1863 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1863.

Events

 * January 1 – The essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson commemorates today's Emancipation Proclamation in the United States by composing "Boston Hymn" and surprising a crowd of 3,000 with a debut reading of it at Boston Music Hall.
 * January 31 – Jules Verne's novel Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen (Cinq semaines en ballon) is published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel in Paris. It will be the first of Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires.
 * February 3 – Samuel Langhorne Clemens, in signing a humorous letter to the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada, first uses the pen name Mark Twain.
 * February 28 – Flaubert and Turgenev meet for the first time, in Paris.
 * June 12 – The Arts Club is founded by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Frederic Leighton and others in London's Mayfair, as a social meeting place for those involved or interested in the creative arts.
 * June 13 – Samuel Butler's dystopian article "Darwin among the Machines" is published (as by "Cellarius") in The Press newspaper in Christchurch, New Zealand; it will be incorporated into his novel Erewhon (1872).
 * November – Mendele Mocher Sforim's first Yiddish language story, "Dos Kleine Menshele" (The Little Man), is published in the Odessa weekly Kol Mevasser.
 * December 29 – An estimated 7000 people attend the funeral of William Makepeace Thackeray at Kensington Gardens and nearly 2000 his burial in London's Kensal Green Cemetery.
 * unknown dates
 * The Freies Deutsches Hochstift association acquires the Goethe House (his 1749 birthplace) in Frankfurt am Main.
 * The Romanian Junimea literary society is established in Iași. It will exercise a major influence on Romanian culture until the 1910s.
 * Elvira, or the Love of a Tyrant, a novel by the Neapolitan author Giuseppe Folliero de Luna, becomes the first published in the Maltese language, as Elvira Jew Imħabba ta’ Tirann.
 * Peruvian writer Ricardo Palma begins periodical publication of his Peruvian Traditions (Tradiciones peruanas).
 * Publication begins in the U.K. of a seminal edition of The Works of William Shakespeare (the "Cambridge Shakespeare"), edited by William George Clark and William Aldis Wright, published by Macmillan and printed by Cambridge University Press.

Fiction

 * Mary Elizabeth Braddon
 * Aurora Floyd
 * Eleanor's Victory
 * John Marchman's Legacy
 * Nikolai Chernyshevsky – What Is to Be Done? (Что делать?, Shto delat'?)
 * George Eliot – Romola
 * "Charles Felix" (probably Charles Warren Adams) – The Notting Hill Mystery (serialization completed, book form; considered first full-length detective novel in English)
 * Elizabeth Gaskell
 * A Dark Night's Work
 * Sylvia's Lovers
 * Théophile Gautier – Captain Fracasse
 * Edward Everett Hale – The Man Without a Country
 * Mary Jane Holmes – Marian Grey
 * Jean Ingelow – "The Prince's Dream" (short story)
 * Julia Kavanagh – Queen Mab
 * Sheridan Le Fanu – The House by the Churchyard
 * John Neal — The White-Faced Pacer, or, Before and After the Battle
 * Margaret Oliphant – Salem Chapel, first of The Chronicles of Carlingford (in book form)
 * Ouida – Held in Bondage
 * Charles Reade – Very Hard Cash (later Hard Cash)
 * Miguel Riofrío – La Emancipada (the first Ecuadorian novel)
 * Anne Thackeray Ritchie – The Story of Elizabeth
 * Leo Tolstoy – The Cossacks (Казаки, Kazaki)
 * Anthony Trollope - Rachel Ray (novel)
 * John Townsend Trowbridge – Cudjo's Cave
 * Giovanni Verga – Sulle Lagune (In the Lagoons)

Children and young people

 * Charles Kingsley – The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby (complete in book form)
 * Jules Verne – Five Weeks in a Balloon

Drama

 * W. S. Gilbert – Uncle Baby
 * Tom Taylor – The Ticket-of-Leave Man

Poetry

 * Rosalía de Castro – Cantares gallegos
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Tales of a Wayside Inn, including "Paul Revere's Ride"

Non-fiction

 * John Austin (posthumously, compiled by Sarah Austin) – Lectures on Jurisprudence
 * Samuel Bache – Miracles the Credentials of the Christ
 * William Barnes – Glossary of Dorset Dialect
 * Henry Walter Bates – The Naturalist on the River Amazons.
 * William Wells Brown – The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius and His Achievements
 * Francis James Child – Observations on the Language of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
 * Gustav Freytag – Die Technik des Dramas
 * Alexander Gilchrist (posthumously, edited by Anne Gilchrist) – Life of William Blake, "Pictor Ignotus"; with selections from his poems and other writings
 * William Howitt – History of the Supernatural
 * Fanny Kemble – Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839
 * Abraham Lincoln – The Gettysburg Address
 * Charles Lyell – Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man
 * Ernest Renan – The Life of Jesus (Vie de Jésus)

Births

 * February 9 – Anthony Hope (Anthony Hope Hawkins), English novelist and playwright (died 1933)
 * February 14 – Virginia Frazer Boyle, American author, poet (died 1938)
 * March 3 – Arthur Machen (Arthur Llewellyn Jones), Welsh novelist and short story writer (died 1947)
 * March 9 — Emelie Tracy Y. Swett, American author (d. 1892)
 * March 12 – Gabriele D'Annunzio, Italian poet (died 1938)
 * March 17 – Olivia Shakespear (née Tucker), British novelist, playwright and patron of the arts (died 1938)
 * April 9 – Henry De Vere Stacpoole, Irish novelist (died 1951)
 * April 20 — Helen Dortch Longstreet, American social advocate, librarian, and newspaper woman (died 1962)
 * April 26 – Arno Holz, German Naturalist poet and dramatist (died 1929)
 * April 29 – Constantine Cavafy, Greek Alexandrine poet (died 1933)
 * June 10 – Louis Couperus, Dutch fiction writer (died 1923)
 * June 20 – Florence White, English food writer (died 1940)
 * July 13 – Margaret Murray, Indian-born English archeologist and historian (died 1963)
 * August 7 – Gene Stratton Porter, American novelist and naturalist (died 1924)
 * September 1 – Violet Jacob (Violet Kennedy-Erskine), Scottish historical novelist and poet (died 1946)
 * September 8 – W. W. Jacobs, English short story writer (died 1943)
 * September 22 – Ferenc Herczeg (Franz Herzog), Hungarian dramatist (died 1954)
 * November 1
 * Charlotte O'Conor Eccles, Irish-born London writer, translator and journalist (died 1911)
 * Arthur Morrison, English writer (died 1945)
 * November 18 – Richard Dehmel, German poet (died 1920)
 * November 21 – Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (Q.), English novelist and anthologist (died 1944)
 * December 16 – George Santayana, American novelist and poet (died 1952)

Deaths

 * May 13 – August Hahn, German Protestant theologian (born 1792)
 * July 3 – William Barksdale, American journalist and Confederate general (killed in action, born 1821
 * July 10 – Clement Clarke Moore, American classicist and poet (born 1779)
 * September 17 – Alfred de Vigny, French poet, dramatist and novelist (born 1797)
 * September 20 – Jacob Grimm, German philologist and fairy-tale author (born 1785)
 * October 6 – Frances Trollope, English novelist and writer (born 1779)
 * October 8 – Richard Whately, English theologian and archbishop (born 1787)
 * December 13 – Christian Friedrich Hebbel, German poet and dramatist (born 1813)
 * December 17 – Émile Saisset, French philosopher (born 1814)
 * December 24 – William Makepeace Thackeray, Indian-born English novelist and travel writer (stroke, born 1811)

Awards

 * Newdigate Prize – Thomas Llewellyn Thomas