1893 in literature

Events

• January 14 – Kate Chopin's short stories "Désirée's Baby" and "A Visit to Avoyelles" appear in Vogue magazine in the United States.
• February/March – The 22-year-old Stephen Crane pays for publication of his first book, the Bowery novella , under the pseudonym "Johnston Smith" in New York. Coming to be considered a pioneering example of American literary realism, the first trade edition comes out in 1896 after Crane has attained fame with The Red Badge of Courage.
• April 19 – Oscar Wilde's social comedy A Woman of No Importance receives its first performance at the Haymarket Theatre, London, with Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Mrs. Bernard Beere and Julia Neilson.
• May 2 – Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, 44, begins a brief marriage with Austrian writer Frida Uhl, 21.
• May 17 – Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist play Pelléas and Mélisande is first performed.
• May 27 – Arthur Wing Pinero's problem play The Second Mrs Tanqueray is first performed, at the St. James Theatre, London, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell in the title rôle.
• June 14 – The Shelley Memorial is inaugurated at University College, Oxford, from which the poet was expelled in 1811). It is designed by Basil Champneys, with a reclining nude marble statue of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Edward Onslow Ford.
• July – Bangiya Sahitya Parishad is established as "The Bengal Academy of Literature".
• July 1 – The first issue of L'Ère Nouvelle is published in Paris by the Romanian George Diamandy. It will have contributions from Marxist theoreticians, including Friedrich Engels, Paul Lafargue, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Georgi Plekhanov, and Georges Sorel. In literature, L'Ère Nouvelle promotes a blend of naturalism as embodied by Émile Zola and historical materialism.
• October – André Gide begins his travels in North Africa, where he comes to accept his homosexuality.
• October 7 – Finley Peter Dunne introduces his character Mr. Dooley in the Chicago Evening Post.
• November 11 – Jerome K. Jerome founds To-Day, "A weekly magazine-journal", in London.
• November 26 – Arthur Conan Doyle surprises the reading public by revealing in the story "The Adventure of the Final Problem", published in The Strand Magazine dated December, that his private detective character Sherlock Holmes had apparently died at the Reichenbach Falls on 4 May 1891. Doyle has stayed in Switzerland for a time this year.
• November 28 – The Raimund Theater opens in Vienna, Austria.
• December – W. B. Yeats publishes The Celtic Twilight, giving a popular name to the Irish Literary Revival.
• December 16 – Establishment, in Yorkshire, of the Brontë Society, possibly the oldest literary society of this nature, dedicated to establishing what will become the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
• December 20 – The first story featuring the private detective character Sexton Blake, "The Missing Millionaire", appears in Alfred Harmsworth's new boys' story paper The Halfpenny Marvel, written by Harry Blyth under the pen-name Hal Meredeth.

  New books

Fiction

• E. F. Benson – Dodo
• Byron A. Brooks – Earth Revisited
• Rhoda Broughton – A Beginner
• Hall Caine
• *Cap'n Davey's Honeymoon
• *The Last Confession
• *The Blind Mother
• Mary Cholmondeley – Diana Tempest
• Marie Corelli – Barabbas
• Stephen Crane –
• Walter Crane – Columbia's Courtship
• Arthur Conan Doyle – The Refugees
• Edith Escombe – A Tale that is Told
• Anatole France – At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque
• Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – Jane Field
• André Gide
• *La tentative amoureuse
• *Le voyage d'Urien
• George Gissing – The Odd Women
• Sarah Grand – The Heavenly Twins
• H. Rider Haggard – Montezuma's Daughter
• Beatrice Harraden – Ships That Pass in the Night
• "Two Women of the West" – Unveiling a Parallel
• Josef Svatopluk Machar – Magdalena
• Henry Olerich – A Cityless and Countryless World
• Bolesław Prus – The New Woman
• Addison Peale Russell – Sub-Coelum
• Flora Annie Steel
• *From the Five Rivers
• *Miss Stuart's Legacy
• August Strindberg – The Defence of a Fool
• Ivan Vazov – Under the Yoke
• Jules Verne
• *The Carpathian Castle
• *Claudius Bombarnac
• *Foundling Mick
• Lew Wallace – The Prince of India or Why Constantinople Fell
• Stanley J. Weyman – A Gentleman of France
• Émile Zola – Le Docteur Pascal

