1888 in literature

Events

• February 9 – During Joseph Conrad's career at sea as Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, he departs from Bangkok for Sydney in his first command as master, on the British barque Otago. This provides a basis for his novella The Shadow Line.
• March 6 – On the day of Amos Bronson Alcott's funeral at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, his daughter, novelist Louisa May Alcott, already in poor health, suffers a fatal stroke.
• March 16 – Foundation stone for a new National Library of Greece building is laid in Athens.
• May 26 – In London, Punch magazine begins serialisation of George and Weedon Grossmith's humorous The Diary of a Nobody, the first entry being for "April 3".
• June 3 – Ernest Thayer's baseball poem "Casey at the Bat" is first published under the pen name "Phin" as the last of his humorous contributions to The San Francisco Examiner.
• July – Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes detective novel, A Study in Scarlet, is first published separately as a book, by Ward Lock & Co in London with illustrations by the author's father, Charles Altamont Doyle.
• October
• *The English publisher Henry Vizetelly is prosecuted in London by the National Vigilance Association and fined for obscene libel for his English translation of Zola's La Terre.
• *The first book to feature Jack the Ripper in fiction is published while the Whitechapel murders attributed to Jack the Ripper are still taking place in London, the short Gothic novel The Curse Upon Mitre Square by John Francis Brewer, which features the murder of Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square on September 30 as a key plot element.

• Sholem Aleichem edits the first issue of the anthology Di Yidishe Folksbibliotek in Kiev, giving important exposure to young writers in Yiddish, including I. L. Peretz's long ballad "Monish".
• The Finnish epic Kalevala is published for the first time in English by American linguist John Martin Crawford.
• German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche writes Götzen-Dämmerung, oder, Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert, Der Antichrist and his autobiography, Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist, his last works before his total mental collapse.
• "Papus" founds the esoteric magazine L'Initiation in France.

• The sexual memoir My Secret Life by "Walter", perhaps Henry Spencer Ashbee, begins publication, being printed in Amsterdam for clandestine sale in Britain.

  New books

Fiction

• Grant Allen
• *The Devil's Die
• *The White Man's Foot
• Edward Bellamy – Looking Backward: 2000–1887
• Rolf Boldrewood – Robbery Under Arms
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – The Fatal Three
• Richard Francis Burton – The Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night
• Félicien Champsaur – L'Amant des danseuses
• Louis Couperus – Eline Vere
• James De Mille – A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder
• Antonio Fogazzaro – The Mystery of the Poet
• Theodor Fontane – Irrungen, Wirrungen
• H. Rider Haggard – Maiwa's Revenge
• Thomas Hardy – Wessex Tales
• Gerhart Hauptmann – :de:Bahnwärter Thiel|Bahnwärter Thiel
• Henry James
• *The Aspern Papers
• *Princess Casamassima
• Rudyard Kipling
• *The Man Who Would Be King
• *Plain Tales from the Hills
• Amy Levy – Reuben Sachs
• Jean Lombard – L'Agonie
• George MacDonald – The Elect Lady
• Herman Melville – John Marr and Other Sailors
• Octave Mirbeau – L'Abbé Jules
• George Moore – Spring Days – A Prelude to Don Juan
• Shardha Ram Phillauri – Bhagyawati
• Raul Pompéia – O Ateneu
• José Maria de Eça de Queiroz – Os Maias
• Arthur Quiller-Couch – Troy Town
• Henryk Sienkiewicz – Fire in the Steppe
• Theodor Storm – The Rider on the White Horse
• Ivan Vazov – Under the Yoke
• Lew Wallace – The Boyhood of Christ
• Mrs Humphrey Ward – Robert Elsmere
• Oscar Wilde – The Happy Prince and Other Tales

  Children and young people

• G. A. Henty
• *'
• *'
• George MacDonald – The Elect Lady
• Robert Louis Stevenson – The Black Arrow
• Jules Verne
• *Family Without a Name
• *Two Years' Vacation
• Oscar Wilde – The Happy Prince and Other Tales

  Drama

• Sarah Bernhardt – L'Aveu, drame en un acte en prose
• Félicien Champsaur – Lulu
• Henrik Ibsen – The Lady from the Sea
• Alexander Kielland – Professoren
• August Strindberg – Miss Julie
• Hall Caine – Ben-my-Chree

  Poetry

• Sir Edwin Arnold – With Saʿdi in the Garden; or, The Book of Love
• W. E. Henley – A Book of Verses, including first publication of "Invictus"
• Andrejs Pumpurs – Lāčplēsis

  Non-fiction

• Joseph Bertrand – Calcul des probabilités
• John D. Billings – Hard Tack and Coffee
• Helena Blavatsky – The Secret Doctrine
• Emilia Dilke – Art in the Modern State
• Esperanza – Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, with sketches of the Irish past
• Celia Fiennes – Through England on a Side Saddle
• Charles Colcock Jones, Jr. – Negro Myths of the Georgia Coast
• Benjamin Hall Kennedy – Revised Latin Primer
• Papus – Traité méthodique de science occulte
• Joseph Prestwich – Geology, Chemical and Physical, Stratigraphical and Palaeontological
• A. F. W. Schimper – Die epiphytische Vegetation Amerikas
• Charlotte Carmichael Stopes – The Bacon/Shakespeare Question
• A. E. Waite
• *Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers
• *The Magical Writings of Thomas Vaughan

  Births

• January 24 – Vicki Baum, Austrian-born writer
• January 25 – A. L. Zissu, Romanian novelist and Zionist leader
• February 10 – Giuseppe Ungaretti, Italian modernist poet and writer
• April 26 – Anita Loos, American novelist and screenwriter
• June 13 – Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese writer
• July 23 – Raymond Chandler, American novelist and screenwriter
• September 4 – Margaret Henley, daughter of W. E. Henley and J. M. Barrie's inspiration for the name "Wendy" in Peter Pan
• September 22 – Lucia Mantu, born Camelia Nădejde, Romanian writer
• September 26 – T. S. Eliot, American-born English poet and playwright
• October 14 – Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand short story writer
• October 16 – Eugene O'Neill, American playwright and Nobel laureate
• October 26 – Dem. Theodorescu, Romanian novelist and journalist

  Deaths

• January 30 – Mary Howitt, English writer, poet and translator
• March 4 – Amos Bronson Alcott, American writer and philosopher
• March 6 – Louisa May Alcott, American novelist
• March 14 – James Hogg, Scottish-born publisher
• April 15 – Matthew Arnold, English poet
• May 12 – Edward Lear, English writer of comic verse and artist
• August 9 – Charles Cros, French poet
• August 20 – Henry Richard, Welsh political writer
• September 24 – Karl von Prantl, German philosopher
• November 17 – Dora d'Istria, Romanian-Albanian writer
• December 8 – Frederick Apthorp Paley, English scholar
• December 23 – Laurence Oliphant, Scottish travel writer and novelist

• William Gifford Palgrave, English Arabic scholar and writer

  Awards

• Newdigate prize – Arthur Waugh