1873 in literature

Events

• January 1 – Chicago Public Library opens in an old water tank in the aftermath of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
• March 3
• *The United States Congress enacts the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" books through the mail.
• *The first performance of W. S. Gilbert and Gilbert Arthur à Beckett's play The Happy Land at the Royal Court Theatre, London, parodies William Ewart Gladstone, Robert Lowe, and Acton Smee Ayrton, respectively the Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and First Commissioner of Works.
• March 18 – Leo Tolstoy begins his novel Anna Karenina, which is serialized in Russkiy Vestnik between 1873 and 1877.
• July – Thomas Hardy's novel A Pair of Blue Eyes completes its serialization in Tinsley's Magazine and appears in book format in London. Although this is Hardy's third novel, it is the first to bear his name on publication in the U.S.
• July 10 – Paul Verlaine shoots and wounds Arthur Rimbaud in Brussels.
• November – The children's periodical St. Nicholas Magazine begins publication by Scribner and Company in New York under the editorship of Mary Mapes Dodge.
• December 18 – Louisa May Alcott's family satire "Transcendental Wild Oats" is published in the newspaper The Independent.

• Serialization of the novel Night and Morning as Xinxi xiantan by "Lishao Jushi" begins in the Shanghai monthly Yinghuan Suoji, the first secular fiction translated from English into Chinese.
• Charles M. Barnes opens his book printing business in Wheaton, Illinois, a forerunner of publisher Barnes & Noble.
• In Berlin, the Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu is known to be working on the verse fairy tale "Girl in the Garden of Gold". He will revisit the text regularly during the next decade, eventually producing his masterpiece Luceafărul.
• Bertha Kinsky becomes governess to the Suttner family.

  New books

Fiction

• Louisa May Alcott – '
• Hortense Allart – Les Enchantements de Prudence avec George Sand
• Ambrose Bierce – The Fiend's Delight
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Publicans and Sinners
• Rhoda Broughton
• *Nancy
• *Tales for Christmas Eve
• Bankim Chatterjee – The Poison Tree
• Wilkie Collins
• *Miss or Mrs.?
• *The New Magdalen
• Sami Frashëri – Ta'aşşûk-ı Tal'at ve Fitnât
• Émile Gaboriau – La Corde au cou
• Thomas Hardy – A Pair of Blue Eyes
• William Dean Howells – A Chance Acquaintance
• Nikolai Leskov – The Enchanted Wanderer
• George MacDonald – The History of Gutta-Percha Willie, the Working Genius
• Benito Pérez Galdós – Trafalgar
• Anne Thackeray Ritchie – Old Kensington
• Karolina Světlá – Nemodlenec
• Anthony Trollope – Phineas Redux
• Mark Twain – '
• Jules Verne – Around the World in Eighty Days
• Émile Zola – Le Ventre de Paris

  Children

• Georgina Castle Smith – Nothing to Nobody
• Charlotte Mary Yonge – Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Bible History
• Helen Zimmern – Stories in Precious Stones

  Drama

• Henrik Ibsen
• *Emperor and Galilean
• *Love's Comedy
• Adolphe L'Arronge – My Leopold
• Émile Zola – Thérèse Raquin

  Poetry

• Paul Bourget – Au bord de la mer
• Robert Browning – Red Cotton Night-Cap Country
• Tristan Corbière – only published work included in Les Amours Jaunes
• Edmund Gosse – On Viol and Flute
• Arthur Rimbaud – Une Saison en Enfer

  Non-fiction

• Samuel Butler – The Fair Haven
• Alexandre Dumas – Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine
• Anna Leonowens – The English Government at the Siamese Court
• Émile Littré – Dictionnaire de la langue française
• Walter Pater – Studies in the History of the Renaissance
• Leslie Stephen – Essays on Free Thinking and Plain Speaking
• Charlotte Mary Yonge – Life of John Coleridge Patteson

  Births

• January 1 – Mariano Azuela, Mexican writer
• January 7 – Charles Péguy, French poet and essayist
• January 9 – Hayim Nahman Bialik, Russian-born Hebrew-language poet
• January 20 – Johannes V. Jensen, Danish writer and Nobel Prize winner
• January 28 – Colette, French novelist
• February 23 – Haralamb Lecca, Romanian dramatist, poet and translator
• March 10 – Jakob Wassermann, German novelist
• March 20 – Constantin Banu, Romanian politician, journalist, cultural promoter and aphorist
• Before March 29 – Peig Sayers, Irish seanchaí
• April 22 – Ellen Glasgow, American novelist
• May 17 – Henri Barbusse, French novelist
• June 8 – José Martínez Ruiz, Spanish novelist
• June 16 – Lady Ottoline Morrell, English patron of the arts
• September 8 – Alfred Jarry, French dramatist
• October 1 – Ludovic Dauș, Romanian novelist and dramatist
• October 10 – George Cabot Lodge, American poet
• November 13 – Oliver Onions, English novelist and ghost story writer
• December 3 – Ilie Bărbulescu, Romanian linguist and journalist
• December 7 – Willa Cather, American novelist
• December 17 – Ford Madox Ford, English novelist
• December 29 – Ovid Densusianu, Romanian poet, philologist and journalist

• Henric Streitman, Romanian essayist and journalist

  Deaths

• January 9 – Sigurd Abel, German historian
• January 10 – Francesco Dall'Ongaro, Italian poet and dramatist
• January 16 – Ulrika von Strussenfelt, Swedish novelist
• January 18 – Edward Bulwer-Lytton, English novelist and playwright
• February 1 – Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Cuban-born novelist
• February 7 – Sheridan Le Fanu, Irish writer
• February 24 – Spiridon Trikoupis, Greek author and orator
• May 8 – John Stuart Mill, English philosopher
• May 22 – Alessandro Manzoni, Italian poet and novelist
• May 27 – Pierre-Antoine Lebrun, French poet
• August 15 – Edward Meredith Cope, English classicist
• September 25 – Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, Italian novelist
• September 26 – Julius Roerich Benedix, German dramatist
• September 28 – Émile Gaboriau, French novelist
• October 4 – Margaret Gatty, English children's author
• November 6 – Manuel Bretón de los Herreros, Spanish playwright
• Unknown date – Harriet Ward, English non-fiction and fiction writer