This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1858.
Events
January 3 – The English critic John Ruskin first meets at her London home 10-year-old Rose La Touche, who becomes his muse. April 29 – Charles Dickens embarks on his first professional tour giving readings from his works. This will involve 129 appearances in 49 towns throughout the British Isles. May 15 – The third Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, designed by Edward Middleton Barry, opens, having been rebuilt after its second destruction by fire in 1856. June 18 – Henrik Ibsen marries Suzannah Thoresen, in the same year that he becomes creative director of Oslo's National Theater. September – Charles Baudelaire's study on Théophile Gautier is published in Revue contemporaine. October 15 – The farce Our American Cousin by the English playwright Tom Taylor is first performed at Laura Keene's Theatre in New York City, with the American Joe Jefferson in the title rôle and the English actor Edward Askew Sothern as Lord Dundreary. unknown date – Khachatur Abovian's historical novel Wounds of Armenia: Lamentation of a Patriot (Վերք Հայաստանի. ողբ հայրենասերի, Verk Hayastani), written in the Yerevan dialect in 1841, appears in Tiflis a decade after the author's presumed death; it is seen as the first Armenian novel and the first modern Eastern Armenian literary work.
New books
Fiction
William Harrison Ainsworth – The Life and Adventures of Mervyn Clitheroe
Élie Berthet – La Bête du Gévaudan
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson – Arne
Robert Barnabas Brough – The Life of Sir John Falstaff (novel) George Eliot – Scenes of Clerical Life (January; first published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine the previous year as three short stories) Octave Feuillet – Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre (Novel of a poor young man) Paul Féval – Le Bossu (The hunchback) Ernest-Aimé Feydeau – Fanny Elizabeth Gaskell – My Lady Ludlow Ivan Goncharov – Frigate "Pallada" («Фрегат "Паллада"») Catherine Gore – Heckington Bernardo Guimarães – Inspirações da Tarde Louise de Broglie, Countess d'Haussonville – Robert Emuret George MacDonald – Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women Abraham Mapu – Ayit Tzavua (Hypocrite Eagle) Aleksey Pisemsky Boyarschina One Thousand Souls Thomas Mayne Reid – Oceola John Hovey Robinson – Nick Whiffles or The Trapper Guide. A Tale of the North West Catharine Maria Sedgwick – Memoir of Joseph Curtis Anthony Trollope – Doctor Thorne
Children and young people
R. M. Ballantyne
The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean
The Gorilla Hunters
Frederic Farrar – Eric, or, Little by Little
Annie Keary – The Rival Kings
Countess of Ségur – Sophie's Misfortunes (Les Malheurs de Sophie) Charlotte Mary Yonge – The Christmas Mummers and other stories
Drama
Dion Boucicault – Jessie Brown; or the Relief of Lucknow (premiers on Feb.22) William Wells Brown – The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom Thomas Holley Chivers – The Sons of Usna: a Tragic Apotheosis in Five Acts (published) Eugène Labiche – L'Avare en gants jaunes John Oxenford – Porter's Knot Tom Taylor – Our American Cousin
Poetry
Matthew Arnold – Merope
Alphonse Daudet – Les Amoureuses
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Courtship of Miles Standish
William Morris – The Defence of Guinevere, and other Poems
Non-fiction
John Brown – Horas Subsecivae (Leisure Hours, three volumes) Gray's Anatomy, 1st edition William Carew Hazlitt – The History of the Origin and Rise of the Republic of Venice Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. – The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table William H. Prescott – History of Philip II, volume 3 Charles Piazzi Smyth – Teneriffe: An Astronomer's Experiment (illustrated by stereoscopic photographs) Dimitrie Ralet – Suvenire și impresii de călătorie în România, Bulgaria, Constantinopole (Souvenirs and Impressions of Travels in Romania, Bulgaria, Constantinople) Alfred Russel Wallace – On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type