1850 in literature

See also: 1849 in literature, other events of 1850, 1851 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) named Poet Laureate of England.
• Periodical Household Words begins publication
• Henrik Ibsen's first play, The Burial Mound, is produced

New books

• Antonina – Wilkie Collins
• The Arabian Nights – Sir Richard Burton
• The Black Tulip – Alexandre Dumas, père
• Dictionary of the Norwegian Dialects – Ivar Aasen
• Frank Fairleigh – Frank Smedley
• Linda – Caroline Lee Hentz
• A Month in the Country (play) – Ivan Turgenev
• The Peasant War in Germany – Friedrich Engels
• Rena, the Snowbird – Caroline Lee Hentz
• The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Sonnets from the Portuguese (Poetry) – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Tales of City Life – Catharine Maria Sedgwick
• Tristan le Roux – Alexandre Dumas, fils
• La Vendee – Anthony Trollope
• White-Jacket – Herman Melville
• The Wide, Wide World – Susan Warner

New drama

• Christian Friedrich Hebbel – Herodes and Mariamne

Births

• January 15 – Mihai Eminescu, poet
• June 27 – Lafcadio Hearn, writer
• June 27 – Ivan Vazov, poet, novelist and playwright
• August 5 – Guy de Maupassant, writer
• September 2 – Eugene Field, poet and essayist
• November 5 – Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet and journalist
• November 13 – Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist

Deaths

• January 20 – Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger, poet
• April 23 – William Wordsworth, poet
• May 31 – Giuseppe Giusti, poet
• July 19 – Sarah Margaret Fuller, writer
• August 18 – Honoré de Balzac, novelist
• August 22 – Nikolaus Lenau, poet
• December 24 – Frederic Bastiat, philosopher and author

Awards