1880 in literature

Events

• April – Publication in France of Les Soirées de Médan, a collection of six Naturalist short stories set during the Franco-Prussian War by six authors who frequent Émile Zola's home, including Guy de Maupassant's first, Boule de Suif, which launches his career.
• April 20 – At the Romanian Academy, Titu Maiorescu announces a reformed Romanian alphabet, adopted by a commission also comprising George Bariț and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu. The rationalized spelling reflects ideas endorsed by Maiorescu since the 1860s, replacing the deep orthography favored by "Latinists".
• June 6 – Statue of Alexander Pushkin, sculpted by Alexander Opekushin, is unveiled in Strastnaya Square, Moscow.
• October – Henry James's novel The Portrait of a Lady begins serial publication in Macmillan's Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly
• December 15 – First performance of a play by Henrik Ibsen in English, The Pillars of Society at the Gaiety Theatre, London.
• Karl May begins publishing his Orient Cycle in Deutschen Hausschatz, where he also publishes Deadly Dust: Ein Abenteuer aus dem nordamerikanischen Westen.
• In the United States, the publishing business of Henry Oscar Houghton and George H. Mifflin is reconstructed as Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

  New books

Fiction

• Henry Adams –
• Rhoda Broughton – Second Thoughts
• Wilkie Collins – Jezebel's Daughter
• Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield – Endymion
• Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov
• Amelia Edwards – Lord Brackenbury
• Evelyn Everett-Green – Tom Tempest's Victory
• Theodor Fontane
• *Grete Minde
• *Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg
• George Gissing – Workers in the Dawn
• Walter T. Gray – A Bad Boy's Diary
• Percy Greg – Across the Zodiac
• Anna Katharine Green – A Strange Disappearance
• Thomas Hardy – The Trumpet-Major
• Henry Kendall – Songs from the Mountains
• Alexander Kielland – Garman og Worse
• Pierre Loti – Le Mariage de Loti
• Ouida – Moths
• Louisa Parr – Adam and Eve
• Anthony Trollope – Ayala's Angel
• Mark Twain – A Tramp Abroad
• Giovanni Verga – Vita dei campi
• Lew Wallace – Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
• Émile Zola – Nana

  Children and young people

• Carlo Collodi – The Adventures of Pinocchio
• Evelyn Everett-Green – Tom Tempest's Victory
• Johanna Spyri – Heidi
• Jules Verne – The Steam House

  Drama

• Oscar Wilde – Vera; or, The Nihilists
• Adolphe L'Arronge – The Lonei Household

  Poetry

• Anne Evans – Poems and Music

  Non-fiction

• Henry Charlton Bastian – The Brain as an Organ of Mind
• James Legge – The Religions of China
• Algernon Charles Swinburne – A Study of Shakespeare
• Charles Warren – The Temple or the Tomb. Giving further evidence in favour of the authenticity of the present site of the Holy Sepulchre

  Births

• February 21 – Waldemar Bonsels, German writer
• February 27 – Angelina Weld Grimké, African-American playwright and poet
• March 13 – Frank Thiess, German writer
• March 21 – E. H. Young, English novelist
• March 30 – Seán O'Casey, Irish dramatist
• June 10 – Margit Kaffka, Hungarian novelist, short story writer and poet
• June 17 – Carl Van Vechten, American writer
• July 4 – Anne Beffort, Luxembourg literary writer and biographer
• July 10 – Greye La Spina, American writer
• August 5 – Ruth Sawyer, American children's writer and novelist
• September 12 – H. L. Mencken, American journalist and English language scholar
• October 18 – Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Russian-born Zionist leader, novelist and poet
• November 1 – Grantland Rice, American sports writer
• November 6 – Robert Musil, Austrian novelist
• November 25 – Elsie J. Oxenham, English story writer for girls
• November 29 – N. D. Cocea, Romanian novelist, critic and journalist

  Deaths

• February 12 – Karl Eduard von Holtei, German poet and dramatist
• February 17 – James Lenox, American bibliophile
• April 9 – Louis Edmond Duranty, French novelist and critic
• April 16 – Edward Vaughan Hyde Kenealy, Irish writer and barrister
• April 18 – Costache Aristia, Wallachian translator, poet, dramatist and actor
• May 5 – Andrei Mocioni, Hungarian-Romanian journalist and literary patron
• May 6 – Ivan Surikov, Russian poet
• May 8 – Gustave Flaubert, French novelist
• May 30 – James Planché, English dramatist
• June 7 – Karl Christian Planck, German philosopher
• July 7 – Lydia Maria Child, American writer and abolitionist
• July 12 – Tom Taylor, English dramatist and journalist
• September 23 – Geraldine Jewsbury, English novelist and woman of letters
• December 22 – George Eliot, English novelist

  Awards

• Commander, First Class of the Order of St. Olav – Andreas Munch

  In literature

• The dramas Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton and Another Part of the Forest by Lillian Hellman are set in this year.
• Mori Ōgai's novel The Wild Geese is set in this year.
• Virginia Woolf's novel The Years opens in this year.