1894 in literature

Events

• February – Oscar Wilde's play Salome is first published in English, with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley.
• February 15 – French anarchist Martial Bourdin accidentally kills himself while attempting to plant a bomb at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, a fictionalised version of which appears in Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent.
• Early Spring – Mary Antin emigrates from White Russia to the United States with her mother.
• April – The Yellow Book imprint, edited by Henry Harland, begins publication by John Lane and Elkin Mathews – The Bodley Head – in London.
• April 21 – George Bernard Shaw's play Arms and the Man is premièred at the Avenue Theatre in London.
• May – The Scottish writer William Sharp publishes Pharais, his first novel under the pseudonym Fiona MacLeod.
• June – The German novelist Hermann Hesse begins an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering at a factory in Calw.
• August 15 – A. E. Waite starts to publish and edit an occult periodical, The Unknown World.
• October – Lafcadio Hearn begins work as a journalist for the English-language Kobe Chronicle in Japan.
• November 8 – Robert Frost's first poem, "My Butterfly" appears in The New York Independent, which pays him $15.
• December
• *An abridgement of Stephen Crane's American Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage is first published as a serial in The Philadelphia Press.
• *Arthur Conan Doyle publishes "An Alpine Pass on "Ski"" in The Strand Magazine, popularizing skiing as a sport in Switzerland.
• December 22 – Claude Debussy's symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, a free interpretation of Stéphane Mallarmé's 1876 poem, "L'Après-midi d'un faune", is premièred in Paris.
• unknown dates
• *The U.K. circulating libraries of Mudie's and WHSmith cease to purchase three-volume novels, killing off the format.
• *J. M. Dent begins in London to publish Temple Shakespeare pocket editions, edited by Israel Gollancz.
• *The Century Roman typeface, first of the Century type family, is cut by American Type Founders' designer Linn Boyd Benton, originally for Theodore Low De Vinne's The Century Magazine.

  New books

Fiction

• Gabriele D'Annunzio – Il trionfo della morte
• Clementina Black – The Agitator
• Léon Bloy – Disagreeable Tales
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – The Christmas Hirelings
• Walter Browne – 2894
• Hall Caine
• *The Madhi: or Love and Race, A Drama in Story
• *The Manxman
• Anton Chekhov – "The Student"
• Kate Chopin
• *Bayou Folk
• *"The Story of an Hour"
• Ella Hepworth Dixon – The Story of a Modern Woman
• Arthur Conan Doyle – The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
• George du Maurier – Trilby
• Marcellus Emants – Een Nagelaten Bekentenis
• Theodor Fontane – Effi Briest
• Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – Pembroke
• George Gissing – In the Year of Jubilee
• Katharine Glasier – Husband & Brother, a few chapters in a woman's life of to-day
• H. Rider Haggard – The People of the Mist
• Knut Hamsun – Pan
• Robert Hichens – The Green Carnation
• William Dean Howells – A Traveler from Altruria
• Jerome K. Jerome – John Ingerfield: And Other Stories
• Sheridan Le Fanu – The Watcher and Other Weird Stories
• Juhan Liiv – "Vari"
• Arthur Machen – The Great God Pan
• Ian Maclaren – Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush
• George A. Moore – Esther Waters
• William Morris – The Wood Beyond the World
• Arthur Morrison – Martin Hewitt: Investigator
• John Muir – The Mountains of California
• Gustavus W. Pope – Journey to Mars
• Bolesław Prus – The New Woman
• Jules Renard – Poil de carotte
• Solomon Schindler – Young West
• Flora Annie Steel
• *The Flower of Forgiveness
• *The Potter's Thumb
• *Tales of the Punjab
• Stendhal – Lucien Leuwen
• Hermann Sudermann – The Undying Past
• Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne – The Ebb-Tide
• Mark Twain
• *Pudd'nhead Wilson
• *Tom Sawyer Abroad
• Jules Verne – Captain Antifer
• Mary Augusta Ward – Marcella
• H. G. Wells – "The Red Room"
• Israel Zangwill – The Bachelors' Club
• Émile Zola – Lourdes

  Children and young people

• Harold Avery
• *The Orderly Officer
• *The School's Honour
• R. D. Blackmore – Perlycross
• Anthony Hope
• *The Dolly Dialogues
• *The Prisoner of Zenda
• Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Book
• E. Nesbit – Miss Mischief
• Talbot Baines Reed – Tom, Dick and Harry
• Margaret Marshall Saunders – Beautiful Joe
• Ethel Turner – Seven Little Australians

