1894 in literature

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

Events

 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.

Fiction

 * 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
 * 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
 * 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

Children and young people

 * 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
 * E. Nesbit – Miss Mischief
 * Talbot Baines Reed – Tom, Dick and Harry
 * Margaret Marshall Saunders – Beautiful Joe
 * Ethel Turner – Seven Little Australians

Drama

 * 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

Poetry

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

Non-fiction

 * 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)

Births

 * January 1 – Aurora Nilsson, Swedish writer (died 1972)
 * January 22 – Charles Langbridge Morgan, English novelist and dramatist (died 1958)
 * February 6 – Eric Partridge, New Zealand/British lexicographer (died 1979)
 * March 14 – Nichita Smochină, Transnistrian Romanian ethnographer and journalist (died 1980)
 * March 17 – Paul Green, American novelist and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright (died 1981)
 * March 23 – Mark Slonim, Russian literary historian and critic (died 1976)
 * April 6 – Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, English children's writer (died 1969)
 * 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)
 * May 27
 * Louis-Ferdinand Céline, French novelist and pamphleteer (died 1961)
 * Dashiell Hammett, American detective fiction writer (died 1961)
 * 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)
 * July 30 – Păstorel Teodoreanu, Romanian poet and satirist (died 1964)
 * August 31 – Albert Facey, Australian autobiographer (died 1982)
 * September 6 – Howard Pease, American maritime adventure novelist (died 1974)
 * September 19 – Rachel Field, American author and poet (died 1942)
 * 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)
 * 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)

Deaths

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

Awards

 * Newdigate Prize – Frank Taylor