1881 in literature

See also: 1880 in literature, other events of 1881, 1882 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• March 4 – A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, begins.
• The first of the three-volume History of Woman Suffrage, was published by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

New books

• Asphodel – Mary Elizabeth Braddon
• The Black Robe – Wilkie Collins
• The Cryptogram – Jules Verne
• Eight Hundred Leagues On The Amazon – Jules Verne
• En menage – Joris-Karl Huysmans
• God and the Man – Robert Buchanan
• The Great Infidels – Robert G. Ingersoll
• Harry Joscelyn – Margaret Oliphant
• John Inglesant – Joseph Henry Shorthouse
• A Little Child's Monument – Roden Noël
• Milly and Olly – Mary Augusta Ward
• The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
• Rajsimha – Bankim Chatterjee
• The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government – Jefferson Davis
• Stanley Brereton – William Harrison Ainsworth
• Sylvestre Bonnard – Anatole France

Births

• March 25 – Mary Webb, writer (d. 1927)
• October 15 – P. G. Wodehouse, British-American writer (d. 1975)

Deaths

• January 28 – Fyodor Dostoevsky, author
• April 19 – Benjamin Disraeli, writer, politician
• George Robert Aberigh-Mackay – English author

Awards