1896 in literature

Events

• February 11 – While Oscar Wilde is in prison, his play Salome is premièred in its original French by Lugné-Poe's Théâtre de l'Œuvre company in Paris, perhaps at the Comédie-Parisienne.
• March 3 – Publication begins of the world's first magazine with an orientation to male homosexuality, Der Eigene, by Adolf Brand in Berlin.
• July 7 – Charles Thomas Wooldridge is hanged at Reading Gaol in England for uxoricide, inspiring fellow-prisoner C.3.3. Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
• October 10 – The New York Times publishes its first book review section, which evolves to become The New York Times Book Review.
• October 17 – Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull is unsuccessfully premièred at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg.
• November – The British magazine The Lady's Realm is first published, edited by William Henry Wilkins.
• December 10 – Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roi is premièred by the Théâtre de l'Œuvre in Paris. The opening word, "Merdre!", triggers disturbances and the play is not performed again in the author's lifetime.

• Stephanus Jacobus du Toit's Die Koningin van Skeba, the first Afrikaans language novel, begins serialization in Ons Klyntji.
• Frank Munsey's The Argosy publishes its first all adult fiction issue, pioneering the pulp magazine genre in the United States.
• Final volume of Theodore Roosevelt's The Winning of the West.
• Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt of Queen's College, Oxford, begin excavation at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt and discover the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
• The English twins Agnes S. Lewis and Margaret D. Gibson bring the treasures of the Cairo Geniza to the attention of Western scholars, notably the first Hebrew-language text of the book of Ecclesiastes known in modern times.
• The Publishers Association is established in the United Kingdom as a trade association.
• The Cheltenham typeface is designed by architect Bertram Goodhue and Ingalls Kimball, director of the Cheltenham Press in New York.

  New books

Fiction

• Herman Bang – Ludvigsbakke
• Max Beerbohm – The Works of Max Beerbohm
• René Boylesve – Le Médecin des dames de Néans
• Frances Hodgson Burnett – A Lady of Quality
• Abraham Cahan – Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto
• Hall Caine – Jan the Icelander or Home, Sweet Home, A Lecture Story
• Joseph Conrad – An Outcast of the Islands
• Marie Corelli
• *The Mighty Atom
• *The Murder of Delicia
• *Ziska
• Machado de Assis – Várias histórias
• Isabelle Eberhardt as Nicolas Podolinsky – "Per fas et nefas"
• Edouard Estaunie – L'Empreinte
• Jane Findlater – The Green Graves of Balgowrie
• Antonio Fogazzaro – The Patriot
• Theodor Fontane – Effi Briest
• Harold Frederic – The Damnation of Theron Ware
• Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – Madelon
• Jules Girardin – Les Aventures de M. Colin-Tampon
• Higuchi Ichiyō – Takekurabe
• W. W. Jacobs – Many Cargoes
• Sarah Orne Jewett – The Country of the Pointed Firs
• Olha Kobylianska – Arystokratka
• "The Lord Commissioner" – A Prophetic Romance: Mars to Earth
• Pierre Louÿs –
• William Morris – The Well at the World's End
• Arthur Morrison – A Child of the Jago
• Bolesław Prus – Pharaoh
• Antala Staška – Blouznivci našich hor
• Robert Louis Stevenson – Weir of Hermiston
• Mark Twain – Tom Sawyer, Detective
• Paul Valéry – La Soirée avec M. Teste
• Jules Verne
• *Facing the Flag
• *Clovis Dardentor
• Mary Augusta Ward – Sir George Tressady
• H. G. Wells – The Island of Doctor Moreau
• Owen Wister – Red Men and White
• Émile Zola – Rome

  Children and young people

• R. D. Blackmore – Tales from the Telling House
• Christabel R. Coleridge – Minstrel Dick. A Tale of the XIVth Century
• K. Langloh Parker - Australian Legendary Tales

