This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1860.
Events
January
The first issue of the Cornhill Magazine appears in London. It serializes Anthony Trollope's Framley Parsonage throughout the year. Mrs. Henry Wood's "sensation novel" East Lynne begins serialization in The New Monthly Magazine. Her first full-length novel, Danesbury House, also appears this year. Approximate date – The Catholic newspaper L'Univers is suppressed by the French government. January 28 – The first of Charles Dickens' literary sketches generally titled The Uncommercial Traveller appears in his magazine All the Year Round. February – Mary Elizabeth Braddon gives up her acting career to write. In the same year she meets her future husband John Maxwell. March 27 – The Irish melodrama The Colleen Bawn, or The Brides of Garryowen, written by and starring Dion Boucicault, is first performed at Miss Laura Keene's theatre, New York. April 4 – George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss is published by John Blackwood in three volumes. June 9 – Ann S. Stephens' Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter, a tale of the American frontier, becomes the first Beadle's dime novel, published in cheap paperback book format by Irwin P. Beadle & Co. in New York City. June 30 – In the 1860 Oxford evolution debate, Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley debate the theories of Charles Darwin at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Lewis Carroll is among the audience. August 25 – Wilkie Collins' sensation novel The Woman in White, an early example of mystery fiction, completes its serialization in All the Year Round. It appears in book form in London around August 15. c. September 3 – Charles Dickens burns most of his private papers at his home in Kent, Gads Hill Place, having taken up regular residence there this year. December 1 – Charles Dickens's Bildungsroman Great Expectations begins serialization in All the Year Round. unknown dates Alexander Bain is appointed to the chair of logic and English literature at the University of Aberdeen. Vasil Drumev, later Metropolitan Kliment of Tarnovo and Bulgaria's Prime Minister, brings out the first original story in the Bulgarian language, "A Woeful Family" (Nešastna familiya), in the Istanbul journal Bâlgarski knižitsi. Andreas Munch becomes the first person granted a poet's pension by the Parliament of Norway.
New books
Fiction
R. M. Ballantyne – The Dog Crusoe and his Master
Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Three Times Dead
Wilkie Collins – The Woman in White
Mrs V. G. Cowdin – Ellen; or, The Fanatic's Daughter
Charles Dickens – Great Expectations (serialization begins) George Eliot – The Mill on the Floss Mrs G. M. Flanders – The Ebony Idol The Goncourt brothers (Edmond and Jules de Goncourt) – Charles Demailly Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Marble Faun Mór Jókai – Poor Rich () George Meredith – Evan Harrington Multatuli – Max Havelaar Thomas Love Peacock – Gryll Grange (serialization) Charles Reade – The Cloister and the Hearth Mary Howard Schoolcraft – The Black Gauntlet: A Tale of Plantation Life in South Carolina Ann S. Stephens – Malaeska Robert Smith Surtees – Plain or Ringlets? (concludes publication) Anthony Trollope – Castle Richmond Ivan Turgenev – First Love (, ; novella) Charlotte M. Yonge Hopes and Fears Kenneth
Drama
Dion Boucicault – The Colleen Bawn
Louise Granberg – Johan Fredman
Poetry
Gul Bakhsh – Kukikatar Puthi (কুকি কাটার পুঁথি) Michael Madhusudan Dutt – Tilottama Sambhab Kabya (তিলোত্তমাসম্ভব কাব্য, "Birth of Tilottama") Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – "Paul Revere's Ride" See also 1860 in poetry
Non-fiction
Jacob Burckhardt – The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien) Mordecai Cubitt Cooke – The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Popular history of the seven prevailing narcotics of the world Ralph Waldo Emerson – The Conduct of Life Gray's Anatomy (2nd edition) Eliphas Lévi – Histoire de la magie Andrei Mocioni (attrib.) – Caus'a limbelor și națiunalităților in Austri'a (The Cause of Languages and Nationalities in Austria) Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux – La Magie au dix-neufième siècle (Magic in the Nineteenth Century) J. W. Parker (ed.) – Essays and Reviews John Ruskin – Modern Painters IV