List of years in literature

This page indexes the individual "year in literature" pages. Each year is annotated with a significant event as a reference point.

2000s – 1990s – 1980s – 1970s – 1960s – 1950s – 1940s – 1930s – 1920s – 1910s – 1900s – 1890s – 1880s – 1870s – 1860s – 1850s – 1840s – 1830s – 1820s – 1810s – 1800s – 1790s – 1780s – 1770s – 1760s – 1750s – 1740s – 1730s – 1720s – 1710s – 1700s – 1690s – 1680s – 1670s – 1660s – 1650s – Pre 1650s

2000s

2005 in literature
2004 in literature – Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories – Chuck Palahniuk
2003 in literature – The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown; Noam Chomsky – Hegemony or Survival
2002 in literature – Atonement – Ian McEwan, margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
2001 in literature – Seabiscuit: An American Legend Laura Hillenbrand, Life of Pi, Yann Martel
2000 in literature – The American Family Association begins a year-long attack on Robert Clark Young's novel, One of the Guys, in an attempt to persuade the U.S. Congress to defund the National Endowment for the Arts

1990s

1999 in literature – Chocolat – Joanne Harris
1998 in literature – A Man in Full – Tom Wolfe
1997 in literature – Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone – J. K. Rowling
1996 in literature – Angela's Ashes – Frank McCourt
1995 in literature – The Celestine Prophecy – James Redfield
1994 in literature – The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
1993 in literature – The Christmas Box Richard Paul Evans
1992 in literature – The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
1991 in literature – Such a Long Journey – Rohinton Mistry
1990 in literature – Vertigo – W.G. Sebald

1980s

1989 in literature – The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
1988 in literature – Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
1987 in literature – Beloved – Toni Morrison
1986 in literature – Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
1985 in literature – The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood
1984 in literature – White Noise – Don DeLillo
1983 in literature – On Wings of Eagles – Ken Follett
1982 in literature – The Color Purple – Alice Walker
1981 in literature – The Blue Bicycle – Régine Deforges
1980 in literature – Smiley's People – John le Carré

1970s

1979 in literature – Kane and Abel – Jeffrey Archer
1978 in literature – The World According to Garp – John Irving
1977 in literature – The Sea, the Sea – Iris Murdoch
1976 in literature – Triton – Samuel R. Delany
1975 in literature – The Book of Sand – Jorge Luis Borges
1974 in literature – Carrie – Stephen King
1973 in literature – Burr – Gore Vidal
1972 in literature – Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Richard Bach
1971 in literature – The End of Summer – Rosamunde Pilcher
1970 in literature – Deliverance – James Dickey

1960s

1969 in literature – Portnoy's Complaint – Philip Roth
1968 in literature – Airport – Arthur Hailey
1967 in literature – Wild Season – Allan W. Eckert
1966 in literature – The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
1965 in literature – Herzog – Saul Bellow
1964 in literature – Little Big Man – Thomas Berger
1963 in literature – Planet of the Apes (La Planete des Singes) – Pierre Boulle
1962 in literature – Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
1961 in literature – Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
1960 in literature – To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee

1950s

1959 in literature – In the Labyrinth – Alain Robbe-Grillet
1958 in literature – The Grass – Claude Simon
1957 in literature – On the Road – Jack Kerouac
1956 in literature – Der Besuch der alten Dame – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
1955 in literature – Tunnel in the Sky Robert Heinlein
1954 in literature – Lord of the Flies – William G. Golding
1953 in literature – Casino Royale – Ian Fleming – First James Bond novel
1952 in literature – Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett
1951 in literature – The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
1950 in literature – The Bald Soprano – Eugène Ionesco

1940s

1949 in literature – Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
1948 in literature – Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
1947 in literature – The Diary of Anne Frank
1946 in literature – The Iceman Cometh – Eugene O'Neill
1945 in literature – The Death of Virgil – Hermann Broch
1944 in literature – Our Lady of the Flowers – Jean Genet
1943 in literature – Four Quartets – T.S. Eliot
1942 in literature – The Stranger – Albert Camus
1941 in literature – Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
1940 in literature – Native Son – Richard Wright

