1844 in literature

Events

• March–July – Alexandre Dumas père's historical adventure story The Three Musketeers is serialized in the Paris newspaper Le Siècle.
• August 28 – Alexandre Dumas père's near-recent historical adventure story The Count of Monte Cristo. Book publication also begins this year.
• October – George W. M. Reynolds begins publication of the bestselling "penny dreadful" city mysteries series The Mysteries of London.
• Autumn – Margaret Fuller joins Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune as literary critic, becoming the first full-time female book reviewer in American journalism.
• December 2 – Emily Brontë writes the poem "A Death-Scene".

• The first volumes of Patrologia Latina'', a 217-volume collection of works in Latin, are published in Paris by Jacques Paul Migne. These include the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian, among other authors.

  New books

Fiction

• José de Alencar – Os contrabandistas
• Honoré de Balzac – Les Paysans
• Charles Dickens
• *The Chimes
• *Martin Chuzzlewit
• Benjamin Disraeli – Coningsby
• Alexandre Dumas
• *The Count of Monte Cristo
• *The Three Musketeers
• Charles Lever – Tom Burke of Ours
• Joaquim Manuel de Macedo – A Moreninha
• Edgar Allan Poe – The Angel of the Odd
• G. W. M. Reynolds – The Mysteries of London
• Eugène Sue – Le Juif Errant
• William Makepeace Thackeray – The Luck of Barry Lyndon
• Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna – The Wrongs of Women
• Charlotte Mary Yonge – Abbeychurch, or, Self Control and Self Conceit
• Edgar Allan Poe - The Premature Burial

  Children and young people

• Heinrich Hoffmann – Struwwelpeter
• Frederick Marryat – Settlers in Canada
• Elizabeth Missing Sewell – Amy Herbert

  Drama

• Émile Augier – La Ciguë
• Gustav Freytag – Die Brautfahrt, oder Kunz von der Rosen
• Christian Friedrich Hebbel – Maria Magdalene
• José Zorilla – Don Juan Tenorio

  Poetry

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Poems
• Heinrich Heine – Neue Gedichte
• James Russell Lowell – Poems
• Coventry Patmore – Poems

  Non-fiction

• Robert Chambers – Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
• Friedrich Engels – Condition of the Working Classes in England
• Joseph Ennemoser – Geschichte der Magie
• Søren Kierkegaard – The Concept of Anxiety
• Karl Marx – On the Jewish Question
• John Stuart Mill – Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy
• William Smith – Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
• Arthur Penrhyn Stanley – Life of Arnold
• Max Stirner – The Ego and Its Own
• Henry Fox Talbot – The Pencil of Nature

  Births

• January 2 – Emeline Harriet Howe, American writer and social activist
• January 8 – Sarah Carmichael Harrell, American educator, reformer, and writer
• January 14 – Susan Frances Nelson Ferree, American writer and activist
• February 25 – Alice Diehl, English novelist and concert pianist
• March 30 – Paul Verlaine, French lyric poet
• April 2 – George Haven Putnam, American author, publisher
• April 16 – Anatole France, French writer
• April 12 – Mollie Evelyn Moore Davis, American poet, writer, and editor
• May 9 – Sarah Newcomb Merrick, American teacher, writer, and physician
• July 21 – Matilda Maranda Crawford, American-Canadian writer and poet
• July 22 – William Archibald Spooner, English academic and instigator of spoonerisms
• July 28 – Gerard Manley Hopkins, English poet
• August 29 – Edward Carpenter, English socialist poet and philosopher
• September 9 – Maurice Thompson, American novelist
• October 1 – H. Maria George Colby, American author of novelettes and juvenile literature
• October 15 – Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher
• October 22 or 23 – Sarah Bernhardt, French actress
• October 23 – Robert Bridges, English poet
• October 25 – Joseph Marmette, Canadian novelist and historian
• October 27 – Klas Pontus Arnoldson, Swedish writer and pacifist
• November 21 – Ada Cambridge, English/Australian writer and poet
• December 13 – Catharine Hitchcock Tilden Avery, American author, editor, and educator

• Mrs. Lovett Cameron, English romantic novelist
• Janet Milne Rae, Scottish novelist
• Evelyn Whitaker, English children's writer

  Deaths

• January 4 – Maria Hack, English educational writer
• January 27 – Charles Nodier, French novelist
• February 11 – Tamenaga Shunsui, Japanese novelist
• February 12 – Jan Nepomuk Štěpánek, Czech dramatist
• May 2 – William Thomas Beckford, English novelist and travel writer
• June 11 – Urban Jarnik, Slovene poet and historian
• June 15 – Thomas Campbell, Scottish poet
• July 11 – Evgeny Baratynsky, Russian poet and philosopher
• August 14 – Henry Cary, Gibraltar-born Irish author and translator
• September 18 – John Sterling, Scottish novelist and poet
• October 28 – Sándor Kisfaludy, Hungarian poet and dramatist
• November 4 – Barbara Hofland, English children's and schoolbook author
• November 21 – Ivan Krylov, Russian fabulist

  Awards

• Newdigate Prize – Evgeny Baratynsky