1898 in literature

Events

• January 13 – Émile Zola's open letter to Félix Faure, President of France, on the Dreyfus affair, J'Accuse…!, is published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper L'Aurore. On February 23, Zola is convicted of criminal libel in connection with J'Accuse…!. Following dismissal of his appeal he flees to London to escape imprisonment. In August he begins writing his novel Fécondité in the suburbs.
• February 5 – June 18 – M. P. Shiel's "Yellow Peril" novel The Empress of the Earth, written around contemporary events in China, appears in the Pearson weekly Short Stories and in book form in July as The Yellow Danger; it is frequently reprinted.
• February 25 – Première of Frank Wedekind's Earth Spirit, first of his Lulu plays, in Leipzig, in a production by Carl Heine, with Wedekind himself in the role of Dr. Schön.
• March 25 – O. Henry is imprisoned in Ohio Penitentiary, Columbus, for embezzlement.
• May 28 – Max Beerbohm succeeds George Bernard Shaw as theater critic of The Saturday Review ; Shaw introduces him as "The Incomparable Max".
• June – First appearance of E. W. Hornung's fictional gentleman thief A. J. Raffles in the story "The Ides of March" in Cassell's Magazine.

• Moscow Art Theatre stages its first season under Constantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, including a double bill of Emilia Matthai's Greta's Happiness and Carlo Goldoni's The Mistress of the Inn, opening on 2 December, and the successful and influential Moscow Art Theatre production of The Seagull by Chekhov, opening on.
• Peadar Ua Laoghaire's story novel.
• Gerald Duckworth establishes the publishers Gerald Duckworth and Company in London. Henry James's novella In the Cage is among their first year's output.
• English designer C. R. Ashbee begins book production at the Essex House Press.
• Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary begins publication.
• The "Generation of '98" writers and thinkers are active in Spain.
• The term "Young Poland" is coined after a manifesto by Artur Górski, published in the Kraków newspaper Życie, to signify the period of modernism in the Polish arts.

  New books

Fiction

• :eu:Txomin Agirre|Txomin Agirre – Aunamendiko Lorea
• Nephi Anderson – Added Upon
• Leonid Andreyev – "Bargamot and Garaska"
• Elizabeth von Arnim – Elizabeth and Her German Garden
• F. W. Bain – A Digit of the Moon
• L. Frank Baum – By the Candelabra's Glare
• Arnold Bennett – A Man from the North
• Vicente Blasco Ibáñez – The Shack
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Rough Justice
• N. D. Cocea – Poet-Poetă
• Ralph Connor – Black Rock
• Joseph Conrad – Tales of Unrest
• Alexander Craig – Ionia
• Stephen Crane
• *The Monster and Other Stories
• *The Open Boat and Other Tales
• Stephanus Jacobus du Toit – Die Koningin van Skeba
• Paul Laurence Dunbar
• *Folks From Dixie
• *The Uncalled
• Finley Peter Dunne – Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War
• Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler – Concerning Isabel Carnaby
• John Fox, Jr. – The Kentuckians
• Ángel Ganivet – Los trabajos del infatigable creador Pío Cid
• Maurice Hewlett – Forest Lovers
• Anthony Hope – Rupert of Hentzau
• Joris-Karl Huysmans – La Cathédrale
• Henry James – The Turn of the Screw
• Olha Kobylianska – Valse melancolique
• Jerome K. Jerome – The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
• John Luther Long – "Madame Butterfly"
• Pierre Louÿs – La Femme et le pantin
• Charles Major – When Knighthood Was in Flower
• George Moore – Evelyn Innes
• Władysław Reymont – The Promised Land
• Morgan Robertson – Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan
• Emilio Salgari – The Black Corsair
• Garrett P. Serviss – Edison's Conquest of Mars
• Italo Svevo – Senilità
• Mary Augusta Ward – Helbeck of Bannisdale
• Theodore Watts-Dunton – Aylwin
• H. G. Wells – The War of the Worlds
• Edward Noyes Westcott – David Harum
• Owen Wister – Lin McLean
• Charlotte Mary Yonge – The Armourer's Prentices
• Émile Zola – Paris

