1869 in literature

Events

• February 3 – Booth's Theatre opens on Manhattan with the owner, Edwin Booth, playing the male lead in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
• May 22 – Serial publication of Anthony Trollope's novel He Knew He Was Right concludes and it appears in London as the first book to include a fictional private investigator, ex-policeman Samuel Bozzle. It concerns a case of marital breakdown.
• August
• *Ambrose Bierce, writing a satirical column for the San Francisco News Letter, begins to produce the cynical definitions which will eventually become The Devil's Dictionary.
• *Macmillan Publishing opens its first American office in New York City, headed by George Edward Brett.
• October 5 – Model, poet and artist Elizabeth Siddal is exhumed at Highgate Cemetery in London in order to recover the manuscript of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poems buried with her.
• December – Publication of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace complete in book form concludes. It is printed in Moscow and sold by the author on subscription.

• As a protest against her drama school having been closed down by the Russian authorities, Swedish-born actress Hedvig Raa-Winterhjelm delivers the lines in her next performance, Aleksis Kivi's Lea, in the Finnish language, the first time this has been spoken in the public theater in Finland.

  New books

Fiction

• Thomas Bailey Aldrich – The Story of a Bad Boy
• Ignacio Manuel Altamirano – Clemencia
• Horatio Alger, Jr. – Luck and Pluck
• R. M. Ballantyne – Erling the Bold
• R. D. Blackmore – Lorna Doone
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky – The Idiot
• Alexandre Dumas, père – The Knight of Sainte-Hermine
• Gustave Flaubert – Sentimental Education
• Émile Gaboriau – Monsieur Lecoq
• Ivan Goncharov – The Precipice
• Edmond and Jules de Goncourt – Madame Gervaisais
• Victor Hugo – The Man Who Laughs
• Sheridan Le Fanu – The Wyvern Mystery
• Nikolai Leskov – Old Years in Plodomasovo
• Joaquim Manuel de Macedo – A Luneta Mágica
• Hector Malot – Romain Kalbris
• Florence Montgomery – Misunderstood
• Charles Reade – Foul Play
• Capt. Hawley Smart – Breezie Langton
• Hesba Stretton – Alone in London
• Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
• Charlotte M. Yonge – The Chaplet of Pearls

  Children and young people

• Louisa May Alcott – Good Wives
• Frances Freeling Broderip – Tales of the Toys told by Themselves
• Juliana Horatia Ewing – Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances
• Jean Ingelow – Mopsa the Fairy
• A. D. T. Whitney – Hitherto

  Drama

• Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson – Sigurd Slembe
• Navalram Pandya – Veermati
• Mendele Mocher Sforim – Di Takse

  Poetry

• Henry Kendall – Leaves from Australian Forests

  Non-fiction

• Matthew Arnold – Culture and Anarchy
• P. T. Barnum – Struggles and Triumphs
• Josephine Butler – Women's Work and Women's Culture
• Warren Felt Evans – The Mental Cure, illustrating the influence of the Mind on the Body
• William Ewart Gladstone – Juventus Mundi: The gods and men of "the heroic" age
• John Stuart Mill – The Subjection of Women
• Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad
• Richard Wagner – Das Judenthum in der Musik
• Garnet Wolseley – Soldier’s Pocket-book for Field Service

  Births

• January 10 – Rachel Davis Harris, African American librarian
• January 15 – Stanisław Wyspiański, Polish dramatist, poet, painter and architect
• February 8 – Victor Ido, born Hans van de Wall, Dutch East Indian journalist, novelist and playwright
• February 11 – Else Lasker-Schüler, German-born poet, playwright and short story writer
• March 11 – F. G. Loring, English writer and naval officer
• March 14 – Algernon Blackwood, English writer
• May 10 – Rachel Davis Harris, African American librarian
• May 23 – Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, American poet
• June 10 – Arthur Shearly Cripps, English-born poet, short story writer and Anglican priest in Africa
• July 1 – William Strunk, Jr., American professor of English
• July 8 – William Vaughn Moody, American dramatist and poet
• July 29 – Booth Tarkington, American novelist
• August 10 – Laurence Binyon, English poet and scholar
• October 6 – Bo Bergman, Swedish poet
• November 15 – Charlotte Mew, English poet
• November 20 – Zinaida Gippius, Russian writer
• November 22 – André Gide, French writer
• December 22 – Edwin Arlington Robinson, American poet
• December 30 – Stephen Leacock, English-born Canadian humorist and economist

  Deaths

• January 20 – Carl Wilhelm Göttling, German classical commentator
• January 30
• *Frances Catherine Barnard, English writer
• *William Carleton, Irish writer
• February 15 – Ghalib, Indian poet
• February 28 – Alphonse de Lamartine, French poet and politician
• May 18 – Peter Cunningham, British literary scholar and antiquarian
• July 11 – William Jerdan, Scottish-born editor
• July 19 – Victor Aimé Huber, German travel writer and literary historian
• August 2 – Thomas Medwin, English poet, biographer and translator
• October 18 – Simon Jenko, Slovene poet
• November 3 – Andreas Kalvos, Greek Romantic poet and dramatist