1882 in literature

Events

• January 2 – Oscar Wilde arrives in the United States for an extended lecture tour sponsored by Richard D'Oyly Carte. He poses for iconic photographs in Napoleon Sarony's Manhattan studio.
• April 9 – English poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti dies aged 53 of Bright's disease at Birchington-on-Sea in the care of his brother, the critic William Michael Rossetti.
• April 29 – May 6 – The Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu reads out his Luceafărul at two successive meetings of Junimea club in Iași. The poem, on which he had been working since 1873, is his last major work before his mental health collapses, requiring hospital care in Oberdöbling; it will be published in April 1883.
• May 20 – World première of Henrik Ibsen's controversial play Ghosts in Norwegian in Chicago.
• June 2 – English language première of Ibsen's play A Doll's House as The Child Wife in Milwaukee.
• October
• *:sv:Almqvist & Wiksell|Almqvist & Wiksell is established in Uppsala by purchase of an earlier printing company.
• *Rudyard Kipling returns to the British Raj and joins the staff of the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore.
• December – Karl May begins to publish Das Waldröschen in installments.
• unknown date – In Delhi, the first original novel in Hindi is published: Pariksha guru by Srinivas Das.

  New books

Fiction

• F. Anstey – Vice Versa
• Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly – The Story Without a Name
• Walter Besant – The Revolt of Man
• Rolf Boldrewood – Robbery Under Arms
• Félicien Champsaur – Dinah Samuel
• Bankim Chatterjee – Anandmath
• Wilkie Collins – After Dark
• Gabriele D'Annunzio – Terra vergine
• Etonensis – The Mysteries of Verbena House, or, Miss Bellasis Birched for Thieving
• Theodor Fontane – L'Adultera
• Ludovic Halévy – The Abbot Constantine
• Richard Jefferies – Bevis
• Alexander Kielland – Skipper Worse
• George Bernard Shaw – Cashel Byron's Profession
• Robert Louis Stevenson – New Arabian Nights
• Frank R. Stockton – "The Lady, or the Tiger?"
• Torfhildur Þorsteinsdóttir – Brynjólfur Sveinsson biskup
• Anthony Trollope – The Fixed Period
• Gleb Uspensky – The Power of the Land
• Jules Verne
• *Godfrey Morgan: A Californian Mystery
• *''The Green Ray

  Children and young people

• R. D. Blackmore – Christowell
• Mrs. W. K. Clifford – Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise
• Ouida – Bimbi: Stories for Children
• Mark Twain – The Prince and the Pauper

  Drama

• Manilal Dwivedi – Kanta
• José Echegaray – Conflicto entre dos deberes
• Victor Hugo – Torquemada
• Henrik Ibsen – An Enemy of the People
• Victorien Sardou – Fédora
• R. L. Stevenson and W. E. Henley – Deacon Brodie
• Jules Verne – Journey Through the Impossible

  Poetry

• Gabriele D'Annunzio – Canto novo
• George Robert Sims – The Dagonet Ballads

  Non-fiction

• Henri-Frédéric Amiel – :fr:Henri-Frédéric Amiel#Journal intime|Journal intime
• Hall Caine – Recollections of Rossetti
• Ignatius L. Donnelly –
• William Morris – Hopes and Fears for Art
• Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science
• Theodore Roosevelt – The Naval War of 1812
• Janez Trdina – Bajke in povesti o Gorjancih

  Births

• January 10 – Olive Higgins Prouty, American novelist
• January 18 – A. A. Milne, English fiction writer, particularly for children
• January 25 – Virginia Woolf, English novelist
• February 1 – Cicely Fox Smith, English poet and nautical writer
• February 2 – James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet
• March 5 – Henry S. Whitehead, American author
• April 18 – Monteiro Lobato, Brazilian fiction writer, particularly for children
• May 20 – Sigrid Undset, Norwegian author
• May 28 – Avery Hopwood, American playwright
• May 30 – Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov, Russian novelist
• September 12 – Ion Agârbiceanu, Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian writer
• October 28 – Richard Barham Middleton, English poet and fiction writer
• November 2 – Leo Perutz, Austrian-born novelist and mathematician
• November 24 – E. R. Eddison, English fantasy author
• December 13 – André Billy, French author

  Deaths

• January 3 – William Harrison Ainsworth, English historical novelist
• January 6 – Richard Henry Dana, Jr., American novelist and politician
• March 20 – Charlotte Chanter, English botanical writer and novelist
• March 24 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet
• April 10 – Dante Gabriel Rossetti, English poet and painter
• April 27 – Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet, essayist and philosopher
• June 14 – Thomas Cautley Newby, English publisher
• June 30 – Charles J. Guiteau, American writer and lawyer, assassin of United States President James A. Garfield
• August 1 – Henry Kendall, Australian poet
• October 13 – Arthur de Gobineau, French novelist
• December 6 – Anthony Trollope, English novelist