1865 in literature

Events

• January – The first issue appears of Our Young Folks, an American monthly for children produced by Ticknor and Fields in Boston.
• February – Publication of Leo Tolstoy's 1805, an early version of War and Peace, begins in the magazine Russkiy Vestnik.
• April 14 – The President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, is shot while attending a performance of the farce Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln dies the following day.
• June 9 – Charles Dickens is caught in the Staplehurst rail crash in England.
• June 14 – Karl May begins a four-year prison sentence for thefts and frauds at Osterstein Castle.
• July – The American magazine for children The Little Corporal first appears.
• July 4 – Lewis Carroll's children's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is published by Macmillan in London for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, three years after it was first narrated to Alice Liddell and her sisters. He and his illustrator, John Tenniel, withdraw this edition, and the first trade editions are published on November 26 and released in December, that published by Appleton in New York using the rejected sheets from the earlier printing.
• November 11 – London West End opening of the comedy drama Society written and directed by Thomas William Robertson at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, considered a milestone in English Victorian drama because of its realism in dialogue and performance.
• November 18 – Mark Twain's story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is published in the New York weekly The Saturday Press in its original version as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog".
• English writer Edwin Abbott Abbott becomes headmaster of the City of London School at the age of 26.
• Frederick Warne & Co established as publishers in London.

  New books

Fiction

• José de Alencar – Iracema
• R. M. Ballantyne – The Lighthouse
• Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay – Durgeshnandini
• Annie Hall Cudlip – Theo Leigh
• Charles Dickens – Our Mutual Friend
• Mary Mapes Dodge – Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky – "The Crocodile"
• Edmond de Goncourt – Germinie Lacerteux
• Charles Kingsley – Hereward the Wake
• Sheridan Le Fanu – Guy Deverell
• Nikolai Leskov – Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
• George MacDonald – Alec Forbes of Howglen
• Robert Smith Surtees – Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds
• Anthony Trollope – Can You Forgive Her?
• Jules Verne – From the Earth to the Moon
• Émile Zola – La Confession de Claude

  Children and young people

• Wilhelm Busch – Max und Moritz
• Lewis Carroll – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• Mary Mapes Dodge – Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates
• Jean Ingelow – Stories Told to a Child
• Mary Wright Sewell – Mother's Last Words: a ballad

  Drama

• Francis Burnand – Windsor Castle
• Henry James Byron – War to the Knife
• Henrik Ibsen – Brand

  Poetry

• Edward Lear – The History of the Seven Families of the Lake Pipple-Popple
• A. C. Swinburne
• *Atalanta in Calydon
• *Chastelard: a tragedy

  Non-fiction

• Annals of the Joseon Dynasty
• Matthew Arnold – Essays in Criticism
• P. T. Barnum – The Humbugs of the World
• Jacob Grimm – Deutsche Sagen
• Friedrich Albert Lange – History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance
• Karl Marx – Value, Price and Profit
• John Stuart Mill – Examinations of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy
• William Gifford Palgrave – Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia
• James Hutchison Stirling – The Secret of Hegel: Being the Hegelian System in Origin Principle, Form and Matter
• James Hudson Taylor – China's Spiritual Need and Claims

  Births

• February 12 – Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, Polish poet and novelist
• February 21 – John Haden Badley, English educationalist and writer
• March 15 – Edith Maude Eaton, English-born writer on Chinese affairs
• March 20 – Arthur Bayldon, English-born Australian poet
• March 27 – Marion Angus, Scottish poet writing in Braid Scots and English
• March 28 – Mary Findlater, Scottish novelist
• March 29 – Stephen Bonsal, American writer, journalist and translator
• May 2 – Clyde Fitch, American playwright
• May 15 – Albert Verwey, Dutch poet
• June 13 – W. B. Yeats, Irish poet
• June 20 – Enrico Corradini, Italian novelist and essayist
• June 26 – Bernard Berenson, American art historian
• July 21 – M. P. Shiel, born Matthew Phipps Shiell, Montserrat-born British fantasy fiction author
• August 14 – Pietro Gori, Italian anarchist poet
• August 26 – Ellen Marriage, English translator of Balzac
• September 11 – Rainis, Latvian poet and dramatist
• November 2 – Panuganti Lakshminarasimha Rao, Indian writer
• December 11 – Frida Stéenhoff, Swedish writer
• December 13 – Ángel Ganivet, Spanish writer
• December 30 – Rudyard Kipling, English poet and fiction writer

  Deaths

• January 11 – Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Ferland, French Canadian historian
• January 18 – Charles Greville, English diarist
• January 19 – Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, French philosopher
• January 21 – X. B. Saintine, French novelist and dramatist
• February 6 – Isabella Beeton, English writer on household management
• February 25 – Otto Ludwig, German novelist and playwright
• April 2
• *John Cassell, English publisher
• *Richard Cobden, English political writer
• April 13 – Theodosia Trollope, English-born writer
• April 15 – Abraham Lincoln, American orator and president of the republic
• May 14 – Pierre François Xavier de Ram, Belgian historian
• June 10 – Lydia Sigourney, American poet
• June 11 – Frederic Charles Lascelles Wraxall, English writer
• August 4 – William Edmondstoune Aytoun, Scottish poet and humorist
• September 29 – Richard Lower, English dialect poet
• September 30 – Dudley Costello, Irish writer and journalist
• November 12 – Elizabeth Gaskell, English novelist
• December 1 – Abraham Emanuel Fröhlich, Swiss poet
• December 3 – Joseph Marie Quérard, French bibliographer
• December 20 – Barton Bouchier, English religious writer

  Awards

• Newdigate Prize – Frederic Dobree Teesdale