# 1883 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1883.

## Events

* January 13 – Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People (En folkefiende, 1882) gains its first performance at the Christiania Theatre.
* February – Carlo Collodi's children's story The Adventures of Pinocchio appears first in Italy complete in book form as Le avventure di Pinocchio.
* May 23 – Robert Louis Stevenson's children's pirate adventure novel Treasure Island first appears in book form from Cassell in London.
* June – Footlights, the University of Cambridge drama club in England, gives its first performance.
* June 4 – Mihai Eminescu reads his nationalist poem Doina to an enthusiastic crowd at Junimea in Iași. It is sometimes described as his last work before a mental breakdown later this year. Eminescu's host Ion Creangă recalls it being composed on the spot, but some researchers date it back to 1870.
* June 30–October 20 – Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is serialized in the British magazine Young Folks as by "Captain George North". Stevenson completes writing it at the end of the summer in France.
* July – The first issue of Fiamuri Arbërit, an Albanian literary and political magazine, is published from Cosenza. Managed by Girolamo de Rada, it promotes Ottomanism against Philhellenism.
* August – Ivan Turgenev dictates his last story, "An end", to Pauline Viardot (who writes it in French) on his deathbed at Bougival in France.
* August 29 – Dunfermline Carnegie Library, the first Carnegie library, opens in Andrew Carnegie's home town, Dunfermline, Scotland.
* October 3–9 – Turgenev's body is returned by train from Paris to Saint Petersburg with crowds turning out to honor him.
* December 27–28 – The Modern Language Association of America holds its first meeting.
* Uncertain dates
** Mark Twain's memoirs Life on the Mississippi are published simultaneously in Boston (Massachusetts) and London, as the first major book submitted to a publisher in typescript.
** Kisari Mohan Ganguli begins publication of the first English-language translation of the Mahabharata.
** The Deutsches Theater company is formed in Berlin.

## New books
### Fiction

* Emilia Pardo Bazán – La tribuna
* Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Phantom Fortune
* Rhoda Broughton – Belinda
* Wilkie Collins – Heart and Science
* Hugh Conway – Called Back
* Anne Elliot – Dr. Edith Romney
* Ludwig Ganghofer – The Hunter of Fall
* John Hay – The Bread-Winners (anonymous serialization in The Century Magazine)
* Alexander Kielland – Poison (Gift)
* Jonas Lie – Familien paa Gilje (The Gilje family)
* John Macnie (as Ismar Thiusen) – The Diothas; or, A Far Look Ahead
* Mary E. Mann – The Parish of Hilby
* Guy de Maupassant – Une Vie
* George A. Moore – A Modern Lover
* Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Also sprach Zarathustra, publication begins)
* Margaret Oliphant – "Hester (novel)"
* Sir Thomas Wemyss Reid – Gladys Fane
* Charlotte Riddell – A Struggle for Fame
* Annie S. Swan – Aldersyde
* Giovanni Verga – Novelle rusticane (Rustic short stories, about Sicily)
* Jules Verne – Kéraban the Inflexible (Kéraban-le-têtu)
* Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam – Contes cruels

### Children and young people

* Carlo Collodi – The Adventures of Pinocchio (Le avventure di Pinocchio)
* George MacDonald – The Princess and Curdie
* Howard Pyle – The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
* Robert Louis Stevenson – Treasure Island (book publication)

### Drama

* Frances Hodgson Burnett and William Gillette – Esmeralda
* François Coppée – Severo Torelli
* Imre Madách – The Tragedy of Man (Az ember tragédiája, first performed)
* Edward Rose – Vice Versa
* George Robert Sims – In the Ranks
* August Strindberg – Lycko-Pers resa (Lucky Peter's Travels or Lucky Pehr)
* Oscar Wilde – Vera; or, The Nihilists (first performed)
* William Young – The Rajah; or Wyncot's Ward