  Children and young people

• Horatio Alger – Ragged Dick
• J. Meade Falkner – Moonfleet
• Kenneth Grahame – Dream Days
• K. Langloh Parker - More Australian Legendary Tales
• Emilio Salgari – Il Corsaro Nero
• Ernest Thompson Seton – Wild Animals I Have Known
• Jules Verne – The Mighty Orinoco

  Drama

• Gabriele D'Annunzio
• *Città Morta
• *La Gioconda
• *Sogno di un Pomeriggio d' Autunno
• R.C. Carton – Lord and Lady Algy
• José Echegaray – La duda
• Clyde Fitch – Nathan Hale
• Jacob Gordin – Mirele Efros
• John Oliver Hobbes – The Ambassador
• Arthur Wing Pinero – Trelawny of the 'Wells'
• George Bernard Shaw – Arms and the Man
• Iosif Vulcan – Soare cu ploaie

  Poetry

• Thomas Hardy – Wessex Poems and Other Verses
• Oscar Wilde – The Ballad of Reading Gaol

  Non-fiction

• Catherine Isabella Dodd – Introduction to the Herbartian Principles of Teaching
• Ebenezer Howard –
• Fred T. Jane – Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships
• Sidney Lee – A Life of William Shakespeare
• Liliʻuokalani – Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen
• Thérèse of Lisieux – The Story of a Soul
• Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers – The Book of Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage
• A. E. Waite – The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts

  Births

• April 8 – Maurice Bowra, English poet and humorist
• April 28 – William Soutar, Scottish poet and diarist
• February 6 – Melvin B. Tolson, African-American modernist poet
• March 12 – Tian Han, Chinese dramatist
• May 19 – Julius Evola, Italian esotericist, journalist and philosopher
• May 23 – Scott O'Dell, American children's author
• June 9 – Curzio Malaparte, Italian novelist, playwright, and journalist
• July 22
• *Stephen Vincent Benét, American poet and short-story writer
• *Erich Maria Remarque, German novelist
• August 23 – George Papashvily, Georgian-American sculptor and author
• August 28 – Malcolm Cowley, American novelist, poet, literary critic and journalist
• September 13 – Arthur J. Burks, American writer
• September 15 – J. Slauerhoff, Dutch poet and novelist
• September 16 – H. A. Rey, German-born American children's writer and illustrator
• October 9 – Tawfiq al-Hakim, Egyptian novelist and dramatist
• October 17 – Simon Vestdijk, Dutch writer
• November 14 – Benjamin Fondane, Romanian-born French poet, playwright and critic
• November 29 – C. S. Lewis, English novelist and children's writer
• December 27 – W. C. Sellar, English humorous writer

  Deaths

• January 14 – Lewis Carroll, English scholar and children's writer
• January 18 – Henry Liddell, English lexicographer of Greek
• March 6 – Felice Cavallotti, Italian poet, playwright and politician
• March 12 – Zachris Topelius, Swedish-language Finnish novelist
• March 24 – George Thomas Stokes, Irish church historian
• March 25 – James Payn, English novelist
• March 31 – Eleanor Marx, English political writer and translator
• May 22 – Edward Bellamy, American novelist
• July 14 – Eliza Lynn Linton, English novelist and journalist
• July 20 – Jean Ingelow, English poet and novelist
• August 7 – Georg Ebers, German novelist and Egyptologist
• August 17 – Sir William Fraser, 4th Baronet, English politician, author and book collector
• September 9 – Stéphane Mallarmé, French Symbolist poet
• September 20 – Theodor Fontane, German novelist and poet
• September 29 – William Kingsford, English-born Canadian historian
• November 29 – Ángel Ganivet, Spanish writer
• December 10 – William Black, Scottish novelist

  Awards

• Newdigate prize – John Buchan