1894 in literature

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

• 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.^[1]
• 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.^[2]
• 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.^[3]
  • 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.

• 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^[4]
• 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^[5]
• 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

• 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

• 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

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

• 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)

• January 1 – Aurora Nilsson, Swedish writer (died 1972)
• January 22 – Charles Langbridge Morgan, English novelist and dramatist (died 1958)^[6]
• February 6 – Eric Partridge, New Zealand/British lexicographer (died 1979)^[7]
• February 28 – Ben Hecht, American playwright and screen writer (died 1964)^[8]
• March 14 – Nichita Smochină, Transnistrian Romanian ethnographer and journalist (died 1980)
• March 17 – Paul Green, American novelist and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright (died 1981)^[9]
• March 23 – Mark Slonim, Russian literary historian and critic (died 1976)^[10]
• April 6 – Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, English children's writer (died 1969)^[11]
• 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)^[12]
• May 27
  • Louis-Ferdinand Céline, French novelist and pamphleteer (died 1961)^[13]
  • Dashiell Hammett, American detective fiction writer (died 1961)^[14]
• 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)^[15]
• 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)^[16]
• 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)^[17]
• 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)

• January 7 – Sophia Alice Callahan, American Muscogee novelist and teacher (born 1868)
• February 8 – R. M. Ballantyne, Scottish novelist for youth (born 1825)^[18]
• April 8
  • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Bengali writer and poet (born 1838)^[19]
  • Harriet Anne Scott, Scottish novelist (born 1819)^[20]
• 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)^[21]
• April 29 – Augusta Theodosia Drane, English religious writer and biographer (born 1823)^[22]
• 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)^[23]
• June 5 – Edward Capern, English poet (born 1819)^[24]
• July 30 – Walter Pater, English essayist, critic and novelist (born 1839)^[25]
• August 6 – Otto Müller, German novelist (born 1816)^[26]
• August 10 – Cynthia Roberts Gorton, American poet and author (born 1826)^[27]
• August 25 – Celia Laighton Thaxter, American author (born 1835)
• October 8 – Oliver Wendell Holmes, American poet and physician (born 1809)^[28]
• October 20 – James Anthony Froude, English historian, novelist and biographer (born 1818)^[29]
• December 3 – Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer (born 1850)^[30]
• December 9 – Mary Bell Smith, American writer, educator, social reformer (born 1818)^[31]
• December 29 – Christina Rossetti, English poet (born 1830)^[32]
• Unknown dates
  • Giuseppe Borrello, Sicilian poet (born 1820)
  • Nabagopal Mitra, Indian playwright, poet and essayist (born c. 1840)

• Newdigate Prize – Frank Taylor^[33]

• Media related to 1894 in literature at Wikimedia Commons