1871 in literature

Events

• January 1 – The children's literary magazine Young Folks begins publication in the United Kingdom as Our Young Folks' Weekly Budget.
• January – John Ruskin begins publishing Fors Clavigera, his originally monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain".
• March 18–May 28 – The Paris Commune is influential on the literary figures in the city at the time and far beyond:
• * Jules Vallès publishes his newspaper Le Cri du Peuple February 22–May 23.
• * At the beginning of April, Victor Hugo moves to Brussels to take care of the family of his son, who has just died, but closely follows events in Paris, on April 21 publishing the poem "Pas de représailles" and on June 11 writing the poem "Sur une barricade".
• *Émile Zola, as a journalist for Le Sémaphore de Marseille, reports the fall of the Commune, and is one of the first reporters to enter the city during Semaine sanglante.
• October – "Thomas Maitland", i. e. Robert Williams Buchanan, attacks Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other members of what Buchanan calls the "Fleshly School" of English poetry in The Contemporary Review. On December 16 Rossetti replies in "The Stealthy School of Criticism" in the Athenaeum.
• November 25 – First performance of The Bells starring Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre, London, the actor's first great success. On the same night, he breaks up permanently with his wife when she criticises his choice of profession.
• December – Publication of George Eliot's novel Middlemarch in eight parts commences.
• George Allen and Sons, publishers, predecessors of Allen & Unwin, established in London.

  New books

Fiction

• William Black – A Daughter of Heth
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Fenton's Quest
• George Eliot – Middlemarch
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton – The Coming Race
• Vanchinbalyn Injinash – The Blue Chronicle
• Henry James – Watch and Ward
• George Meredith – The Adventures of Harry Richmond
• William Gifford Palgrave – Personal Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia
• Emily Spender – Restored
• Mark Twain
• *Eye Openers
• *Screamers
• Giovanni Verga – :it:Storia di una capinera|Storia di una capinera
• Jules Verne – A Floating City
• Émile Zola – La Fortune des Rougon

  Children and young people

• Alexander Afanasyev – «Русские детские сказки»
• Louisa M. Alcott – Little Men
• Lewis Carroll – Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
• George MacDonald – At the Back of the North Wind
• Samuel Smiles – A Boy's Voyage Round the World
• Johanna Spyri – Ein Blatt auf Vrony’s Grab

  Drama

• W. S. Gilbert – Pygmalion and Galatea
• Leopold David Lewis – The Bells
• Alexander Ostrovsky – The Forest
• Dobri Voynikov – The Phoney Civilization

  Non-fiction

• Charles Darwin – The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
• Edward Burnett Tylor – Primitive Culture

  Births

• January 17 – Nicolae Iorga, Romanian historian, politician, culture critic, poet and playwright
• February 22 – John Langalibalele Dube, Zulu writer
• February 25 – Lesya Ukrainka, Ukrainian poet and writer
• March 5 – Rosa Luxemburg, Polish-born German revolutionary socialist
• March 27 – Heinrich Mann, German narrator, dramatist and essayist
• June 17 – James Weldon Johnson, American writer and activist
• May 14 – Caton Theodorian, Romanian dramatist and novelist
• July 3 – W. H. Davies, Welsh poet
• July 10 – Marcel Proust, French novelist
• August 21 – Leonid Andreyev, Russian short story writer and playwright
• August 27 – Theodore Dreiser, American novelist
• September 27 – Grazia Deledda, Italian writer and Nobel Prize winner
• October 7 – :de:Georg Hermann|Georg Hermann, German fiction writer
• October 10 – Wickham Steed, English journalist, editor and historian
• October 30 – Paul Valéry, French poet
• November 1 – Stephen Crane, American novelist
• November 10 – Winston Churchill, American novelist

  Deaths

• January 12 – Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois, French dramatist
• February 4 – Hermann, Fürst von Pückler-Muskau, German travel and gardening writer
• February 12 – Alice Cary, American poet
• March 17 – Robert Chambers, Scottish writer and publisher
• March 28 – Joseph Isidore Samson, French playwright and actor
• July 31 – Phoebe Cary, American poet
• July 15 – Ján Chalupka, Slovak dramatist
• December 8 – Thomas Gaspey, English novelist and journalist