1930s

1939 in literature – Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
1938 in literature – Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
1937 in literature – Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
1936 in literature – Death on the Installment Plan – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
1935 in literature – The Dog Beneath the Skin – W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood
1934 in literature – I, Claudius – Robert Graves
1933 in literature – A Universal History of Infamy (to 1934) – Jorge Luis Borges
1932 in literature – Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
1931 in literature – The Good Earth – Pearl S. Buck
1930 in literature – The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil

1920s

1929 in literature – Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
1928 in literature – Lady Chatterley's Lover – D.H. Lawrence
1927 in literature – In Search of Lost Time (final volume) – Marcel Proust
1926 in literature – The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
1925 in literature – The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
1924 in literature – Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
1923 in literature – Duino Elegies – Rainer Maria Rilke
1922 in literature – Ulysses – James Joyce, The Waste Land – T. S. Eliot, Steppenwolf – Hermann Hesse
1921 in literature – The Mistress of Husaby – Sigrid Undset
1920 in literature – The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton

1910s

1919 in literature – The Moon and Sixpence – W. Somerset Maugham
1918 in literature – The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington, Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey
1917 in literature – Prufrock and Other Observations – T.S. Eliot
1916 in literature – Relativity – Albert Einstein
1915 in literature – The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
1914 in literature – Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich – Stephen Leacock
1913 in literature – Alcools – Guillaume Apollinaire, Petersburg – Andrei Bely
1912 in literature – Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
1911 in literature – Encyclopædia Britannica published
1910 in literature – Howards End – E. M. Forster

1900s

1909 in literature – The Song of Songs – Hermann Sudermann
1908 in literature – Anne of Green Gables – Lucy Maude Montgomery
1907 in literature – The City of Pleasure – Arnold Bennett
1906 in literature – The House of Souls – Arthur Machen
1905 in literature – White Fang – Jack London
1904 in literature – Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
1903 in literature – The Souls of Black Folk – W. E. B. DuBois
1902 in literature – The Immoralist – André Gide
1901 in literature – Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
1900 in literature – Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser

1890s

1899 in literature – The School and Society – John Dewey
1898 in literature – Paris – Emile Zola
1897 in literature – Captains Courageous – Rudyard Kipling
1896 in literature – The Well at the World's End – William Morris
1895 in literature – Almayer's Folly – Joseph Conrad
1894 in literature – The Prisoner of Zenda – Anthony Hope
1893 in literature – The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
1892 in literature – Children of the Ghetto – Israel Zangwill
1891 in literature – Diary of a Pilgrimage – Jerome K. Jerome
1890 in literature – Hedda Gabler – Henrik Ibsen

1880s

1889 in literature – Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Friedrich Nietzsche
1888 in literature – Confessions of a Young Man – George A. Moore
1887 in literature – Thelma – Marie Corelli
1886 in literature – Little Lord Fauntleroy – Frances Hodgson Burnett
1885 in literature – Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
1884 in literature – Miss Bretherton – Mary Augusta Ward
1883 in literature – Une Vie – Guy de Maupassant
1882 in literature – The Naval War of 1812 – Theodore Roosevelt
1881 in literature – The Black Robe – Wilkie Collins
1880 in literature – Workers in the Dawn – George Gissing

1870s

1879 in literature – The Red Room – August Strindberg
1878 in literature – Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
1877 in literature – Under the Lilacs – Louisa May Alcott
1876 in literature – The Shadow of the Sword – Robert Buchanan
1875 in literature – The Goldsmith's Wife – William Harrison Ainsworth
1874 in literature – Les Diaboliques – Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly
1873 in literature – The Poison Tree – Bankim Chatterjee
1872 in literature – The Birth of Tragedy – Friedrich Nietzsche
1871 in literature – Middlemarch – George Eliot
1870 in literature – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne

1860s

1869 in literature – War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
1868 in literature – Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
1867 in literature – Cometh Up as a Flower – Rhoda Broughton
1866 in literature – Surry of Eagle's-Nest – John Esten Cooke
1865 in literature – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
1864 in literature – Renee Mauperin – Edmond de Goncourt
1863 in literature – Capitan Fracassa – Theophile Gautier
1862 in literature – Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
1861 in literature – Framley Parsonage – Anthony Trollope
1860 in literature – The Fall of the Alamo – R.M. Potter

