Calendar of Literary Facts
1849
- Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery; she returns South numerous times, helping over 300 slaves escape to the freedom in the North
- Charles Dickens publishes The Personal History of David Copperfield
- James Whitcomb Riley is born (October 7)
- Edgar Allan Poe dies (October 7)
- James Lane Allen is born (December 21)
- August Strindberg is born (January 22)
- Fedor Dostoevsky and several other condemned men, members of the allegedly subversive “Petrashevsky Circle,” face the firing squad, but are spared by a last-minute stay of execution (December 22)
- William Ernest Henley is born (August 23)