  Drama

• George Ade – Artie
• Anton Chekhov – The Seagull
• Georges Feydeau – Le Dindon
• Henrik Ibsen – John Gabriel Borkman
• Alfred Jarry – Ubu Roi
• Maurice Maeterlinck – Aglavaine et Sélysette

  Poetry

• Hilaire Belloc
• *The Bad Child's Book of Beasts
• *Verses and Sonnets
• Richard Dehmel – Weib und Welt
• Paul Laurence Dunbar – Lyrics of Lowly Life, Majors and Minors and "We Wear the Mask"
• A. E. Housman – A Shropshire Lad
• Robert Louis Stevenson – Songs of Travel, and Other Verses
• See also 1896 in poetry

  Non-fiction

• Theodor Herzl – Der Judenstaat
• George Holyoake – The Origin and Nature of Secularism
• Charles Monroe Sheldon – In His Steps: 'What Would Jesus Do?'
• Andrew Dickson White – A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

  Births

• January 7 – Arnold Ridley, English dramatist and actor
• January 9 – Eleanor Graham, English children's writer and editor
• January 12 – Nobuko Yoshiya, Japanese romantic novelist
• January 14 – John Dos Passos, American novelist
• January 21 – Guy Gilpatric, American short story writer
• February 12 – Dorothy Frooks, American author and publisher
• February 18 – André Breton, French Surrealist poet and author
• March 10 – Nancy Cunard, English patron of the arts
• April 16 – Tristan Tzara, Romanian-French poet and essayist
• April 23 – Margaret Kennedy, English novelist and playwright
• May 1 – Mihai Ralea, Romanian critic and sociologist of literature
• May 3 – Dodie Smith, English novelist and dramatist
• May 9 – Austin Clarke, Irish poet, playwright and novelist
• May 27 – Joanna Cannan, English writer of children's pony books and detective novels
• June 6 – R. C. Sherriff, English dramatist
• July 19 – A. J. Cronin, Scottish novelist
• July 25 – Josephine Tey, Scottish crime writer
• August 27 – Kenji Miyazawa, Japanese poet
• August 28 – Liam O'Flaherty, Irish novelist and short-story writer
• September 4 – Antonin Artaud, French theater director
• September 5 – Heimito von Doderer, Austrian author
• September 22 – Uri Zvi Grinberg, Austro-Hungarian-born Israeli poet writing in Yiddish and Hebrew
• September 24 – F. Scott Fitzgerald, American writer
• October 11 – Roman Jakobson, Russian linguistic theorist
• October 30 – Ruth Gordon, American actress and screenwriter
• November 4 – J. R. Ackerley, English literary editor
• December – Sandu Tudor, Romanian poet, journalist and theologian

• Edith Ditmas, English archivist, historian and writer

  Deaths

• January 8 – Paul Verlaine, French poet
• January 17 – Lady Llanover, Welsh writer and patron of the arts
• February 26 – Arsène Houssaye, French novelist, poet and man of letters
• March 22 – Ludwig Laistner, German novelist, mythologist and literary historian
• May 11 – Henry Cuyler Bunner, American novelist and poet
• May 13 – Nora Perry, American poet, journalist and children's author
• June 8 – Jules Simon, French philosopher
• June 22 – Sir Augustus Harris, French-born English dramatist and theater manager
• July 1 – Harriet Beecher Stowe, American novelist
• July 11 – Ernst Curtius, German historian
• July 16 – Edmond de Goncourt, French critic and founder of Prix Goncourt
• July 23 – Mary Dickens, English memoirist, editor and novelist
• August 17 – Mary Abigail Dodge, American essayist
• October 3 – William Morris, English poet, novelist and designer
• October 8 – George du Maurier, English cartoonist and novelist
• November 26
• *Mathilde Blind, German-born English poet
• *Coventry Patmore, English poet
• December 10 – Alfred Nobel, Swedish founder of the Nobel prizes