title: 1877 in literature
text: # 1877 in literature
  
  This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1877.
  
  ## Events
  
  * January 24 – Émile Zola's L'Assommoir (sometimes translated as "The Dram Shop"), seventh in his novel sequence Les Rougon-Macquart, is first published in book format a few weeks after its serialisation ends in Le Bien public (Paris). It sells more than 50,000 copies by the end of the year.
  * February 24–March 17 – Robert Louis Stevenson's first published work of fiction, the novella "An Old Song", appears anonymously in four episodes in the magazine London. It is first attributed to Stevenson in 1980.
  * July – The ending of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is published in Russkiy vestnik.
  * July 15 – "Coppino Law" in Italy makes elementary schools mandatory, free and secular.
  * October – Robert Louis Stevenson publishes the short story "A Lodging for the Night" (in Temple Bar magazine), later collected in New Arabian Nights.
  * October 15 – Edward L. Wheeler's first story featuring Deadwood Dick, set on the American frontier, opens the first number of Beadle's Half-Dime Library, published in New York.
  * November 5 – The Mitchell Library is established in Glasgow.
  * November 14 – Henrik Ibsen's first contemporary realist drama The Pillars of Society is premièred at the Odense Teater (having been first published on October 11 in Copenhagen).
  * November 24 – Anna Sewell's novel Black Beauty, his grooms and companions: the autobiography of a horse "translated from the equine" is published by Jarrolds of Norwich in England. Her only book, published five months before her death arising from long-standing illness, it rapidly establishes its position as an all-time bestseller, going on to sell fifty million copies and becoming the sixth best seller in the English language.
  * December 30 – Swedish dramatist August Strindberg marries his mistress, the divorced actress Siri von Essen, a member of the Finnish-Swedish minor nobility.
  
  ## New books
  
  ### Fiction
  
  * R. M. Ballantyne – The Settler and the Savage
  * R. D. Blackmore – Erema; or, my father's sin
  * Ned Buntline – Buffalo Bill Trails the Devil Head
  * Bankim Chatterjee
     * Chandrasekhar
     * Rajani
  * Ion Creangă – Harap Alb
  * Fyodor Dostoevsky – "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" (Сон смешного человека, short story)
  * Maria Fetherstonhaugh – Kilcorran
  * Gustave Flaubert – Three Tales
  * Henry James – The American
  * Jan Neruda – Povídky malostranské (Tales of the Little Quarter)
  * Margaret Oliphant – Carità
  * William Clark Russell – The Wreck of the Grosvenor
  * Theodor Storm – Aquis Submersus
  * Anthony Trollope
     * The American Senator
     * Is He Popenjoy?
  * Jacint Verdaguer – L'Atlàntida
  * Jules Verne
     * Hector Servadac
     * Les Indes noires
  * Émile Zola – L'Assommoir
  
  ### Children and young people
  
  * Louisa May Alcott – Under the Lilacs
  * Mary Louisa Molesworth (Mrs. Molesworth) – The Cuckoo Clock
  * Anna Sewell – Black Beauty
  * Amy Catherine Walton (Mrs. O. F. Walton) – A Peep Behind the Scenes
  
  ### Drama
  
  * James Albery – The Pink Dominos
  * José Echegaray – Saint or Madman? (O locura o santidad)
  * W. S. Gilbert – Engaged
  * Henrik Ibsen – The Pillars of Society (Samfundets støtter)
  * Adolphe L'Arronge – Hasemann's Daughters
  
  ### Poetry
  
  * Edward Lear – Laughable Lyrics (published December 1876, dated 1877)
  * Stéphane Mallarmé – Poésies
  
  ### Non-fiction
  
  * Henry Spencer Ashbee (as Pisanus Fraxi) – Index Librorum Prohibitorum: being Notes Bio- Biblio- Icono- graphical and Critical on Curious and Uncommon Books
  * Helena Blavatsky – Isis Unveiled
  * Florence Caddy – Household Organisation
  * Amelia Edwards – A Thousand Miles up the Nile
  * Henry Miers Elliot (ed. by John Dowson) – The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians
  * Kenneth Mackenzie – Royal Masonic Cyclopedia
  * Lewis H. Morgan – Ancient Society
  * Shen Fu (沈復) – Six Records of a Floating Life (autobiography; first printed edition)
  
  ## Births
  
  * January 4 – Sextil Pușcariu, Romanian linguist, philologist and journalist (died 1948)
  * February 7 – Alfred Williams, English "hammerman poet" (died 1930)
  * March 6 – Rose Fyleman, English writer and poet (died 1957)
  * April 14 – Donald Maxwell, English travel writer and illustrator (died 1936)
  * April 29 – Henri Stahl, Romanian historian, short story writer, memoirist and stenographer (died 1942)
  * June 11 – Renée Vivien, born Pauline Mary Tarn, English-born French-language Symbolist poet (died 1909)
  * July 2 – Hermann Hesse, German-Swiss poet, novelist and painter (died 1962)
  * August 27 – Lloyd C. Douglas, American novelist and pastor (died 1951)
  * September 1 – Rex Beach, American novelist and playwright (died 1949)
  * September 9 – James Agate, English diarist and critic (died 1947)
  * November 15 – William Hope Hodgson, English fiction writer (killed in action 1918)
  
  ## Deaths
  
  * January 29 – Caroline Howard Jervey, American author, poet, and teacher (born 1823)
  * February 18 – Henrietta A. Bingham, American writer and editor (born 1841)
  * April – Ernst Moritz Ludwig Ettmüller, German philologist (born 1802)
  * June 15 – Caroline Norton (née Caroline Sheridan), English poet, pamphleteer and social reformer (born 1808)
  * June 17 – John Stevens Cabot Abbott, American historian and pastor (born 1805)
  * August 30 – Toru Dutt, multilingual Indian Bengali poet, novelist and translator, of pulmonary tuberculosis (born 1856)
  * September 12 – Emily Pepys, English child diarist (born 1833)
  * October 10 – Johann Georg Baiter, Swiss philologist and critic (born 1801)
  * October 16 – Théodore Barrière, French dramatist (born 1823)
  * October 28 – Julia Kavanagh, Irish novelist (born 1824)
  * December 12 – José de Alencar, Brazilian novelist (born 1829)
  