1866 in literature

Events

• Ludwig Anzengruber returns to Vienna after working as a travelling actor.
• Charles Baudelaire's collection Les Épaves is published in Belgium, containing poems from Les Fleurs du mal that were suppressed for outraging public morality.
• Luigi Capuana becomes a theatre critic for the Italian newspaper The Nation.
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel Crime and Punishment is serialized through the year in the monthly literary magazine Russkiy Vestnik. His novella The Gambler is dictated to his future wife to meet a publisher deadline of November 1.
• Josip Jurčič has Deseti brat published, as the first full-length novel in the Slovene language.
• Nandshankar Mehta publishes Karana Ghelo, the first Gujarati language novel.
• Hesba Stretton's children's story Jessica's First Prayer is serialized in Sunday at Home As a book, it sells one and half million copies.
• Algernon Charles Swinburne's first collection Poems and Ballads causes a sensation on publication in London, especially the ones written in homage to Sappho and the sadomasochistic "Dolores ". Under threat of prosecution, his original publisher, Moxon and Co., transfers publication rights to the more liberal John Camden Hotten.
• Anthony Trollope's novel Nina Balatka: The Story of a Maiden of Prague is initially published anonymously. Trollope is interested in discovering whether his books sell on their own merits or as a consequence of the author's name and reputation.
• The Stockholm Reading Parlor is co-founded by Sophie Adlersparre in Sweden; it becomes a free library for women to improve their access to education.
• The first detective fiction by women authors is published: the dime novel The Dead Letter, an American Romance by "Seeley Regester" in New York City as the first full-length American work of crime fiction, having begun to appear serially in the January Beadle's Monthly; Mary Fortune's story "The Dead Witness, or the Bush waterhole" is published in the Australian Journal on January 20.
• The former English chess master Howard Staunton publishes a facsimile of the Shakespeare First Folio by photolithography.
• London publisher Samuel Orchart Beeton is obliged by the financial panic of May/June to sell his titles and name to Ward Lock & Co.
• The American magazine for children Children's Hour publishes its first issue.
• Charles Dickens publishes "Mugby Junction" as a Christmas supplement to his magazine All the Year Round, containing short stories by himself and by Charles Collins, Amelia B. Edwards, Andrew Halliday and Hesba Stretton.

  New books

Fiction

• Louisa May Alcott – "Behind a Mask, or A Woman's Power"
• R. D. Blackmore – Cradock Nowell
• Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay – Kapalkundala
• Wilkie Collins – Armadale
• John Esten Cooke – Surry of Eagle's-Nest
• Alphonse Daudet – Letters From My Windmill
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
• Alexandre Dumas, fils – L'Affaire Clemenceau
• George Eliot – Felix Holt, the Radical
• Augusta Jane Evans – St. Elmo
• John William De Forest – Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
• Émile Gaboriau – L'Affaire Lerouge
• Elizabeth Gaskell – Wives and Daughters
• Victor Hugo – Toilers of the Sea
• George MacDonald – Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood
• Mrs Oliphant – Miss Marjoribanks
• Ouida – Chandos
• Charles Reade – Griffith Gaunt
• Emmanuel Rhoides – Ἡ Πάπισσα Ἰωάννα
• Felicia Skene – Hidden Depths
• Anthony Trollope – Nina Balatka
• José Milla y Vidaurre – La Hija del Adelantado

  Children

• Anna Harriett Drury – The Three Half-Crowns : a story for boys
• James Greenwood – The True History of a Little Ragamuffin
• Hesba Stretton – Jessica's First Prayer

  Drama

• Dion Boucicault – Rip van Winkle or The Sleep of Twenty Years
• Alexandre Dumas, fils – Heloise Paranquet
• Henrik Ibsen – Brand
• Dobri Voynikov – Princess Rayna

  Poetry

• Charles Baudelaire – Les Épaves
• Algernon Charles Swinburne – Poems and Ballads
• Paul Verlaine – Poèmes saturniens, including "Chanson d'automne"

  Non-fiction

• William Wells Brown – The Negro in the American Rebellion
• Edward Bruce Hamley – The Operations of War Explained and Illustrated
• Friedrich Albert Lange – History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance
• Edward A. Pollard – The Lost Cause
• John Robert Seeley – Ecce Homo: A Survey in the Life and Work of Jesus Christ
• Charles Haddon Spurgeon – The Wordless Book
• Benjamin Thorpe assisted by Elise Otté – Edda Sæmundar Hinns Frôða: the Edda of Sæmund the Learned, from the old Norse or Icelandic

  Births

• January 2 – Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică, Romanian literary critic
• January 29 – Romain Rolland, French dramatist, novelist and Nobel Prize-winner
• February 9 – George Ade, American columnist and playwright
• February 24 – Arthur Pearson, English writer and newspaper publisher
• March 2 – John Gray, English poet
• March 16 – E. K. Chambers, English literary scholar
• May 2 – Paul Kretschmer, German linguist
• July 28 – Beatrix Potter, English children's writer and illustrator
• August 12 – Jacinto Benavente, Spanish dramatist and Nobel Prize-winner
• August 16 – Dora Sigerson, Irish poet
• September 7 – Tristan Bernard, French writer
• August 31 – Elizabeth von Arnim, née Mary Annette Beauchamp, Australian-born novelist
• September 21 – H. G. Wells, English novelist and social commentator
• October 28 – Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Spanish dramatist and novelist
• November 4 – Jane Findlater, Scottish novelist
• November 21 – Dusé Mohamed Ali, Egyptian-born political activist, journalist and dramatist

• Edith Escombe, English fiction writer and essayist

  Deaths

• January 23 – Thomas Love Peacock, English satirical novelist
• February 2 – François-Xavier Garneau, French Canadian historian and civil servant
• March 6 – William Whewell, English polymath and cleric
• March 29 – John Keble, English poet and cleric
• May 5 – John Critchley Prince, English poet
• June 16 – Joseph Méry, French satirist and librettist
• August 1 – Luigi Carlo Farini, Italian historian
• August 12 – Philip Stanhope Worsley, English poet and translator
• September 10 – Charles Maclaren, Scottish founding editor of The Scotsman
• September 14 – Léon Gozlan, French novelist and dramatist
• September 19 – Christian Hermann Weisse, German philosopher
• September 26 – Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, Swedish-born novelist
• October – Evan Bevan, Welsh writer of satirical verse
• December 20 – Ann Taylor, English poet and critic

  Awards

• Newdigate Prize – George Yeld