1850s

1859 in literature – A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
1858 in literature – A House of Gentlefolk – Ivan Turgenev
1857 in literature – Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
1856 in literature – The Daisy Chain – Charlotte Mary Yonge
1855 in literature – Westward Ho! – Charles Kingsley
1854 in literature – The Newcomers – William Makepeace Thackeray
1853 in literature – Life in the Clearings – Susanna Moodie
1852 in literature – Uncle Tom's Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
1851 in literature – Moby Dick – Herman Melville
1850 in literature – The Arabian Nights – Sir Richard Burton

1840s

1849 in literature – The Oregon Trail – Francis Parkman
1848 in literature – The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
1847 in literature – Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
1846 in literature – The Children of the Night – Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
1845 in literature – The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas, père
1844 in literature – Les Paysans – Honoré de Balzac
1843 in literature – Windsor Castle – William Harrison Ainsworth
1842 in literature – Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol
1841 in literature – The Bronze Horseman – Alexander Pushkin
1840 in literature – Two Years Before the Mast – Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

1830s

1839 in literature – The Voyage of the Beagle – Charles Darwin
1838 in literature – The Birds of America – John James Audubon
1837 in literature – Live and Let Live – Catharine Maria Sedgwick
1836 in literature – Poems – Oliver Wendell Holmes
1835 in literature – Souvenirs (book)Souvenirs – Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun
1834 in literature – Sartor Resartus – Thomas Carlyle
1833 in literature – Gamiani – Alfred de Musset
1832 in literature – Valentine – George Sand
1831 in literature – The Young Duke – Benjamin Disraeli
1830 in literature – The Red and the Black – Stendhal

1820s

1829 in literature – The Misfortunes of Elphin – Thomas Love Peacock
1828 in literature – The Birds of America – John James Audubon
1827 in literature – Book of Songs (poetry) – Heinrich Heine
1826 in literature – Cinq-Mars – Alfred de Vigny
1825 in literature – The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
1824 in literature – Our Village – Mary Russell Mitford
1823 in literature – Posthumous Poems – Percy Bysshe Shelley
1822 in literature – Trilby – Charles Nodier
1821 in literature – Confessions of an English Opium Eater – Thomas De Quincey
1820 in literature – Méditations Poétiques – Lamartine

1810s

1819 in literature – The Sketch Book – Washington Irving
1818 in literature – Frankenstein – Mary Shelly
1817 in literature – Ormond and Harrington – Maria Edgeworth
1816 in literature – Adolphe – Benjamin Constant
1815 in literature – The Pastor's Fireside – Jane Porter
1814 in literature – The Wanderer – Fanny Burney
1813 in literature – The Swiss Family Robinson – Johann David Wyss
1812 in literature – The Milesian Chief – Charles Robert Maturin
1811 in literature – Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
1810 in literature – The Houses of Osma and Almeria – Regina Maria Roche

1800s

1809 in literature – The Martyrs – François-René de Chateaubriand
1808 in literature – Faust (Part One) – Goethe
1807 in literature – Tales from Shakespeare – Charles Lamb & Mary Lamb
1806 in literature – The Earthquake in Chile – Heinrich von Kleist
1805 in literature – The Wonder of the Village – Mary Meeke
1804 in literature – Jerusalem (poetry) – William Blake
1803 in literature – St. Clair of the Isles – Elisabeth Helme
1802 in literature – Delphine – Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
1801 in literature – The Wizard and the Sword – Henry Summersett
1800 in literature – Hymns to the Night – Novalis

1790s

1799 in literature – Arthur Mervyn – Charles Brockden Brown
1798 in literature – Lyrical Ballads – Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth
1797 in literature – l'Histoire de Juliette – Marquis de Sade
1796 in literature – Camilla – Fanny Burney
1795 in literature – Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (to 1796) – Goethe
1794 in literature – The Age of Reason – Thomas Paine
1793 in literature -
1792 in literature – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman – Mary Wollstonecraft
1791 in literature – The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. – James Boswell
1790 in literature – Reflections on the Revolution in France – Edmund Burke

