1887 in literature

Events

• February – Oscar Wilde publishes "The Canterville Ghost", his first short story, in The Court and Society Review.
• March 30 – Théâtre Libre, established by André Antoine to promote naturalism in theatre, gives its first performances in Paris, originally as an amateur ensemble.
• April 22 – Syracuse University in New York State purchases the Ranke Library from the estate of historian Leopold von Ranke, outbidding the Prussian government.
• November – Arthur Conan Doyle's first detective novel, A Study in Scarlet, is published in Beeton's Christmas Annual by Ward Lock & Co. in London, introducing the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend and chronicler Dr. Watson.
• December 5 – The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works comes into effect.
• December 15 – The Romanian literary magazine Revista Nouă is launched in Bucharest by Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, who answers a request made by Ioan Bianu, Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, Alexandru Vlahuță and others. The first issue, illustrated by George Demetrescu Mirea, hosts Delavrancea's Hagi Tudose and Petre Ispirescu's Sarea în bucate.

• Futabatei Shimei writes and begins to publish The Drifting Cloud, the first modern novel in Japan.
• George Hutchinson establishes Hutchinson & Co. as a publisher in London.
• John Lane and Elkin Mathews set up in partnership under the name The Bodley Head in London, originally as antiquarian booksellers.

  New books

Fiction

• Herman Bang – Stucco
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Cut by the County
• Hall Caine – The Deemster
• Marie Corelli – Thelma
• F. Marion Crawford – Saracinesca
• José Maria de Eça de Queiroz – :pt:A Relíquia|A Relíquia
• Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea – Hagi Tudose
• Anna Bowman Dodd – The Republic of the Future
• Arthur Conan Doyle – A Study in Scarlet
• Édouard Dujardin – Les Lauriers sont coupés
• Benito Pérez Galdós – Fortunata y Jacinta
• Enrique Gaspar – El anacronópete, first fiction to feature a time machine
• George Gissing – Thyrza
• H. Rider Haggard
• *Allan Quatermain
• *Jess
• *She
• Thomas Hardy – The Woodlanders
• W. H. Hudson – A Crystal Age
• Joris-Karl Huysmans – En rade
• Petre Ispirescu – Sarea în bucate
• Pierre Loti – Madame Chrysanthème
• Paolo Mantegazza – Testa
• Appu Nedungadi – Kundalatha
• Bolesław Prus – The Doll
• José Rizal – Noli Me Tangere
• Mark Rutherford – Revolution in Tanner's Lane
• Futabatei Shimei – The Drifting Cloud
• August Strindberg – The People of Hemsö
• Jules Verne
• *The Flight to France
• *Texar's Revenge, or, North Against South
• O. F. Walton – A Peep Behind the Scenes
• Émile Zola – La Terre

  Children and young people

• Palmer Cox – The Brownies, Their Book
• Robert Louis Stevenson – The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables

  Drama

• Anton Chekhov – Ivanov
• Arthur Wing Pinero – Dandy Dick
• Victorien Sardou – La Tosca
• August Strindberg – The Father
• Thomas Russell Sullivan – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, adapted from 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

  Non-fiction

• Mikhail Bakunin – God and the State
• Hall Caine – Life of Samuel Coleridge Taylor
• Charles Darwin – The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
• Julius Dresser – The True History of Mental Science
• Friedrich Engels – The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844
• George William Foote – Royal Paupers: a radical's contribution to the Jubilee
• Franz Hartmann – The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, better known by the name of Paracelsus, and the substance of his teachings
• Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers – The Kabbalah Unveiled
• Friedrich Nietzsche – On the Genealogy of Morality
• Marius Nygaard, Jan Johanssen and Emil Schreiner – Latinsk Ordbog
• A. E. Waite – The Real History of the Rosicrucians
• L. L. Zamenhof – Unua Libro

  Births

• January 7 – Oskar Luts, Estonian author and playwright
• February 1 – Charles Nordhoff, English-born author
• February 3 – Georg Trakl, Austrian poet
• February 11 – John van Melle, South African writer
• February 18 – Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek poet
• March 3 – Rupert Brooke, English poet
• March 9 – Ion Buzdugan, Romanian poet and political figure
• March 14 – Sylvia Beach, American publisher and memoirist
• May 15 – Edwin Muir, Scottish poet and translator
• June 2 – Orrick Glenday Johns, American poet and playwright
• July 1 – Amber Reeves, New Zealand-born English scholar, feminist and novelist
• September 1 – Blaise Cendrars, Swiss-born French writer
• September 8 – Constantin Beldie, Romanian literary promoter and memoirist
• October 1 – Barbu Nemțeanu, Romanian poet and translator
• December 15 – A. de Herz, Romanian playwright and journalist

  Deaths

• February 10 – Mrs Henry Wood, English novelist
• February 19 – Multatuli, Dutch-born writer
• April 23 – John Ceiriog Hughes, Welsh poet and folk song collector
• May 4 – William Murdoch, Scottish-born Canadian poet
• August 20 – Jules Laforgue, French poet
• August 25 – Emma Jane Guyton, English novelist and magazine editor
• October 12 – Dinah Craik, English novelist and poet
• November 2 – Alfred Domett, English-born New Zealand poet and politician
• November 19 – Emma Lazarus, American poet
• December 5 – Eliza Roxcy Snow, American poet

• Frances Browne, Irish poet and novelist