1883 in literature

The year 1883 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• The Modern Language Association forms

New books

• Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Phantom Fortune
• Rhoda Broughton - Belinda
• Wilkie Collins - Heart and Science
• Jonas Lie - Familien paa Gilje (The Gilje family)
• George A. Moore - A Modern Lover
• Guy de Maupassant - Une Vie
• Friedrich Nietzsche - Also sprach Zarathustra
• Sir Thomas Wemyss Reid - Gladys Fane
• Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island
• Jules Verne - Kéraban the Inflexible

New drama

• Frances Hodgson Burnett & William Gillette - Esmeralda
• François Coppée - Severo Torelli
• George Robert Sims - In the Ranks
• August Strindberg - Lucky Pehr

Non-fiction

• Hall Caine - Cobwebs of Criticism
• Mark Twain - Life on the Mississippi

Births

• January 6 - Khalil Gibran, poet, novelist (d. 1931)
• January 10 - Aleksei Tolstoy, writer (d. 1945)
• February 15 - Sax Rohmer, author (d. 1959)
• April 11 - Hozumi Shigeto, Japanese author
• April 30 - Jaroslav Hašek, Czech novelist (d. 1923)
• June 3 - Franz Kafka, Czech novelist (d. 1924)
• Alberto Gerchunoff, Argentine writer

Deaths

• January 21 – Anna Eliza Bray, novelist
• March 14 – Karl Marx, philosopher
• December 13 – Victor de Laprade, poet and critic
• date unknown – Gustave Aimard, novelist