1851 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1851.

Events

• January 1 – The Caucasian Georgian theatre company gives its first performance, under the direction of Giorgi Eristavi.
• June 5 – Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin begins serialization in the American abolitionist weekly The National Era.
• June – While waiting to cross the English Channel on his honeymoon, Matthew Arnold probably begins to compose the poem "Dover Beach".
• September 29 – Marian Evans, the future George Eliot, takes up an appointment as (assistant) editor of the Westminster Review, published by John Chapman. In this capacity she will meet G. H. Lewes.
• November 14 – Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is published in full, in a single volume, for the first time, by Harper & Brothers in New York, having been previously issued on October 18 as The Whale in an abridged three-volume edition by Richard Bentley in London.
• December 2 – The French coup d'état of 1851 prompts Victor Hugo to be a leader of an unsuccessful insurrection against it. He is forced into exile, initially to Brussels.
• December 24 – A fire at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., destroys 35,000 books, about two–thirds of the collection.
• unknown dates
• Akabi's Story (Akabi Hikayesi), by Vartan Pasha, is published - an early example of a novel in the Turkish language printed in the Armenian alphabet
• Hovhannes Hisarian publishes Khosrov yev Makruhi (Khosrov and Makruhi), the first romantic novel in the Armenian language, written in the vernacular Ashkharhabar dialect.
• Stephanos Th. Xenos publishes his "Istanbul novel" The Devil in Turkey; Or Scenes in Constantinople in English translated from his Greek manuscript, in London.
• Philosopher Auguste Comte includes a list of 150 books which a well-educated person should have read in his Catéchisme positiviste .
• Albertus Willem Sijthoff establishes a publishing business at Leiden.

New books

Fiction

• Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly – Une Vieille Maîtresse (An Old Mistress)
• George Borrow – Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy and the Priest (novelized memoir of Romany life)
• Mathilde Fibiger – Clara Raphael, Tolv Breve (Clara Raphael, Twelve Letters)
• Elizabeth Gaskell – Cranford (serialization begins)
• Nathaniel Hawthorne – The House of the Seven Gables
• Gottfried Keller – Der Grüne Heinrich
• Sheridan Le Fanu
• Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery
• The Watcher
• Herman Melville – Moby-Dick
• John Ruskin – The King of the Golden River
• Jules Verne – A Drama in Mexico (Un drame au Mexique) short story
• Harriet Ward – Jasper Lyle: A Tale of Kafirland [sic]

Children and young people

• W. H. G. Kingston – Peter the Whaler

Drama

• Edward Bulwer-Lytton – '
• Ferdinand Dugué – Salvator Rosa
• Franz Grillparzer – The Jewess of Toledo (Die Jüdin von Toledo, written)
• Eugène Marin Labiche with Marc Michel – Un Chapeau de paille d'Italie (An Italian Straw Hat)
• Maria Ann Lovell – Ingomar the Barbarian
• Alexey Pisemsky – The Hypochondriac (published)
• Eugène Scribe – Bataille de Dames