1891 in literature

Events

• January – The Strand Magazine is first published in London. On June 25 Arthur Conan Doyle's private consulting detective Sherlock Holmes appears in it for the first time, in the story "A Scandal in Bohemia".
• January 31 – Henrik Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler published in 1890 is first performed, at the Königliches Residenz-Theater in Munich, the city where it was written. The lead is played by Clara Heese, but Ibsen is displeased with her performance. The first British performance is on April 20 at the recently reopened Vaudeville Theatre, London, with Elizabeth Robins as Hedda and co-directing.
• March 13 – Henrik Ibsen's play Ghosts achieves a single London performance, its English-language stage première. To evade the Lord Chamberlain's Office's censorship, it has to be staged privately by the Independent Theatre Society, but still attracts strong criticism on moral grounds.
• April – Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is first published in book format by Ward and Lock in London with the aphoristic preface originally published in the March 1 issue of The Fortnightly Review.
• May – William Morris establishes the Kelmscott Press as a private press at Hammersmith and produces its first book, the first edition in book format of his fantasy novel The Story of the Glittering Plain.
• May 21 – Maurice Maeterlinck's play Intruder is premièred at Paul Fort's Théâtre d'Art in Paris.
• c. Late June – In a meeting of decadent poets in London, Oscar Wilde is first introduced to Lord Alfred Douglas by Lionel Johnson at Wilde's Tite Street home.
• July 1 – The International Copyright Act of 1891 comes into effect in the United States, permitting foreign authors to register their works for copyright. On July 3, the first such work, the play Saints and Sinners by English author Henry Arthur Jones, is registered.
• July 4 – December 26 – Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles is serialized in expurgated form in the weekly illustrated newspaper The Graphic ; in November the first book edition is published in London.
• August 22 – Israel Zangwill's The Big Bow Mystery, the first classic full-length locked room mystery, begins serialization in The Star.
• October 9 – Émile Zola's stage adaptation of his novel Thérèse Raquin achieves a single London performance, its English stage première. To evade the Lord Chamberlain's Office's censorship it has to be staged privately by the Independent Theatre Society, but still attracts criticism on moral grounds.
• September 4 – Ambrose Bierce dates the preface of Tales of Soldiers and Civilians for this day, although it will not actually be issued until 1892. It includes "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", one of his best known works.
• December – Thomas Hardy writes "The Son's Veto", which he regards as his best short story.
• December 7 – Maurice Maeterlinck's play The Blind is premièred.

• Tristan Bernard has his first work published in La Revue Blanche, which returns to Parisian publication in October, and adopts his pseudonym.
• Sophia Alice Callahan's Wynema, a Child of the Forest is published, the first work of fiction by a Native American woman in English.
• Publication of the first complete one-volume popular German translation of Shakespeare's plays

• Edmund Clerihew Bentley, G. K. Chesterton and fellow pupils of St Paul's School, London compose the first pseudo-biographical comic verses which become known as clerihews.

  New books

Fiction

• Grant Allen – The Great Taboo
• Hall Caine – The Scapegoat
• J. M. Barrie – The Little Minister
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Gerard; or, The World, the Flesh and the Devil
• Gabriele D'Annunzio – Giovanni Episcopo
• Machado de Assis – Quincas Borba
• Arthur Conan Doyle – The White Company
• George du Maurier – Peter Ibbetson
• Helen H. Gardener – Is This Your Son, My Lord?
• André Gide – Les Cahiers d'André Walter
• George Gissing – New Grub Street
• Thomas Hardy
• *A Group of Noble Dames
• *Tess of the d'Urbervilles
• J.-K. Huysmans – Là-bas
• Henry James – "The Pupil"
• Jerome K. Jerome – Diary of a Pilgrimage
• Jean Lorrain – Sonyeuse
• Lucas Malet – The Wages of Sin
• Herman Melville – Timoleon
• Georges Ohnet – Dernier Amour
• Daniel Owen – Enoc Huws
• Howard Pyle – Men of Iron
• José Rizal – El filibusterismo
• Jules Verne – Mistress Branican
• Oscar Wilde – Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories
• Margaret L. Woods – Esther Vanhomrigh
• Charlotte M. Yonge
• *Two Penniless Princesses
• *Unknown to History
• Émile Zola – L'Argent

  Children and young people

• Selma Lagerlöf – Gösta Berlings Saga
• Laura E. Richards – Captain January
• Molly Elliot Seawell – Midshipman Paulding
• William Gordon Stables – The Cruise of the Crystal Boat

  Drama

• Carlo Favetti – Fusilir e granatir, un scherz comic
• Jacob Mikhailovich Gordin – Siberia
• Maurice Maeterlinck – Intruder
• Victorien Sardou – Thermidor
• Rosario de Acuña – El padre Juan
• Frank Wedekind – Spring Awakening
• Oscar Wilde
• *The Duchess of Padua
• *Salome

  Poetry

• William Morris – Poems by the Way

  Non-fiction

• Marie Bashkirtseff – Lettres
• Black's Law Dictionary, 1st edition
• John Churton Collins – The Study of English Literature: a plea for its recognition and organization at the Universities
• John Gibson – The Emancipation of Women
• Edmond de Goncourt – Utamaro
• George Holyoake – The Co-operative Movement of To-day
• Frederic G. Kenyon
• *Aristotelous Ἀθηναιων Πολιτεια: Aristotle on the Constitution of Athens
• *Classical Texts from Papyri in the British Museum; including the newly discovered poems of Herodas, with autotype facsimiles of MSS
• Errico Malatesta – Anarchy
• George W. E. Russell – The Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone
• George Bernard Shaw – Quintessence of Ibsenism
• A. E. Waite – The Occult Sciences
• Oscar Wilde – Intentions

  Births

• January 7 – Zora Neale Hurston, American Harlem Renaissance novelist
• January 8 – Storm Jameson, English novelist
• January 15 – Osip Mandelstam, Russian poet and essayist
• January 23 – Pavlo Tychyna, Ukrainian poet
• February 10 – Elliot Paul, American writer
• February 13 – Kate Roberts, Welsh writer
• March 13 – Felix Aderca, Romanian novelist, critic, poet and journalist
• March 27 – Lajos Zilahy, Hungarian novelist and dramatist
• June 14 – Alexander Melentyevich Volkov, Russian novelist
• July 5 – Tin Ujević, Croatian poet
• August 1 – Edward Streeter, American humorist
• August 12 – C. E. M. Joad, English philosopher and broadcaster
• September 23 – Arthur Graeme West, English military writer and poet
• October 6 – John Metcalfe, English writer
• November 14 – Josef Magnus Wehner, German poet and playwright
• November 17 – Sigurd Christiansen, Norwegian novelist and dramatist
• November 23 – Masao Kume, Japanese playwright, novelist and haiku poet
• December 10 – Nelly Sachs, German-Swedish poet, dramatist and Nobel Prize winner
• December 17 – Hu Shih, Chinese Nobel Prize winning philosopher and language reformer
• December 26 – Henry Miller, American novelist

  Deaths

• February 3 – Élie Berthet, French novelist
• April 24 – Rebecca Agatha Armour, Canadian novelist
• July 17 – Jean Lombard, French novelist
• July 19 – Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, Spanish novelist
• August 12 – James Russell Lowell, American poet
• August 22 – Jan Neruda, Czech writer
• September 15 – Ivan Goncharov, Russian writer
• September 28 – Herman Melville, American novelist
• October 15 – Gilbert Arthur à Beckett, English writer
• November 10 – Arthur Rimbaud, French poet

  Awards

• Newdigate Prize – Laurence Binyon