  Drama

• Hall Caine – The Manxman
• William Gillette – Too Much Johnson
• Martin Greif – Agnes Bernauer, der Engel von Augsburg
• Sydney Grundy
• *A Bunch of Violets
• *An Old Jew
• Henry Arthur Jones – The Case of Rebellious Susan
• Josef Lauff – Ignez de Castro
• Maurice Maeterlinck – The Death of Tintagiles
• Marc-André Raffalovich and John Gray – The Blackmailers
• Victorien Sardou – Gismonda
• George Bernard Shaw – Arms and the Man

  Poetry

• Bliss Carman – Low Tide on Grande Pre: A Book Of Lyrics
• Pierre Louÿs – Songs of Bilitis
• Rainer Maria Rilke – Leben und Lieder

  Non-fiction

• John Bartlett – A Complete Concordance or verbal index to words, phrases and passages in the dramatic Works of Shakespeare
• Edward Carpenter – Homogenic Love and Its Place in a Free Society
• Christabel Rose Coleridge – The Daughters Who Have not Revolted
• Francis Darwin – The Practical Physiology of Plants
• King Gillette – The Human Drift
• Karl Marx – Das Kapital
• Leo Tolstoy – The Kingdom of God Is Within You

  Births

• January 1 – Aurora Nilsson, Swedish writer
• January 22 – Charles Langbridge Morgan, English novelist and dramatist
• February 6 – Eric Partridge, New Zealand/British lexicographer
• March 17 – Paul Green, American novelist and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright
• March 23 – Mark Slonim, Russian literary historian and critic
• April 6 – Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, English children's writer
• April 7 – A. A. Thomson, English cricket and travel writer
• May 27
• *Louis-Ferdinand Céline, French novelist and pamphleteer
• *Dashiell Hammett, American detective fiction writer
• June 14 – W. W. E. Ross, Canadian geophysicist and Imagist poet
• June 15 – Trygve Gulbranssen, Norwegian novelist, businessman and journalist
• June 28 – Allardyce Nicoll, British literary scholar
• July 8 – Claude-Henri Grignon, Canadian novelist, journalist and politician
• July 9 – Phelps Putnam, American poet
• July 26 – Aldous Huxley, English novelist and poet
• July 30 – Păstorel Teodoreanu, Romanian poet and satirist
• August 31 – Albert Facey, Australian autobiographer
• September 6 – Howard Pease, American maritime adventure novelist
• September 23 – Momčilo Nastasijević, Serbian poet, novelist and dramatist
• October 4 – Frans G. Bengtsson, Swedish novelist, essayist, poet and biographer
• October 9 – Agnes von Krusenstjerna, Swedish writer
• October 14 – E. E. Cummings, American poet
• October 18 – H. L. Davis, American fiction writer, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and poet
• October 26 – Eugene Jolas, American writer, literary translator and critic
• December 8 – James Thurber, American cartoonist and humorous writer
• December 26
• *Håkon Evjenth, Norwegian children's writer
• *Jean Toomer, African American writer
• December 31 – Hong Shen, Chinese dramatist

  Deaths

• February 8 – R. M. Ballantyne, Scottish novelist for youth
• April 8
• *Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bengali writer and poet
• *Harriet Anne Scott, Scottish novelist
• April 12 – Ludwig Pfau, German poet, journalist, and revolutionary
• April 14 – Adolf Friedrich von Schack, German poet, literary historian and art collector
• April 29 – Augusta Theodosia Drane, English religious writer and biographer
• May 7 – Marie Sophie Schwartz, Swedish novelist
• May 20 – Edmund Yates, Scottish novelist and dramatist
• June 5 – Edward Capern, English poet
• July 30 – Walter Pater, English essayist, critic and novelist
• August 6 – Otto Müller, German novelist
• September 29 – Christina Rossetti, English poet
• October 8 – Oliver Wendell Holmes, American poet and physician
• October 20 – James Anthony Froude, English historian, novelist and biographer
• December 3 – Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer
• Unknown dates
• *Giuseppe Borrello, Sicilian poet
• *Nabagopal Mitra, Indian playwright, poet and essayist

  Awards

• Newdigate Prize – Frank Taylor