1890 in literature

Events

• January – William Heinemann launches his Heinemann publishing business in London's Covent Garden with Hall Caine's successful novel The Bondman.
• March 8 – Bram Stoker begins work on Dracula.
• c. June–September – Joseph Conrad, at this time serving as Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski with a Belgian steamer company, makes a journey on the Congo River which will inspire his novel Heart of Darkness.
• July 13 – Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", one of his best known works, is first published, in The San Francisco Examiner.
• July–August – Bram Stoker holidays with his family at Whitby and from the library there reads William Wilkinson's An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, all of which feed into his composition of Dracula.
• September – Arthur Morrison joins the staff of The Globe.
• October 19 – Sir Richard Francis Burton dies in Trieste, after which his widow, Isabel, burns his journals, a revised translation of The Perfumed Garden and many more manuscripts and books, largely on account of their erotic nature.

• Leo Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata, suppressed in Russia, is published in Berlin in Russian, German, English and French, with other English versions issued in England and the United States. The United States Post Office Department prohibits mailing of newspapers containing serialized installments of it.
• Macmillan Publishers in the U.K. begin to supply on "net book" terms, i. e. no discounts are available to consumers.
• Hall Caine's four-act historical drama Mahomet, based on the life of Muhammad and written for the actor-manager Henry Irving, is banned by the Lord Chamberlain after it causes unrest in Britain's Muslim communities, threatens British rule in parts of India and strains Britain's relations with the Ottoman Empire.

  New books

Fiction

• Rolf Boldrewood – The Squatter's Dream
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – One Life, One Love
• Rhoda Broughton – Alas!
• Hall Caine
• *The Bondman
• *The Prophet: a Parable
• Kate Chopin – At Fault
• Wilkie Collins – Blind Love
• Marie Corelli –
• Louis Couperus – Footsteps of Fate
• Florence Dixie – Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900
• Ignatius L. Donnelly – Caesar's Column
• Arthur Conan Doyle
• *The Firm of Girdlestone
• *The Sign of Four
• Knut Hamsun – Hunger
• E. W. Hornung – A Bride from the Bush
• William Dean Howells – A Hazard of New Fortunes
• Rudyard Kipling – The Light That Failed
• Arthur Machen – The Great God Pan
• Karl May – Der Schatz im Silbersee
• Mori Ōgai – "The Dancing Girl"
• William Morris – News from Nowhere
• Octave Mirbeau – Sébastien Roch
• Georges Ohnet - Serge Panine
• Bolesław Prus
• *The Doll
• *The New Woman
• Molly Elliot Seawell – Little Jarvis
• Mary Taylor – Miss Miles, or, A Tale of Yorkshire Life Sixty Years Ago
• Jules Verne – César Cascabel
• Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray

  Children and young people

• Lady Florence Dixie
• *Aniwee, or, The Warrior Queen
• *The Young Castaways, or, The Child Hunters of Patagonia
• Joseph Jacobs – English Fairy Tales
• Kate Douglas Wiggin – Timothy's Quest
• Dikken Zwilgmeyer – Vi børn

  Drama

• Hall Caine – Good Old Times
• Clyde Fitch – Beau Brummell
• James Herne – Margaret Fleming
• 'Bjarne P. Holmsen' – Die Familie Selicke
• Henrik Ibsen – Hedda Gabler
• Wilhelm Jacoby and Carl Laufs – Pension Schöller
• Maurice Maeterlinck – The Blind
• Arthur Wing Pinero – The Cabinet Minister

  Poetry

• Edwin James Brady – The Way of Many Rivers
• Emily Dickinson – Poems
• W. B. Yeats – "Lake Isle of Innisfree"

  Non-fiction

• Eliza Brightwen – Wild Nature Won by Kindness
• Sir James George Frazer – The Golden Bough
• Clarissa Caldwell Lathrop, A Secret Institution
• Alfred Thayer Mahan – The Influence of Sea Power upon History
• Ragnar Redbeard – Might Is Right, or The Survival of the Fittest
• James McNeill Whistler – The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

  Births

• January 9
• *Karel Čapek, Czech author
• *Barbara Euphan Todd, English children's writer
• January 11 – Oswald de Andrade, Brazilian poet and polemicist
• February 10 – Boris Pasternak, Russian author
• March 11 – Vannevar Bush, American author
• May 15 – Katherine Anne Porter, American journalist and novelist
• May 18 – Zora Cross, Australian poet and novelist
• May 20 – Allan Nevins, American historian and journalist
• May 29
• *Rhoda Power, English children's writer and broadcaster
• *Martin Wickramasinghe, Sri Lankan novelist
• August 15 – Tsugi Takano, Japanese novelist
• August 20 – H. P. Lovecraft, American horror writer
• August 24 – Jean Rhys, Dominica, West Indies-born English novelist
• August 28 – Ivor Gurney, English war poet and composer
• August 31 – August Alle, Estonian writer
• September 6 – Brinsley MacNamara, born John Weldon, Irish novelist and playwright
• September 10 – Franz Werfel, Austrian author
• September 15 – Agatha Christie, English mystery writer
• September 24 – A. P. Herbert, English humorist and novelist
• October 1 – Blanche Oelrichs, American poet and playwright
• October 13 – Conrad Richter, American novelist
• November 25 – Isaac Rosenberg, English poet
• December 2 – Károly Molter, Hungarian novelist, dramatist and academic

  Deaths

• January 2 – George Henry Boker, American poet and playwright
• June 11 – George Edward Brett, American publisher
• June 24 – Subba Row, Hindu Theosophist writer
• July 15 – Gottfried Keller, Swiss novelist
• August 9 – Eduard von Bauernfeld, Austrian dramatist
• September 18 – Dion Boucicault, Irish dramatist
• October 19 – Sir Richard Francis Burton, English explorer, translator and writer
• October 26 – Carlo Collodi, Italian children's writer
• November 1 – Júlio Ribeiro, Brazilian naturalist, novelist and grammarian
• December 6 – Richard William Church, English biographer and cleric
• December 18 – Grigory Danilevsky, Russian historical novelist
• December 19 – Zénaïde Fleuriot, French novelist
• December 29 – Octave Feuillet, French novelist and dramatist

  Awards

• Newdigate prize – Laurence Binyon