1780s

1789 in literature – Songs of Innocence – William Blake
1788 in literature – Memoirs – Saint-Simon
1787 in literature – Don Carlos – Friedrich Schiller
1786 in literature – Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect – Robert Burns
1785 in literature – Anton Reiser (to 1790) – Karl Philipp Moritz
1784 in literature – Barham Downs – Robert Bage
1783 in literature – Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics – Immanuel Kant
1782 in literature – The Robbers – Friedrich Schiller
1781 in literature – A Critique of Pure Reason – Immanuel Kant
1780 in literature -

1770s

1779 in literature – Nathan the Wise – Gotthold Lessing
1778 in literature – Evelina – Fanny Burney
1777 in literature -
1776 in literature – Common Sense – Thomas Paine
1775 in literature -
1774 in literature – The Sorrows of Young Werther – Goethe
1773 in literature – Der Messias (from 1749) – Klopstock
1772 in literature -
1771 in literature – Jacques le fataliste et son maître (to 1773) – Diderot
1770 in literature -

1760s

1769 in literature – The History of Emily Montague – Frances Brooke
1768 in literature – Poems – Thomas Gray
1767 in literature – Minna von Barnhelm – Gotthold Lessing
1766 in literature – The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
1765 in literature -
1764 in literature – The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
1763 in literature – The Chronicles of the Stone – Cao Xueqin
1762 in literature – Émile – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1761 in literature – Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1760 in literature – Tristram Shandy (to 1770) – Laurence Sterne

1750s

1759 in literature – Candide – Voltaire
1758 in literature – Letter to d'Alembert – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1757 in literature – Odes – Thomas Gray
1756 in literature -
1755 in literature – Letter to Lord Chesterfield – Samuel Johnson
1754 in literature – History of Great Britain (to 1762) – David Hume
1753 in literature – Sir Charles Grandison (to 1754) – Samuel Richardson
1752 in literature – Micromégas – Voltaire
1751 in literature – Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard – Thomas Gray
1750 in literature – Rambler essays (to 1752) – Samuel Johnson

1740s

1749 in literature – Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
1748 in literature – An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding – David Hume
1747 in literature – Clarissa (to 1748) – Samuel Richardson
1746 in literature -
1745 in literature -
1744 in literature – The Pleasures of the Imagination – Mark Akenside
1743 in literature – The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great – Henry Fielding
1742 in literature – Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
1741 in literature – Shamela – Henry Fielding
1740 in literature – Institutions de physique Émilie du Châtelet

1730s

1739 in literature – A Treatise of Human Nature (to 1740) – David Hume
1738 in literature – Leonidas – Richard Glover
1737 in literature -
1736 in literature -
1735 in literature -
1734 in literature -
1733 in literature -
1732 in literature – Essay on Man (to 1744) – Alexander Pope
1731 in literature – Insel Felsenburg (to 1743) – Johann Schnabel
1730 in literature -

1720s

1729 in literature – A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
1728 in literature – Dunciad – Alexander Pope
1727 in literature -
1726 in literature – Gulliver's Travels – Jonathan Swift
1725 in literature – Odyssey (translation) – Alexander Pope
1724 in literature – Roxana – Daniel Defoe
1723 in literature – Henréiade – Voltaire
1722 in literature – Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
1721 in literature – Persian Letters – Montesquieu
1720 in literature

1710s

1719 in literature – Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
1718 in literature
1717 in literature – The Rape of the Lock – Alexander Pope
1716 in literature
1715 in literature – Iliad (translation; to 1720) – Alexander Pope
1714 in literature – Monadology – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
1713 in literature – Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous – George Berkeley
1712 in literature – The Rape of the Lock – Alexander Pope
1711 in literature
1710 in literature – A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge – George Berkeley

1700s

1690s

1680s

1670s

1660s

1650s

Pre 1650s

17th century in literature
16th century in literature
15th century in literature
14th century in literature – Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer
13th century in literature
Pre 13th century in literature – Religious, philosophical texts written.

Categories: Books by year | Timelines