This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1876.
Events
February 24 – The stage première of the verse-play Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (published 1867) with incidental music by Edvard Grieg, takes place in Christiania, Norway. February/March – The Harvard Lampoon humor magazine is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts. March 14 – Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma established in Rome. March American librarian Melvil Dewey first publishes the Dewey Decimal Classification system. George Bernard Shaw moves permanently from Dublin to England, after which he begins his writing career as the ghostwriter of a musical column in London satirical weekly The Hornet. April – Émile Zola's L'Assommoir begins serialization in Le Bien public. Its low-life themes cause it to be suspended after six episodes; serialization resumes in July in La République des lettres. July – William Heffer takes over his first bookshop in Cambridge (England), primarily as a stationer at this date. December – The first United States edition of Mark Twain's first individual extended work of fiction, the Bildungsroman The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, illustrated by True Williams, is published by the American Publishing Company. An authorised non-illustrated British edition has appeared in early June from Chatto & Windus in London (with the first review appearing on June 24 in a British magazine) and pirated editions have appeared in Canada and Germany. unknown dates The first (1594) edition of Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II is discovered. The Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord opens in Paris.
New books
Fiction
W. H. Ainsworth
Chetwynd Calverley
The Leaguer of Lathom
Machado de Assis – Helena
Isabella Banks (Mrs. G. Linnæus Banks) – The Manchester Man
Walter Besant and James Rice – The Golden Butterfly
Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Dead Men's Shoes
Rhoda Broughton – Joan
Robert Buchanan – The Shadow of the Sword
Wilkie Collins – The Two Destinies
Alphonse Daudet – Jack
Swarnakumari Devi – Deepnirban
Fyodor Dostoevsky – A Gentle Creature
George Eliot – Daniel Deronda
Benito Pérez Galdós – Doña Perfecta
John Habberton – Helen's Babies
Thomas Hardy – The Hand of Ethelberta
Joris-Karl Huysmans – Martha
Helen Hunt Jackson - Mercy Philbrick's Choice
Jens Peter Jacobsen – Fru Marie Grubbe
Herman Melville – Clarel
Anthony Trollope – The Prime Minister (complete in book form) Jules Verne – Michael Strogoff Charlotte M. Yonge – The Three Brides Émile Zola – Son Excellence Eugène Rougon
Children and young people
Louisa May Alcott – Rose in Bloom
Mark Twain – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Drama
Émile Augier – Madame Caverlet
Rosario de Acuña – Rienzi el tribuno
W. S. Gilbert – Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith
Julius Villiam Gudmand-Høyer – Sorte Ellen og Hendes Søn
Henrik Ibsen – Peer Gynt
Poetry
Robert Browning - Pacchiarotto
Lewis Carroll – The Hunting of the Snark
Edward Lear – Laughable Lyrics (published December, dated 1877) Julia A. Moore – The Sentimental Song Book
Non-fiction
Michael Foster – Textbook of Physiology
William Ewart Gladstone – Bulgarian Horrors
Professor Louis Hoffmann (Angelo John Lewis) – Modern Magic
Søren Kierkegaard (died 1855) – Judge for Yourselves! (Dømmer selv!) Friedrich Nietzsche – Untimely Meditations (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen) Robert's Rules of Order George Smith (ed.) – The Chaldean Account of Genesis
Births
January 4 – Paola Drigo, Italian writer (died 1938) January 12 – Jack London, American writer (died 1916) February 11 – Mary Frances Dowdall, English novelist and non-fiction writer (died 1939) February 16 – G. M. Trevelyan, English historian (died 1962) March 4 – Léon-Paul Fargue, French poet (died 1947) April 13 – Sidney Bradshaw Fay American historian (died 1967) April 22 – Ole Edvart Rolvaag, Norwegian-American writer (died 1931) May 10 – Ivan Cankar, Slovene dramatist and poet (died 1918) June 2 – Konstantin Trenyov, Russian dramatist (died 1945) July 1 – Susan Glaspell, American playwright and novelist (died 1948) July 12 – Max Jacob, French poet (died 1944) September 13 – Sherwood Anderson, American novelist (died 1941) October 31 – Natalie Clifford Barney, American writer and patron (died 1972) November 1 – Anne de Noailles, French writer (died 1933) December 22: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Italian poet, art theorist and Futurist writer (died 1944) Thomas Mofolo, Sotho novelist (died 1948)