### Non-fiction

* American Medical Association – Journal of the American Medical Association
* Mathilde Blind – George Eliot
* Hall Caine – Cobwebs of Criticism
* Thomas Hill Green (died 1882) – Prolegomena to Ethics
* J.-K. Huysmans – L'Art moderne
* Agnes Catherine Maitland (as A. C. M., Examiner...) – The Rudiments of Cookery: a Manual for Use in Schools and Homes
* William Robinson – The English Flower Garden
* J. R. Seeley – The Expansion of England
* Alfred Percy Sinnett – Esoteric Buddhism
* John Addington Symonds – A Problem in Greek Ethics: an inquiry into the phenomenon of sexual inversion, addressed especially to medical psychologists and jurists
* Mark Twain – Life on the Mississippi

## Births

* January 1 – Alberto Gerchunoff, Argentine writer (died 1949)
* January 6 – Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-born poet and novelist writing in Arabic and English (died 1931)
* January 10 – Aleksei Tolstoy, Russian writer (died 1945)
* January 20 – Forrest Wilson, American journalist and author (died 1942)
* January 21 – Olav Aukrust, Norwegian poet and teacher (died 1929)
* February 8 – Joseph Schumpeter, Austrian/American political economist (died 1950)
* February 15 – Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Ward), English novelist (died 1959)
* February 16 – Elizabeth Craig, British writer (died [1980)
* February 20 – Naoya Shiga, Japanese novelist (died 1971)
* March 2 (February 18 O.S.) – Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek novelist (died 1957)
* March 9 – Umberto Saba, Italian poet and novelist (died 1957)
* March 17 – Urmuz, Romanian short prose writer (died 1923)
* March 27 (March 15 O.S.) – Marie Under, Estonian poet (died 1980)
* April 18 – Aleksanteri Aava, Finnish poet (died 1956)
* April 27 – Hubert Harrison, African-American writer, critic, and activist (died 1927)
* April 30 – Jaroslav Hašek, Czech novelist (died 1923)
* June 3 – Franz Kafka, Czech novelist writing in German (died 1924)
* June 4 – Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, English crime writer (died 1955)
* July 29 – Porfirio Barba-Jacob, Colombian writer (died 1942)
* September 14 – Rose Combe, French writer and railway worker (died 1932)
* September 22 – Ferenc Oslay, Hungarian-Slovene historian, writer and irredenta (died 1932)
* October 18 – Helena Boguszewska, Polish writer, columnist and a social activist (died 1978)
* December 13 – Belle da Costa Greene, American librarian (died 1950)
* December 23 – Yoshishige Abe, Japanese philosopher and politician (died 1966)
* December 30 – Marie Gevers, Belgian novelist writing in French (died 1975)
* unknown date – May Edginton, English popular novelist (died 1957)

## Deaths

* January 21 – Anna Eliza Bray, English novelist and travel writer (born 1790)
* March 14 – Karl Marx, German philosopher (born 1818)
* April 24 – Jules Sandeau, French novelist (born 1811)
* May 15 – Mary Elizabeth Mohl ("Clarkey"), English-born literary salonnière (born 1793)
* May 23 – Cyprian Norwid, Polish poet, dramatist and artist (born 1821)
* June 20 – Gustave Aimard, French novelist (born 1818)
* June 11 – Caroline Leigh Gascoigne, English poet, novelist, short story writer (born 1813)
* July 16 – Edward Backhouse Eastwick, Anglo-Indian orientalist and translator (born 1814)
* August 31 – Levin Schücking, German novelist (born 1814)
* September 2 – Léon Halévy, French historian and dramatist (born 1802)
* September 3 – Ivan Turgenev, Russian novelist (born 1818)
* September 10 – Hendrik Conscience, Flemish novelist (born 1812)
* September 25 – George Ayliffe Poole, English writer and cleric (born 1809)
* November 26 – Sojourner Truth, African American abolitionist, women's rights activist, and author (born 1797)
* December 13 – Victor de Laprade, French poet and critic (born 1812)
* unknown date – Mary S. B. Shindler, American poet (born 1810)