This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1836.
Events
March 31 (dated April) – The first monthly part of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens is issued in London. On April 20, the original illustrator, Robert Seymour, shoots himself and Dickens has more freedom to develop the story in his own way. April 2 – Dickens marries Catherine Hogarth at St Luke's Church, Chelsea (London). They honeymoon at Chalk, Kent. April 19 – Nikolai Gogol's satire The Government Inspector («Ревизор») is premièred at the Alexandra Theatre in Saint Petersburg before the Emperor Nicholas I of Russia and first published there. June – Georg Büchner begins work on his play Woyzeck; it remains unfinished when he dies the following year in Zurich. August 20 – The legal deposit privilege in the U.K. is removed from the libraries of Sion College in London, the four universities in Scotland and King's Inns in Dublin and replaced by a government grant for the purchase of books. September – The Flinders Island Chronicle is founded in Australia, the first newspaper produced by indigenous Australians. October 23 – Honoré de Balzac's novel La Vieille Fille (The Old Maid) begins a 12-day serialization in the newly established Paris newspaper La Presse, as the first novel serialized in the French press. November 6 – The funeral of Czech romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha takes place on what should have been the day of his wedding to Eleonora Šomková, about a month after the birth of their child. Mácha had overexerted himself in helping put out a fire and died just before his 26th birthday of pneumonia in Litoměřice. December – Charles Dickens first meets, in London, a lifelong friend, the biographer and critic John Forster. unknown dates The Russian literary, social and political quarterly Sovremennik («Современник», The Contemporary), edited by Alexander Pushkin, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It publishes Fyodor Tyutchev's poetry, and the fourth issue contains Pushkin's historical novel The Captain's Daughter («Капитанская дочка», ). The Hon. Grantley Berkeley M.P. assaults publisher James Fraser in his office over a review published in Fraser's Magazine of Berkeley's Berkeley Castle: an historical romance (for which Berkeley is convicted). Berkeley subsequently fights a pistol duel with the review's (anonymous) author William Maginn in London without hurt to either party. The first printed literature in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic is produced by Justin Perkins, an American Presbyterian missionary in Persia. The dissertation of the German writer Georg Büchner on the common barbel (fish), Barbus barbus, "Mémoire sur le Système Nerveux du Barbeaux (Cyprinus barbus L.)", appears in Paris and Strasbourg. After receiving his doctorate, he is appointed in October by the University of Zurich as a lecturer in anatomy.
New books
Fiction
Hans Christian Andersen – O. T. Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed (January) Honoré de Balzac Le Lys dans la vallée (The Lily of the Valley) Facino Cane Alfred de Musset – La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century) Charles Dickens – The Pickwick Papers Alexandre Dumas – The Countess of Salisbury Théophile Gautier – "La Morte amoureuse" (short story) Louis Geoffroy – Histoire de la Monarchie universelle: Napoléon et la conquête du monde (1812–1832) William Nugent Glascock – Tales of a Tar, with characteristic Anecdotes Nikolai Gogol "The Carriage" (short story) "The Nose" («Нос», short story) Catherine Gore – Mrs. Armytage Thomas Colley Grattan – Agnes de Mansfeldt Thomas Chandler Haliburton – The Clockmaker Washington Irving – Astoria Alexander Pushkin – The Captain's Daughter X. B. Saintine – Picciola Nathaniel Beverley Tucker George Balcombe The Partisan Leader
Children
Letitia Elizabeth Landon – Traits and Trials of Early Life
William Holmes McGuffey (ed.) – first McGuffey Readers
Frederick Marryat
Japhet, in Search of a Father
Mr Midshipman Easy
The Pirate
The Three Cutters
Agnes Strickland – Tales and Stories From History
Drama
Georg Büchner – Leonce and Lena (Leonce und Lena) Alexandre Dumas – Kean Nikolai Gogol – Leaving the Theater (After the Staging of a New Comedy) («Театральный разъезд после представления новой комедии») Henrik Hertz – The Savings Bank (Sparekassen) James Sheridan Knowles – The Daughter George William Lovell – The Provost of Bruges
Poetry
Robert Browning – "Porphyria's Lover" Girolamo de Rada – Këngët e Milosaos Oliver Wendell Holmes – Poems Andreas Munch – Ephemerer