1855 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1855.

• January – Samuel Orchart Beeton's weekly The Boys' Own Magazine, "an illustrated journal of fact, fiction, history and adventure", begins publication in London.^[1]
• January 5 – Anthony Trollope's novel The Warden, the first of his Chronicles of Barsetshire, is published in London by Longman as he begins to write the second, Barchester Towers.
• February 25 – The comedy De Scholtschäin, by Edmond de la Fontaine writing as Dicks, becomes the first play to be performed in the language of Luxembourg.^[2]
• June 29 – The Daily Telegraph newspaper begins publication in London.
• July 4 – Walt Whitman's first edition of his book of poems titled Leaves of Grass is published in Brooklyn, New York.
• September 27 – Alfred Tennyson reads from his new book Maud and other poems at a social gathering in the home of Robert and Elizabeth Browning in London. Dante Gabriel Rossetti makes a sketch of him doing so.^[3]
• October – Victor Hugo moves to Hauteville House, Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, accompanied by his mistress, Juliette Drouet.
• December
  • Charles Dickens publishes the first instalment of Little Dorrit, which continues to appear into 1857.
  • Thomas Babington Macaulay's best-selling History of England in four volumes is completed.^[4]
• unknown dates
  • Alexander Afanasyev begins publication of his collection of Narodnye russkie skazki [National Russian Tales].^[5]
  • John Camden Hotten opens a bookselling business in London, which is the origin of the publisher Chatto & Windus.^[6]
  • Faris al-Shidyaq publishes the metafiction Sâq 'ala al-sâq (Leg over Leg), the first modern Arabic novel, in Paris.
  • The first Luxembourg novel in French, Marc Bruno, profil d'artiste, is published shortly after the death of its author, Félix Thyes (born 1830).
  • Belarusian writer Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkyevich publishes «Гапон» (Hapon) in the Russian Empire, the first poem written wholly in modern Belarusian.

• Gheorghe Asachi – Ziua din urmă a municipiului Iașenilor (The Last Day of Iași Municipality)
• Cuthbert Bede (pseudonym) – The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green (other volumes, 1856 and 1857)
• Gustav Freytag – Debit and Credit (Soll und Haben)
• Elizabeth Gaskell – North and South
• James Grant – The Yellow Frigate (also entitled The Three Sisters)
• Mary Virginia Hawes – The Hidden Path
• Caroline Lee Hentz – Robert Graham
• Paul Heyse – "L'Arrabbiata" (The Fury, short story)
• Washington Irving – Wolfert's Roost
• Gottfried Keller – Green Henry (Der grüne Heinrich)
• Charles Kingsley – Westward Ho!
• Herman Melville
  • Israel Potter
  • The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids
  • Benito Cereno
• Gérard de Nerval – Aurelia
• Giovanni Ruffini – Doctor Antonio
• Ann Sophia Stephens – The Old Homestead
• William Makepeace Thackeray – The Newcomes
• Félix Thyes – Marc Bruno, profil d'artiste
• Anthony Trollope – The Warden (first in the Chronicles of Barchester series of six books)8

• Božena Němcová – The Grandmother

• Émile Augier – Le Mariage d'Olympe
• Dicks
  • De Scholtschäin
  • D'Mumm Sèiss
• Léon Gozlan – Le Gâteau des reines
• Henrik Ibsen – The Feast at Solhaug
• Andreas Munch – En Aften paa Giske^[7]
• Watts Phillips – Joseph Chavigny
• Ivan Turgenev – A Month in the Country (published as Two Women)

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Song of Hiawatha
• Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass

• David Brewster – Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton
• John Brown – Slave Life in Georgia
• Pedro Carolino – O novo guia da conversação em portuguez e inglez (translated as English as She is Spoke)
• Frederick Douglass – "My Bondage and My Freedom"
• Washington Irving – The Life of George Washington, Volumes 1 and 2
• George Sand – Histoire de ma vie (The Story of My Life)
• William Smith – Latin–English Dictionary based upon the works of Forcellini and Freund
• Leo Tolstoy – Sevastopol Sketches (Севастопольские рассказы, Sevastopolskiye rasskazy)
• Alfred Russel Wallace – "On the Law Which has Regulated the Introduction of Species" (in Annals and Magazine of Natural History, September)

• February 21 – Elizabeth Robins Pennell, American biographer and critic based in London (died 1936)
• April 4 – Manonmaniam Sundaram Pillai, Indian dramatist (died 1897)
• April 27 – Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, Irish novelist (died 1897)^[8]
• May 1 – Marie Corelli (Mary Mackay), English novelist (died 1924)
• May 21 – Emile Verhaeren, Belgian Symbolist poet writing in French (died 1916)
• May 24 – Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, English dramatist (died 1934)
• July 7 – Ludwig Ganghofer, German novelist (died 1920)
• July 19 – Alexander Ertel, Russian novelist and short story writer (died 1908)
• August 7 – Stanley J. Weyman, English novelist (died 1928)
• September 12 – William Sharp, Scottish poet and biographer (died 1905)
• September 22 – Alice Zimmern, English writer, translator and suffragist (died 1939)
• October 26 – Jessie Wilson Manning, American author and lecturer (died 1947)
• October 30 – Pyotr Gnedich, Russian writer and poet (died 1925)
• November 4 – William Ritchie Sorley, Scottish philosopher (died 1935)
• December 15 – Maurice Bouchor, French poet and sculptor (died 1929)
• December 28 – Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, Uruguayan poet (died 1931)^[9]
• unknown date
  • Solomon Cleaver, Canadian story teller, novelist and pastor (died 1939)
  • Florence Huntley, American journalist, editor, humorist and occult author (died 1912)

• January 3 – János Majláth, Hungarian poet and historian (born 1786)
• January 10 – Mary Russell Mitford, English dramatist and novelist (born 1787)
• January 25 – Dorothy Wordsworth, English poet and diarist (born 1771)
• January 26 – Gérard de Nerval (Gérard Labrunie), French poet and essayist (suicide, born 1808)^[10]
• February 4 – Gottfried Christian Friedrich Lücke, German theologian (born 1791)
• March 31 – Charlotte Brontë, English novelist and poet (born 1816)^[11]
• June 29 – Delphine de Girardin, French poet and novelist (born 1804)
• July 12 – Karl Spindler, German novelist, (born 1796)
• September 4 – Emma Tatham, English poet (born 1829)
• September 27 – John Adamson, English antiquary and scholar of Portuguese (born 1787)
• November 11 – Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher (born 1813)
• November 19 – Mihály Vörösmarty, Hungarian poet and dramatist (born 1800)
• November 26 – Adam Mickiewicz, Poland's national poet (cholera, born 1798)
• December 3 – Robert Montgomery, English poet (born 1807)
• unknown date – Sunthorn Phu, Thai poet (born 1786)