1848 in literature

Events

• January 22 – The second edition of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is dedicated to William Makepeace Thackeray. It is also first published in the United States this year.
• February 21 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto in London.
• March 15 – Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire: Hungarian Revolution of 1848 – The poet Sándor Petőfi with Mihály Táncsics and other young men lead the bloodless revolution in Pest, reciting Petőfi's "Nemzeti dal" and the "12 points" and printing them on the presses of Landerer és Heckenast, so forcing Ferdinand I of Austria to abolish censorship.
• March 18 – The Boston Public Library is founded by an act of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts.
• April 1 – Charles Dickens's novel Dombey and Son concludes its serial publication.
• April 10 – John Ruskin marries Effie Gray.
• May 5 – Poet Alfred de Musset is dismissed as librarian of the Ministry of the Interior under the French Second Republic.
• c. June 27 – The second and final novel of Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is published in London. It sells out in six weeks, requiring a reissue.
• July – Serial publication of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair by Punch magazine concludes. It appears in book format by Bradbury and Evans in London, with illustrations by the author.
• September 24 – Branwell Brontë dies, probably of tuberculosis, at Haworth Parsonage, aged 31.
• October 18 – Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life is published anonymously by Chapman & Hall in London in two volumes.
• c. October – The first frescoes of scenes from English literature in the Poets' Hall of the Palace of Westminster are completed: Charles West Cope's Griselda's first Trial of Patience and John Callcott Horsley's Satan touched by Ithuriel's Spear while whispering evil dreams to Eve.
• November
• *William Makepeace Thackeray's novel The History of Pendennis begins its serial publication.
• *The London publisher George Routledge begins issuing the Railway Library series of cheap reprint novels, pioneering the yellow-back genre, with an edition of James Fenimore Cooper's .
• December 19 – Emily Brontë dies of tuberculosis at Haworth Parsonage, aged 30. She is buried in her father's St Michael and All Angels' Church, Haworth.

• The first issue of the penny dreadful Gentleman Jack, or Life on the Road, probably by James Malcolm Rymer, is published in London by Edward Lloyd. Inspired by the life of the highwayman Claude Duval, but opening in 1780, the series will reach over 200 parts by 1852 and be popular on both sides of the Atlantic.

  New books

Fiction

• W. Harrison Ainsworth – The Lancashire Witches
• Willibald Alexis – Der Werwulf
• R. M. Ballantyne – Life in the Wilds of North America
• Anne Brontë – The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton – Harold, the Last of the Saxons
• William Carleton – The Emigrants of Ahadarra
• Charles Dickens
• *Dombey and Son
• *The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
• Fyodor Dostoevsky – White Nights
• Alexandre Dumas, fils – La Dame aux caméllias
• Elizabeth Gaskell – Mary Barton
• Geraldine Jewsbury – The Half Sisters
• Julia Kavanagh – Madeleine, a Tale of Auvergne
• Charles Kingsley – Yeast
• Eliza Lynn Linton – Amymone: a romance of the days of Pericles
• Frederick Marryat
• *The Little Savage
• *Valerie
• Henri Murger – Scènes de la vie de Bohème
• John Henry Newman – Loss and Gain: the story of a convert
• G. W. M. Reynolds
• *The Coral Island, or the Hereditary Curse
• *Wagner the Wehr-Wolf
• George Sand – François le champi
• Adele Schopenhauer – Eine dänische Geschichte
• William Makepeace Thackeray – The Book of Snobs
• Anthony Trollope – The Kellys and the O'Kellys

  Children and young people

• Cecil Frances Alexander – Hymns for Little Children (includes "All Things Bright and Beautiful" and "Once in Royal David's City"
• Catherine Crowe – Pippie's Warning, or, Mind Your Temper

  Drama

• Émile Augier – L'Aventurière
• Alfred de Musset – André del Sarto

  Poetry

• William Edmonstoune Aytoun – Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton – King Arthur
• James Russell Lowell – A Fable for Critics, The Biglow Papers
• Charles Masson – Legends of the Afghan countries, in verse
• Johan Ludvig Runeberg – The Tales of Ensign Stål

  Non-fiction

• Ivar Aasen – Det norske Folkesprogs Grammatik
• George Catlin – Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe
• Wilkie Collins – Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A.
• Catherine Crowe – The Night-side of Nature
• Jacob Grimm – Geschichte der deutschen Sprache
• Benjamin Randell Harris – The Recollections of Rifleman Harris
• Søren Kierkegaard – The Point of View of My Work as an Author
• Thomas Babington Macaulay – The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, Vols 1–2
• Harriet Martineau – Household Education
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – The Communist Manifesto
• Charles Delucena Meigs – Females and Their Diseases; A Series of Letters to His Class
• John Stuart Mill – Principles of Political Economy
• Monckton Milnes – Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats
• Edgar Allan Poe –
• George Ayliffe Poole – A History of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England
• Percy Bolingbroke St John – French Revolution in 1848: The three days of February, 1848; with sketches of Lamartine, Guizot, etc.
• Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis – Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley
• Harriet Ward – Five years in Kaffirland: with sketches of the late war in that country to the conclusion of peace, written on the spot
• John Collins Warren – Etherization: with Surgical Remarks

  Births

• January 6 – Hristo Botev, Bulgarian poet and journalist
• January 28 – Mary Elizabeth Hawker, Scottish-born English fiction writer
• February 5 – Joris Karl Huysmans, French novelist
• February 16 – Octave Mirbeau, French travel writer, novelist and playwright
• February 24 – Grant Allen, Canadian novelist and science writer
• March 9 – George Panu, Romanian memoirist, critic, and politician
• May – Bonifaciu Florescu, Wallachian and Romanian polygraph
• July 15 – Vilfredo Pareto, Italian economist, political scientist and philosopher
• August 14 – Mary E. Mann, English novelist and short story writer
• August 16 – Francis Darwin, English botanist and academic
• October 25 – Karl Emil Franzos, Austrian novelist

• Maryana Marrash, Syrian writer and salonist

• Bithia Mary Croker, Irish novelist

  Deaths

• January 19 – Isaac D'Israeli, English scholar and man of letters
• February 9 – Ann Batten Cristall, English poet
• February 13 – Sophie von Knorring, Swedish novelist
• July 4 – François-René de Chateaubriand, French historian, politician and diplomat
• July 6 – He Changling, Chinese scholar and writer on governance
• August 9 – Frederick Marryat, English novelist and children's writer
• September 24 – Branwell Brontë, English painter, writer and poet
• November 23 – John Barrow, English writer, geographer and linguist
• December 19 – Emily Brontë, English novelist and poet
• December 23 – James Cowles Prichard, English ethnologist and psychiatrist