1880 in literature

Children and young people

• Carlo Collodi – The Adventures of Pinocchio (Le avventure di Pinocchio)
• Evelyn Everett-Green – Tom Tempest's Victory
• Johanna Spyri – Heidi
• Jules Verne – The Steam House (La Maison à vapeur)

Drama

• Adolphe L'Arronge – The Lonei Household (Haus Lonei)
• Augustus Harris and Paul Meritt – The World
• Oscar Wilde – Vera; or, The Nihilists (privately printed)

Poetry

• Anne Evans (died 1870) – Poems and Music (with a memorial preface by Anne Isabella Thackeray)

Non-fiction

• Henry Charlton Bastian – The Brain as an Organ of Mind
• James Legge – The Religions of China
• Algernon Charles Swinburne – A Study of Shakespeare
• Charles Warren – The Temple or the Tomb. Giving further evidence in favour of the authenticity of the present site of the Holy Sepulchre

Births

• February 21 – Waldemar Bonsels, German writer (died 1952)
• February 27 – Angelina Weld Grimké, African-American playwright and poet (died 1958)
• March 1 – Lytton Strachey, English critic and biographer (died 1932)
• March 4 – Channing Pollock, American playwright and critic (died 1946)
• March 13 – Frank Thiess, German writer (died 1977)
• March 21 – E. H. Young, English novelist (died 1949)
• March 30 – Seán O'Casey, Irish dramatist (died 1964)
• June 10 – Margit Kaffka, Hungarian novelist, short story writer and poet (died 1918)
• June 17 – Carl Van Vechten, American writer (died 1964)
• June 27 – Helen Keller, American writer and lecturer (died 1968)
• July 4 – Anne Beffort, Luxembourg literary writer and biographer (died 1966)
• July 10 – Greye La Spina, American writer (died 1969)
• August 5 – Ruth Sawyer, American children's writer and novelist (died 1970)
• August 15 – Anna Rüling, German journalist, the first known lesbian activist (died 1953)
• August 26 – Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet and dramatist (died 1918)
• September 12 – H. L. Mencken, American journalist and English language scholar (died 1956)
• October 4 – Damon Runyon, American journalist and short-story writer (died 1946)
• October 17 – Vasile Cijevschi, Bessarabian Romanian soldier, journalist and short-story writer (died 1931)
• October 18 – Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Russian-born Zionist leader, novelist and poet (died 1940)
• November 1 – Grantland Rice, American sports writer (died 1954)
• November 6 – Robert Musil, Austrian novelist (died 1942)
• November 25 – Elsie J. Oxenham (Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley), English story writer for girls (died 1960)
• November 29 – N. D. Cocea, Romanian novelist, critic and journalist (died 1949)
• December 24 – Johnny Gruelle, American cartoonist and children's author (died 1938)

Deaths

• January 12 – Ida, Countess von Hahn-Hahn, German author (born 1805)
• February 12 – Karl Eduard von Holtei, German poet and dramatist (born 1798)
• February 17 – James Lenox, American bibliophile (born 1800)
• April 9 – Louis Edmond Duranty, French novelist and critic (born 1833)
• April 16 – Edward Vaughan Hyde Kenealy, Irish writer and barrister (born 1819)
• April 18 – Costache Aristia, Wallachian translator, poet, dramatist and actor (born 1800)
• May 2 – Eunice Hale Cobb, American writer, public speaker, and activist (born 1803)
• May 5 – Andrei Mocioni, Hungarian-Romanian journalist and literary patron (born 1812)
• May 6 – Ivan Surikov, Russian poet (born 1841)
• May 8 – Gustave Flaubert, French novelist (born 1821)
• May 30 – James Planché, English dramatist (born 1796)
• June 7 – Karl Christian Planck, German philosopher (born 1819)
• July 7 – Lydia Maria Child, American writer and abolitionist (born 1802)
• July 12 – Tom Taylor, English dramatist and journalist (born 1817)
• September 23 – Geraldine Jewsbury, English novelist and woman of letters (born 1812)
• December 22 – George Eliot (Mary Anne Cross), English novelist (born 1819)

Awards

• Commander, First Class of the Order of St. Olav – Andreas Munch
• Newdigate Prize – Rennell Rodd, "Raleigh"

References