1843 in literature

Events

• January
• *Serial publication begins of Charles Dickens' picaresque novel The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit by Chapman & Hall in London. In the July chapters, he lands his hero in the United States.
• *Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" appears in The Pioneer in Boston and his poem "The Conqueror Worm" in Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia.
• February – Macmillan Publishers is founded in London by the Scottish brothers Daniel and Alexander Macmillan.
• April 4 – William Wordsworth accepts the office of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, after the death of Robert Southey on March 21. He is reassured that it is seen as a purely honorific position.
• June 21 – Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Gold-Bug" begins to be serialized in the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper as the winning entry in a competition, earning Poe a $100 prize. It will be widely reprinted and adapted for theater. It popularizes cryptography.
• July – Margaret Fuller's "The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women" appears in The Dial magazine in the United States. It will later be expanded into a book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century.
• August 19 – Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic short story "The Black Cat" is first published in The Saturday Evening Post.
• August 22 – The Theatres Act in the United Kingdom ends a virtual monopoly of theatrical performances held by the patent theatres and encourages development of popular entertainment.
• September – Ada Lovelace translates and expands Menabrea's notes on Charles Babbage's analytical engine, including an algorithm for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers, seen as the world's first computer program.
• October – Anna Atkins begins publishing Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, a collection of contact printed cyanotype photograms of algae, to form the first book illustrated with photographs.
• December 17 – Publication of Charles Dickens' novella A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Chapman & Hall is made at his expense. It introduces the character Ebenezer Scrooge. Released on December 19, it sells out by Christmas Eve.
• Christmas – Thomas Hood's poem "The Song of the Shirt" appears in Punch.
• unknown dates
• *The Routledge publishing firm is founded in London by the Cumberland-born bookseller George Routledge.
• *The steam-powered rotary printing press is invented by Richard March Hoe in the United States.

  New books

Fiction

• W. Harrison Ainsworth – Windsor Castle
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton – The Last of the Barons
• James Fenimore Cooper – Le Mouchoir; an Autobiographical Romance
• Charles Dickens
• *A Christmas Carol
• *Martin Chuzzlewit
• Alexandre Dumas, père – Georges
• Catherine Gore – The Banker's Wife
• Léon Gozlan – Aristide Froissart
• Victor Hugo – Les Burgraves
• Søren Kierkegaard – Diary of a Seducer
• Frederick Marryat – Monsieur Violet
• Eugène Sue – The Mysteries of Paris
• Robert Smith Surtees – Handley Cross
• Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna – Perils of the Nation

  Children and young people

• Hans Christian Andersen – New Fairy Tales

  Drama

• Eusebio Asquerino – Casada, vírgen y mártir
• V. A. Bhave – Sita Swayamvar
• Théophile Gautier – Un Voyage en Espagne
• Nikolai Gogol – The Gamblers
• W. T. Moncrieff – The Scamps of London

  Poetry

• Thomas Hood – "The Song of the Shirt"
• Richard Henry Horne – Orion: an epic poem
• Edgar Allan Poe – "The Conqueror Worm"

  Non-fiction

• Leon Battista Alberti – I Libri della famiglia
• Anna Atkins – Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions
• Paul Rudolf von Bilguer – Handbuch des Schachspiels
• George Borrow – The Bible in Spain; or, the Journey, Adventures, and Imprisonment of an English-man in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula
• James Braid – Neurypnology: or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep
• Thomas Carlyle – Past and Present
• Marquis de Custine – :fr:La Russie en 1839|La Russie en 1839
• Benjamin Hall Kennedy – Elementary Latin Primer
• Søren Kierkegaard – Fear and Trembling
• Thomas Babington Macaulay – Critical and Historical Essays
• Moses Margoliouth – The Fundamental Principles of Modern Judaism Investigated
• John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic
• William H. Prescott – History of the Conquest of Mexico
• John Ruskin – Modern Painters, vol. 1
• Wei Yuan and others – Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms

  Births

• January 14 – Hans Forssell, Swedish historian
• January 17 – Florence Montgomery, English novelist and children's writer
• February 24
• *Teófilo Braga, Portuguese poet, playwright and politician
• *Violet Fane, English novelist, poet and essayist
• April 15
• *Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, American author, reformer, and philanthropist
• *Henry James, American-born fiction writer
• April 25 – Constance Cary Harrison, American playwright and novelist
• May 10 – Benito Pérez Galdós, Spanish novelist
• May 3 – Edward Dowden, Irish poet and critic
• May 10 – Benito Pérez Galdós, Spanish novelist
• May 25 – Christabel Rose Coleridge, English novelist and editor
• June 9 – Bertha von Suttner, Austrian pacifist writer
• July 5 – Mandell Creighton, English bishop and historian
• September 26 – James Rice, English novelist
• October 25 – Gleb Uspensky, Russian writer
• November – Lucy M. Hall, American physician and writer
• December 7 – Helena Nyblom, née Roed, Danish-born poet and writer of fairy tales
• December 10 – Isabella Fyvie Mayo, Scottish poet, novelist, and reformer
• December 21 – Thomas Bracken, Irish-born New Zealand poet
• December 23 – Ada Langworthy Collier, American author
• December 29 – Princess Elisabeth of Wied, German-born queen consort and writer
• unknown dates
• *Mary Bathurst Deane, English novelist
• *Lillian Rozell Messenger, American poet

  Deaths

• January 11 – Francis Scott Key, American poet
• February 10 – Richard Carlile, English writer and agitator for suffrage and freedom of the press
• February 22 – Mary Hays, English feminist writer
• March 21 – Robert Southey, English poet and Poet Laureate
• May 12 – Charlotte von Kalb, German writer
• May 19 – Charles James Apperley, English sporting writer
• May 28 – Noah Webster, American lexicographer
• June 6 – Friedrich Hölderlin, German poet, novelist, and dramatist
• July 4 – John Basset, writer on Cornish mining
• July 9 – Karoline Pichler, Austrian novelist
• July 31 – William Thomas Lowndes, English bibliographer
• August 10 – Jakob Friedrich Fries, German philosopher
• October 21 – William Pinnock, English writer, publisher and bookseller
• November 25 – Ellen Pickering, English novelist
• December 11 – Casimir Delavigne, French poet and dramatist

  Awards

• Newdigate Prize – Matthew Arnold, "Cromwell"