1883 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1883.

Events

January 13 - World première of Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People (En folkefiende; 1882) at the Christiania Theatre.^[1]
February - Carlo Collodi's children's story The Adventures of Pinocchio is first published complete in book form as Le avventure di Pinocchio in Italy.
May 23 - Robert Louis Stevenson's children's pirate adventure novel Treasure Island is first published in book form, by Cassell in London.
June - First performance by Footlights, the Cambridge University dramatic club.
June 30–October 20 - Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is serialized in the British magazine Young Folks as by "Captain George North". Stevenson completes writing it at the end of the summer in France.
August - The first Carnegie library is opened in Andrew Carnegie's hometown, Dunfermline, Scotland.
December 27–28 - The Modern Language Association of America holds its first meeting.
Mark Twain's memoirs Life on the Mississippi, published simultaneously in Boston (Massachusetts) and London, is the first substantial book submitted to a publisher as a typewritten manuscript.^[2]
The Deutsches Theater company is formed in Berlin.

Hall Caine - Cobwebs of Criticism
Thomas Hill Green (died 1882) - Prolegomena to Ethics
Alfred Percy Sinnett - Esoteric Buddhism
John Addington Symonds - A Problem in Greek Ethics: an inquiry into the phenomenon of sexual inversion, addressed especially to medical psychologists and jurists
Mark Twain - Life on the Mississippi

January 1 – Alberto Gerchunoff, Argentine writer (died 1949)
January 6 – Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-born poet and novelist writing in Arabic and English (died 1931)
January 10 – Aleksei Tolstoy, Russian writer (died 1945)
January 20 – Forrest Wilson, American journalist and author (died 1942)
February 15 – Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Ward), English novelist (died 1959)
March 9 – Umberto Saba, Italian poet and novelist (died 1957)
March 17 – Urmuz, Romanian short prose writer (died 1923)
April 30 – Jaroslav Hašek, Czech novelist (died 1923)
June 3 – Franz Kafka, Czech novelist writing in German (died 1924)
June 4 – Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, English crime writer (died 1955)
December 13 – Belle da Costa Greene, American librarian (died 1950)
December 30 – Marie Gevers, Belgian novelist writing in French (died 1975)

January 21 – Anna Eliza Bray, English novelist (born 1790)
March 14 – Karl Marx, German philosopher (born 1818)
April 24 – Jules Sandeau, French novelist (born 1811)
May 15 – Mary Elizabeth Mohl ("Clarkey"), English-born literary salonnière (born 1793)
May 23 – Cyprian Norwid, Polish poet, dramatist and artist (born 1821)
June 20 – Gustave Aimard, French novelist (born 1818)
July 16 – Edward Backhouse Eastwick, Anglo-Indian orientalist and translator (born 1814)
August 31 – Levin Schücking, German novelist (born 1814)
September 2 – Léon Halévy, French historian and dramatist (born 1802)
September 3 – Ivan Turgenev, Russian novelist (born 1818)
December 13 – Victor de Laprade, French poet and critic (born 1812)