1894 in literature

• 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.^[1]
• 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.^[2]
• 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.^[3]
  • 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 edit

• 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^[4]
• 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^[5]
• 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 edit

• 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 edit

• 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 edit

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

Non-fiction edit

• 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)

• January 1 – Aurora Nilsson, Swedish writer (died 1972)
• January 22 – Charles Langbridge Morgan, English novelist and dramatist (died 1958)^[6]
• February 6 – Eric Partridge, New Zealand/British lexicographer (died 1979)^[7]
• March 14 – Nichita Smochină, Transnistrian Romanian ethnographer and journalist (died 1980)
• March 17 – Paul Green, American novelist and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright (died 1981)^[8]
• March 23 – Mark Slonim, Russian literary historian and critic (died 1976)^[9]
• April 6 – Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, English children's writer (died 1969)^[10]
• 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)^[11]
• 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)^[12]
• 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)^[13]
• 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)^[14]
• 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)

• January 7 – Sophia Alice Callahan, American Muscogee novelist and teacher (born 1868)
• February 8 – R. M. Ballantyne, Scottish novelist for youth (born 1825)^[15]
• April 8
  • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Bengali writer and poet (born 1838)^[16]
  • Harriet Anne Scott, Scottish novelist (born 1819)^[17]
• 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)^[18]
• April 29 – Augusta Theodosia Drane, English religious writer and biographer (born 1823)^[19]
• 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)^[20]
• June 5 – Edward Capern, English poet (born 1819)^[21]
• July 30 – Walter Pater, English essayist, critic and novelist (born 1839)^[22]
• August 6 – Otto Müller, German novelist (born 1816)^[23]
• August 10 – Cynthia Roberts Gorton, American poet and author (born 1826)^[24]
• August 25 – Celia Laighton Thaxter, American author (born 1835)
• October 8 – Oliver Wendell Holmes, American poet and physician (born 1809)^[25]
• October 20 – James Anthony Froude, English historian, novelist and biographer (born 1818)^[26]
• December 3 – Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer (born 1850)^[27]
• December 9 – Mary Bell Smith, American writer, educator, social reformer (born 1818)^[28]
• December 29 – Christina Rossetti, English poet (born 1830)^[29]
• Unknown dates
  • Giuseppe Borrello, Sicilian poet (born 1820)
  • Nabagopal Mitra, Indian playwright, poet and essayist (born c. 1840)

• Newdigate Prize – Frank Taylor^[30]

• Media related to 1894 in literature at Wikimedia Commons