  Children and young people

• Margaret Marshall Saunders – Beautiful Joe
• Robert Louis Stevenson
• *Catriona
• *Island Nights' Entertainments

  Drama

• Rosario de Acuña – La voz de la patria
• Alexandre Bisson and Albert Carré – Le Veglione
• Gerhart Hauptmann
• *The Beaver Coat
• *The Assumption of Hannele
• Herman Heijermans – Dora Kremer
• Maurice Maeterlinck – Pelléas et Mélisande
• George Moore – The Strike at Arlingford
• Arthur Wing Pinero – The Second Mrs Tanqueray
• Arthur Schnitzler – Anatol
• George Bernard Shaw – Mrs. Warren's Profession
• Oscar Wilde
• *Salome
• *A Woman of No Importance

  Poetry

• Gabriele D'Annunzio – Odi Navali
• Maryana Marrash – Bint fikr
• Alice Meynell – Poems
• Eric Stenbock – The Shadow of Death: poems, songs, and sonnets
• Francis Thompson – Poems, including "The Hound of Heaven"

  Non-fiction

• Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford
• Henry James – Essays in London and Elsewhere
• George Panu – Portrete și tipuri parlamentare
• Alois Riegl – Stilfragen: Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik
• William Wynn Westcott – Collectanea Hermetica

  Births

• January 3 – W. N. Hodgson, English war poet
• January 12 – Maria Jolas, born Maria McDonald, American-born French literary publisher
• January 13 – Clark Ashton Smith, American poet and short-story writer
• February 11 – Nan Shepherd, Scottish novelist and poet
• February 26 – Dorothy Whipple, English writer of fiction and children's books
• March 11 – Wanda Gág, American children's author and artist
• March 18 – Wilfred Owen, English war poet
• April 9
• *Victor Gollancz, English publisher
• *Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan, Indian historian, writer, scholar
• May 6 – Margaret Cole, English political writer, biographer and activist
• May 14 – Louis Verneuil, born Louis Jacques Marie Collin du Bocage, French playwright
• May 19 – H. Bonciu, Romanian novelist, poet and translator
• June 13 – Dorothy L. Sayers, English writer of detective fiction and translator
• July 3 – Luca Caragiale, Romanian poet, novelist and translator
• July 21 – Hans Fallada, German novelist
• August 14 – Francis Dvornik, Czech historian
• August 22 – Dorothy Parker, American poet, journalist and wit
• September 28 – Giannis Skarimpas, Greek writer, dramatist, and poet
• October 9 – Mário de Andrade, Brazilian writer and photographer
• October 14 – May Wedderburn Cannan, English poet
• October 15 – Saunders Lewis, English-born Welsh poet, dramatist and critic
• October 26 – Miloš Crnjanski, Serbian poet and novelist
• November 10 – John P. Marquand, American novelist
• November 14 – Carlo Emilio Gadda, Italian author
• December 6 – Sylvia Townsend Warner, English novelist and poet
• December 29 – Vera Brittain, English memoirist, novelist, feminist and pacifist
• Unknown date – Samuel Roth, Galician-born American writer and publisher

  Deaths

• January 7 – Jožef Stefan, Slovenian physicist, mathematician and poet
• January 15 – Fanny Kemble, English actress
• January 22 – Kawatake Mokuami, Japanese dramatist
• January 23 – José Zorrilla, Spanish dramatist and poet
• February 10 – Alphonse Jolly, French dramatist and librarian
• April 6 – Charlotte Anley, English didactic novelist and religious writer
• April 19 – John Addington Symonds, English poet and essayist
• June 14 – Jakob Frohschammer, German theologian and philosopher
• July 6 – Guy de Maupassant, French novelist and short story writer
• August 12 – Edward Bruce Hamley, English military writer, general and politician
• September 4 – Francis Adams, Maltese-born English political writer, poet and novelist
• October 7 – William Smith, English lexicographer
• November 12 – Jemima von Tautphoeus, English-born novelist
• December 2 – Charlotte Maria Tucker, English children's writer
• December 25
• *Ivan Broz, Croatian linguist and literary historian
• *Emily Sarah Holt, English novelist

  Awards

• Newdigate Prize - John Burland Harris-Burland