhill Magazine. It concerns the disappearance of the crew of the Mary Celeste in 1872.
• January 14 – Giovanni Verga's play Cavalleria rusticana, taken from his short story, is first performed, by Cesare Rossi's company at the Teatro Carignano in Turin, starring Eleonora Duse.
• February 1 – A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, part 1 appears in England, edited by James A. H. Murray, the first fascicle of what will become The Oxford English Dictionary.
• February 12 – Henry James visits the home of Alphonse Daudet and meets Goncourt, Émile Zola, François Coppée and others. In a discussion with Daudet, James describes the average Frenchman as "infinitely sharper in his observation than the average Englishman or American."
• February 18 – The English Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins becomes Professor of Greek and Latin at University College Dublin in Ireland, where he will remain until his death in 1889 and write his innovative sonnets and other poems.
• May 29 – Oscar Wilde marries Constance Mary Lloyd, a Protestant Dubliner, at St James's Church, Paddington, London.
• September 27 – August Strindberg's short stories Getting Married are published in Sweden. A week later, the author is prosecuted for blasphemy, but will be acquitted on November 17.
• December 10 – The first London publication of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appears.

• The poet Alfred Tennyson is created 1st Baron Tennyson of Aldworth in the County of Sussex and of Freshwater, Isle of Wight, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Thus he becomes known as Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
• Lie Kim Hok's collection of children's stories Sobat Anak-anak is published in Buitenzorg, the first work of popular literature in the Dutch East Indies. His Malay language syair Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari is also first published.
• The first translation of Shakespeare's plays in Japan is made, an adaptation of Julius Caesar by Tsubouchi Shōyō as a Bunraku puppet play, entitled The Strange Case of Caesar: the renowned sharpness of the blade of liberty.

  New books

Fiction

• Edwin Abbott Abbott – Flatland
• Henry Brooks Adams – Esther
• Juhani Aho – Rautatie
• Leopoldo Alas – La regenta, vol. 1
• Aluísio de Azevedo – Casa de Pensão
• Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly – What Never Dies
• R. D. Blackmore – Tommy Upmore
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Ishmael. A Novel
• Bankim Chandra Chatterji – Devi Chaudhurani
• Wilkie Collins – I Say No
• Alphonse Daudet – Sapho
• Amy Dillwyn – Jill
• J.-K. Huysmans
• *À rebours
• *Controcorrente
• Helen Hunt Jackson – Ramona
• Vernon Lee – Miss Brown
• George A. Moore – A Mummer's Wife
• Mrs. Oliphant
• *The Ladies Lindores
• *The Wizard's Son
• Mark Twain – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Rachilde – Monsieur Vénus
• Jules Verne
• *The Archipelago on Fire
• *The Vanished Diamond
• Mary Augusta Ward – Miss Bretherton

  Drama

• Henrik Ibsen – The Wild Duck
• Giovanni Verga – Cavalleria rusticana
• Friedrich Theodor Vischer – Nicht Ia: Schwäbisches Lustspiel in drei Aufzügen

  Poetry

• Lie Kim Hok – Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari
• Rabindranath Tagore – Bhanusimha Thakurer Padabali
• William Watson – Epigrams of Art, Life and Nature

  Non-fiction

• Friedrich Engels – The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State
• The Herefordshire Pomona
• Henry James – A Little Tour in France
• Sophia Jex-Blake – The Care of Infants: A Manual for Mothers and Nurses
• Vernon Lee
• *The Countess of Albany
• *Euphorion: Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediæval in the Renaissance
• George Fletcher Moore – Diary of Ten Years Eventful Life of an Early Settler in Western Australia
• Elizabeth Robins Pennell – Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
• Arnold Toynbee – Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England]

  Births

• January 2 – Oscar Micheaux, African American author and filmmaker
• January 18 – Arthur Ransome, English author of children's and other books
• March 13 – Sir Hugh Walpole, New Zealand-born novelist
• April 1 – J. C. Squire, English writer and critic
• April 3 – Nicos Nicolaides, Greek Cypriot writer
• June 5 – Ivy Compton-Burnett, English novelist
• June 29 – Francis Brett Young, English novelist and poet
• August 8 – Sara Teasdale, American poet
• August 10 – Panait Istrati, Romanian novelist, short story writer and political essayist
• August 24 – Earl Derr Biggers, American writer
• September 20 – Maxwell Perkins, American literary editor
• December 17 – Alison Uttley, English writer of children's books

• Mourning Dove, Native American writer

  Deaths

• January 3 – William Billington, English poet and publican
• January 7 – John Harris, English poet
• January 11 – Hermann Ulrici, German philosopher
• February 2 – Abraham Hayward, English man of letters
• February 11 – Thomas Chenery, Barbadian-born English scholar and editor
• March 10 – William Blanchard Jerrold, English journalist
• March 13 – Richard Henry Horne, English poet, critic and journalist, and public official in Australia
• March 24 – François Mignet, French historian
• April 6 – Emanuel Geibel, German poet
• April 11 – Charles Reade, English novelist
• May 27 – Caroline Dexter, English-born Australian feminist writer
• May 28 – Joseph d'Haussonville, French historian
• June 10 – Johann Gustav Droysen, German historian
• June 27 – Andreas Munch, Norwegian poet
• July 23 – Anna Mary Howitt, English writer, painter and feminist
• September 18 – Boleslav Markevich, Russian novelist, essayist and critic
• October 16 – Paul Lacroix, French novelist and journalist
• October 19 – Karl Hillebrand, German literary historian and philosopher
• November 3 – František Doucha, Czech translator
• November 6 – William Wells Brown, African-American writer

  Awards

• Gaisford Prize – Harry Hammond House for iambics