The year 1870 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• Thomas Hardy meets his first wife, Emma.
• Friedrich Engels moves to London.

New books

• Thomas Bailey Aldrich - The Story of a Bad Boy
• Thomas Archer - The Terrible Sights of London
• Rhoda Broughton - Red as a rose is she
• Wilkie Collins - Man and Wife
• Charles Dickens - The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Dickens last and un-finished novel)
• Benjamin Disraeli - Lothair
• Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Eternal Husband
• Aleksis Kivi - Seven Brothers (Seitsemän veljestä)
• William Morris - The Earthly Paradise
• Leopold von Sacher-Masoch - Venus in Furs (Venus im Pelz)
• Anthony Trollope - The Vicar of Bullhampton
• Jules Verne
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
• Around the Moon
• Charlotte Mary Yonge - The Caged Lion

New drama

• James Albery - Two Roses
• Pietro Cossa - Nero

Poetry

• Lewis Carroll - The Hunting of the Snark
• Bret Harte - The Heathen Chinee
• Giovanni Marradi - Canzone moderne
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti - The House of Life

Non-fiction

• Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1st edition)

Births

• March 5 - Frank Norris (d. 1902)
• June 25 - Erskine Childers (d. 1922)
• July 27 - Hilaire Belloc (d. 1953)
• December 18 - Saki (d. 1916)
• date unknown - Gerald Duckworth, publisher (died 1937)

Deaths

• February 25 - Henrik Hertz, Danish poet
• June 9 - Charles Dickens, British novelist
• June 11 - William Gilmore Simms, author
• July 20 - Jules de Goncourt, Prix Goncourt
• July 24 - Anders Abraham Grafström, Swedish poet and historian
• September 12 - Fitz Hugh Ludlow, American author and explorer
• November 4 - Comte de Lautreamont, French poet and writer
• December 5 - Alexandre Dumas, père, author

Awards