# 1894 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1894.

## Events

* February – Oscar Wilde's play Salome is first published in English, with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley.
* February 15 – French anarchist Martial Bourdin accidentally kills himself while attempting to plant a bomb at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, a fictionalised version of which appears in Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent (1907).
* Early Spring – Mary Antin emigrates from White Russia (Belarus) to the United States with her mother.
* April – The Yellow Book imprint, edited by Henry Harland, begins publication by John Lane and Elkin Mathews – The Bodley Head – in London.
* April 21 – George Bernard Shaw's play Arms and the Man is premièred at the Avenue Theatre in London.
* May – The Scottish writer William Sharp publishes Pharais, his first novel under the pseudonym Fiona MacLeod.
* June – The German novelist Hermann Hesse begins an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering at a factory in Calw.
* August 15 – A. E. Waite starts to publish and edit an occult periodical, The Unknown World.
* October – Lafcadio Hearn begins work as a journalist for the English-language Kobe Chronicle in Japan.
* November 8 – Robert Frost's first poem, "My Butterfly" appears in The New York Independent, which pays him $15.
* December
** An abridgement of Stephen Crane's American Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage is first published as a serial in The Philadelphia Press.
** Arthur Conan Doyle publishes "An Alpine Pass on "Ski"" in The Strand Magazine (London), popularizing skiing as a sport in Switzerland.
* December 22 – Claude Debussy's symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, a free interpretation of Stéphane Mallarmé's 1876 poem, "L'Après-midi d'un faune", is premièred in Paris.
* unknown dates
** The U.K. circulating libraries of Mudie's and WHSmith cease to purchase three-volume novels, killing off the format.
** J. M. Dent begins in London to publish Temple Shakespeare pocket editions, edited by Israel Gollancz.
** The Century Roman typeface, first of the Century type family, is cut by American Type Founders' designer Linn Boyd Benton, originally for Theodore Low De Vinne's The Century Magazine.

## New books
### Fiction

* Gabriele D'Annunzio – Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death)
* Clementina Black – The Agitator
* Léon Bloy – Disagreeable Tales
* Mary Elizabeth Braddon – The Christmas Hirelings
* Walter Browne – 2894
* Hall Caine
** The Madhi: or Love and Race, A Drama in Story
** The Manxman
* Anton Chekhov – "The Student" («Студент», published in Russkiye Vedomosti, April)
* Kate Chopin
** Bayou Folk
** "The Story of an Hour"
* Ella Hepworth Dixon – The Story of a Modern Woman
* Arthur Conan Doyle – The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (collection)
* George du Maurier – Trilby (serialization in Harper's Monthly Magazine)
* Marcellus Emants – Een Nagelaten Bekentenis (A Posthumous Confession)
* Theodor Fontane – Effi Briest (begins serialization in Deutsche Rundschau)
* Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – Pembroke
* George Gissing – In the Year of Jubilee
* Katharine Glasier (as Katharine Conway) – Husband & Brother, a few chapters in a woman's life of to-day
* H. Rider Haggard – The People of the Mist
* Knut Hamsun – Pan
* Robert Hichens – The Green Carnation
* William Dean Howells – A Traveler from Altruria
* Jerome K. Jerome – John Ingerfield: And Other Stories
* Sheridan Le Fanu – The Watcher and Other Weird Stories
* Juhan Liiv – "Vari" ("The Shadow")
* Arthur Machen – The Great God Pan (in book form, with "The Innermost Light")
* Ian Maclaren – Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush
* George A. Moore – Esther Waters
* William Morris – The Wood Beyond the World
* Arthur Morrison – Martin Hewitt: Investigator
* John Muir – The Mountains of California
* Gustavus W. Pope – Journey to Mars
* Bolesław Prus – The New Woman (Emancypantki; book publication)
* Jules Renard – Poil de carotte (Carrot Head)
* Solomon Schindler – Young West
* Flora Annie Steel
** The Flower of Forgiveness
** The Potter's Thumb
** Tales of the Punjab (short stories)
* Stendhal – Lucien Leuwen
* Hermann Sudermann – The Undying Past (Es war)
* Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne – The Ebb-Tide
* Mark Twain
** Pudd'nhead Wilson
** Tom Sawyer Abroad
* Jules Verne – Captain Antifer
* Mary Augusta Ward – Marcella
* H. G. Wells – "The Red Room"
* Emma Wolf – A Prodigal in Love
* Israel Zangwill – The Bachelors' Club
* Émile Zola – Lourdes

### Children and young people

* Harold Avery
** The Orderly Officer
** The School's Honour
* R. D. Blackmore – Perlycross
* Anthony Hope
** The Dolly Dialogues
** The Prisoner of Zenda
* Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Book
* Skelton Kuppord – Hammond's Hard Lines
* E. Nesbit – Miss Mischief
* Talbot Baines Reed – Tom, Dick and Harry
* Margaret Marshall Saunders – Beautiful Joe
* Ethel Turner – Seven Little Australians

### Drama

* Wilson Barrett – The Manxman (adapted from Hall Caine's novel)
* William Gillette – Too Much Johnson (adapted from Maurice Ordonneau's La Plantation Thomassin)
* Martin Greif – Agnes Bernauer, der Engel von Augsburg
* Sydney Grundy
** A Bunch of Violets
** An Old Jew
* Henry Arthur Jones – The Case of Rebellious Susan
* Josef Lauff – Ignez de Castro
* Maurice Maeterlinck – The Death of Tintagiles (La Mort de Tintagiles, for marionette performance)
* Marc-André Raffalovich and John Gray – The Blackmailers
* Victorien Sardou – Gismonda
* George Bernard Shaw – Arms and the Man

