1831 in literature
Encyclopedia
The year 1831 in literature involved some significant events and new books.
Events
- January 15 - Victor HugoVictor HugoVictor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
completed his novel Notre-Dame de Paris, known in English as The Hunchback of Notre DameThe Hunchback of Notre DameThe Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a novel by Victor Hugo published in 1831. The French title refers to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, on which the story is centered.-Background:...
. - The play La Cocarde Tricolore by the Cogniard brothersCogniard brothersThe Cogniard brothers were two French brothers who worked as playwrights and theatre directors, producing an incalculable number of vaudevilles, reviews, fééries and operettas...
introduces the term "chauvinism." - William Lloyd GarrisonWilliam Lloyd GarrisonWilliam Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United...
begins publication of the Liberator, an abolitionist periodical. - The Sydney Morning HeraldThe Sydney Morning HeraldThe Sydney Morning Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia. The newspaper is published six days a week. The newspaper's Sunday counterpart, The...
is first published. - Alexander Pushkin marries Natalya GoncharovaNatalia PushkinaNataliya Nikolaevna Pushkina-Lanskaya , , was the wife of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin from 1831 until his death in 1837 of a duel with Georges d'Anthès...
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New books
- Honoré de BalzacHonoré de BalzacHonoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
- La Peau de chagrinLa Peau de chagrinLa Peau de chagrin is an 1831 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac . Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells the story of a young man who finds a magic piece of shagreen that fulfills his every desire. For each wish granted, however, the skin shrinks and consumes a portion of...
- Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnuLe Chef-d'œuvre inconnuLe Chef-d’œuvre inconnu is a short story by Honoré de Balzac. It was first published in the newspaper L'Artiste with the title "Maître Frenhofer" in August 1831...
- La Peau de chagrin
- Selina DavenportSelina DavenportSelina Davenport was an English author of the Romantic period. She wrote 11 novels and was married to Richard Alfred Davenport.-Early life:...
- The Queen's Page - Benjamin Disraeli - The Young Duke
- Nikolai GogolNikolai GogolNikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
- Evenings on a Farm Near DikankaEvenings on a Farm Near DikankaEvenings on a Farm Near Dikanka is a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol, written from 1831-1832. They appeared in various magazines and were published in book form when Gogol, who had spent his life in Ukraine up to the age of nineteen, was twenty two. He put his early impressions and... - Catherine GoreCatherine GoreCatherine Grace Frances Gore was a British novelist and dramatist, daughter of a wine merchant at Retford, where she was born. She is amongst the well-known of the silver fork writers - authors of the Victorian era depicting the gentility and etiquette of high society.-Biography:Gore was born in...
- The Tuileries - Ann HattonAnn HattonAnn Julia Hatton , was a popular novelist in Britain in the early 19th century.-Biography:...
- Gerald Fitzgerald - Victor HugoVictor HugoVictor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
- The Hunchback of Notre DameThe Hunchback of Notre DameThe Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a novel by Victor Hugo published in 1831. The French title refers to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, on which the story is centered.-Background:...
- Washington IrvingWashington IrvingWashington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works...
- Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus - George SandGeorge SandAmantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...
- IndianaIndiana (novel)Indiana is the first novel of George Sand, published in April 1832. It was Amandine Aurore Dupin's first novel published under the pseudonym George Sand. The novel blends the conventions of romanticism, realism, and idealism. The novel is about love and marriage.The novel set partly in France,... - Rosalia St. Clair - The Last of the Lyals
Non-fiction
- John Stuart MillJohn Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
- The Spirit of the Age - Washington IrvingWashington IrvingWashington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works...
- Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus
Births
- January 2 - Justin WinsorJustin WinsorJustin Winsor was a prominent American writer, librarian, and historian.-Background and education:Winsor was born in Boston, Massachusetts, son of Nathaniel Winsor III and Ann Thomas Howland Winsor...
, historian and librarian (d. 1897) - January 26 - Mary Mapes DodgeMary Mapes DodgeMary Mapes Dodge was an American children's writer and editor, best known for her novel Hans Brinker.-Biography:...
, writer (d. 1907) - February 16 - Nikolai LeskovNikolai LeskovNikolai Semyonovich Leskov was a Russian journalist, novelist and short story writer, who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, held in high esteem by Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky among others, Leskov is...
, novelist (d. 1895) - August 1 - William Aldis WrightWilliam Aldis WrightWilliam Aldis Wright , was an English writer and editor.William Aldis Wright was son of George Wright, a Baptist minister in Beccles. He was educated at Beccles Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1858...
, literary editor (d. 1914) - September 5 - Victorien SardouVictorien SardouVictorien Sardou was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play...
, dramatist (d. 1908) - October 15 - Helen Hunt JacksonHelen Hunt JacksonHelen Maria Hunt Jackson, born Helen Fiske , was a United States writer who became an activist on behalf of improved treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government. She detailed the adverse effects of government actions in her history A Century of Dishonor...
, writer-activist (d. 1885)
Deaths
- January 2 - Barthold Georg NiebuhrBarthold Georg NiebuhrBarthold Georg Niebuhr was a Danish-German statesman and historian who became Germany's leading historian of Ancient Rome and a founding father of modern scholarly historiography. Classical Rome caught the admiration of German thinkers...
, historian (b. 1776) - January 14 - Henry MackenzieHenry MackenzieHenry Mackenzie was a Scottish novelist and miscellaneous writer. He was also known by the sobriquet "Addison of the North."-Biography:Mackenzie was born in Edinburgh....
, Scottish novelist (b. 1745) - January 21 - Ludwig Achim von ArnimLudwig Achim von ArnimLudwig Achim von Arnim was a German poet and novelist born in Berlin.-Life:Arnim was descended from a Prussian noble family. His father was Joachim Erdmann von Arnim , associated with the Prussian court and, among other roles, active as the Director of the Berlin theater...
- February 25 - Friedrich Maximilian KlingerFriedrich Maximilian KlingerFriedrich Maximilian von Klinger was a German dramatist and novelist.-Biography:Klinger was born of humble parentage in Frankfurt. His father died when he was a child, and his early years were a hard struggle. He was enabled, however, in 1774 to enter the university of Gießen, where he studied law...
, dramatist and novelist, originator of Sturm und DrangSturm und DrangSturm und Drang is a proto-Romantic movement in German literature and music taking place from the late 1760s through the early 1780s, in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism... - April 4 - Isaiah ThomasIsaiah ThomasIsaiah Thomas , was an American newspaper publisher and author. He performed the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in Worcester, Massachusetts and reported the first account of the Battles of Lexington and Concord...
, publisher - June 30 - William RoscoeWilliam RoscoeWilliam Roscoe , was an English historian and miscellaneous writer.-Life:He was born in Liverpool, where his father, a market gardener, kept a public house called the Bowling Green at Mount Pleasant. Roscoe left school at the age of twelve, having learned all that his schoolmaster could teach...
, English poet - October 2 - José Agostinho de MacedoJosé Agostinho de MacedoJosé Agostinho de Macedo , Portuguese poet and prose writer, was born at Beja of plebeian family, and studied Latin and rhetoric with the Oratorians in Lisbon...
, Portuguese poet (b. 1761) - December 18 - Willem BilderdijkWillem BilderdijkWillem Bilderdijk , Dutch poet, the son of an Amsterdam physician. When he was six years old an accident to his foot incapacitated him for ten years, and he developed habits of continuous and concentrated study...
, Dutch author - December 26 - Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, Indian poet and teacher (b. 1809)