### Poetry

* Bliss Carman – Low Tide on Grande Pre: A Book Of Lyrics
* Pierre Louÿs – Songs of Bilitis
* Rainer Maria Rilke – Leben und Lieder

### Non-fiction

* John Bartlett (comp.) – A Complete Concordance or verbal index to words, phrases and passages in the dramatic Works of Shakespeare
* Edward Carpenter – Homogenic Love and Its Place in a Free Society
* Christabel Rose Coleridge – The Daughters Who Have not Revolted (essays)
* Francis Darwin (with E. H. Acton) – The Practical Physiology of Plants
* King Gillette – The Human Drift
* Karl Marx – Das Kapital
* Leo Tolstoy – The Kingdom of God Is Within You («Царство Божіе внутри васъ», Tsárstvo Bózhiye vnutrí vas)

## Births

* January 1 – Aurora Nilsson, Swedish writer (died 1972)
* January 22 – Charles Langbridge Morgan, English novelist and dramatist (died 1958)
* February 6 – Eric Partridge, New Zealand/British lexicographer (died 1979)
* February 28 – Ben Hecht, American playwright and screen writer (died 1964)
* March 14 – Nichita Smochină, Transnistrian Romanian ethnographer and journalist (died 1980)
* March 17 – Paul Green, American novelist and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright (died 1981)
* March 23 – Mark Slonim, Russian literary historian and critic (died 1976)
* April 6 – Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, English children's writer (died 1969)
* April 7 – A. A. Thomson, English cricket and travel writer (died 1968)
* May 1 – Elizabeth Johanna Bosman, South African author who wrote under the pen name Marie Linde (d. 1963)
* May 27
** Louis-Ferdinand Céline, French novelist and pamphleteer (died 1961)
** Dashiell Hammett, American detective fiction writer (died 1961)
* June 14 – W. W. E. Ross, Canadian geophysicist and Imagist poet (died 1966)
* June 15 – Trygve Gulbranssen, Norwegian novelist, businessman and journalist (died 1962)
* June 28 – Allardyce Nicoll, British literary scholar (died 1976)
* July 8 – Claude-Henri Grignon, Canadian novelist, journalist and politician (died 1976)
* July 9 – Phelps Putnam, American poet (died 1948)
* July 18 – Isaac Babel, Ukrainian writer (died 1940)
* July 26 – Aldous Huxley, English novelist and poet (died 1963)
* July 30 – Păstorel Teodoreanu, Romanian poet and satirist (died 1964)
* August 31 – Albert Facey, Australian autobiographer (died 1982)
* September 2 – Joseph Roth, Austrian novelist
* September 6 – Howard Pease, American maritime adventure novelist (died 1974)
* September 19 – Rachel Field, American author and poet (died 1942)
* September 23 – Momčilo Nastasijević, Serbian poet, novelist and dramatist (died 1938)
* October 4 – Frans G. Bengtsson, Swedish novelist, essayist, poet and biographer (died 1954)
* October 9 – Agnes von Krusenstjerna, Swedish writer (died 1940)
* October 14 – E. E. Cummings, American poet (died 1962)
* October 18 – H. L. Davis, American fiction writer, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and poet (died 1960)
* October 26 – Eugene Jolas, American writer, literary translator and critic (died 1952)
* December 8 – James Thurber, American cartoonist and humorous writer (died 1961)
* December 26
** Håkon Evjenth, Norwegian children's writer (died 1951)
** Jean Toomer (Nathan Eugene Pinchback Toomer), African American writer (died 1967)
* December 31 – Hong Shen (洪深), Chinese dramatist (died 1955)

## Deaths

* January 7 – Sophia Alice Callahan, American Muscogee novelist and teacher (born 1868)
* February 8 – R. M. Ballantyne, Scottish novelist for youth (born 1825)
* April 8
** Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Bengali writer and poet (born 1838)
** Harriet Anne Scott, Scottish novelist (born 1819)
* April 12 – Ludwig Pfau, German poet, journalist, and revolutionary (born 1821)
* April 14 – Adolf Friedrich von Schack, German poet, literary historian and art collector (born 1815)
* April 29 – Augusta Theodosia Drane, English religious writer and biographer (born 1823)
* May 6 – Fanny Murdaugh Downing, American author and poet (born 1831)
* May 7
** Frances Elizabeth Barrow, American juvenile literature author (born 1822)
** Marie Sophie Schwartz, Swedish novelist (born 1819)
* May 19 – Caroline M. Sawyer, American poet, writer, and editor (born 1812)
* May 20 – Edmund Yates, Scottish novelist and dramatist (born 1831)
* June 5 – Edward Capern, English poet (born 1819)
* July 30 – Walter Pater, English essayist, critic and novelist (born 1839)
* August 6 – Otto Müller, German novelist (born 1816)
* August 10 – Cynthia Roberts Gorton, American poet and author (born 1826)
* August 25 – Celia Laighton Thaxter, American author (born 1835)
* October 8 – Oliver Wendell Holmes, American poet and physician (born 1809)
* October 20 – James Anthony Froude, English historian, novelist and biographer (born 1818)
* December 3 – Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer (born 1850)
* December 9 – Mary Bell Smith, American writer, educator, social reformer (born 1818)
* December 29 – Christina Rossetti, English poet (born 1830)
* Unknown dates
** Giuseppe Borrello, Sicilian poet (born 1820)
** Nabagopal Mitra, Indian playwright, poet and essayist (born c. 1840)

## Awards

* Newdigate Prize – Frank Taylor