Calendar of Literary Facts

1865

  • The first transatlantic telegraph cable is laid
  • War rages between the Basutos and the Dutch Boers of the Orange Free State
  • Giosuè Carducci publishes Inno a Satana (Hymn to Satan)
  • Sully Prudhomme publishes Stances et poems
  • Anthony Trollope, Frederic Chapman, and others found The Fortnightly Review in London
  • E. L. Godkin founds The Nation magazine in New York
  • Orestes Brownson publishes The American Republic
  • Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Washington, D.C. by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth
  • Defeated on all fronts, Confederate armies surrender to U.S. forces, ending the War between the States
  • Mary Mapes Dodge publishes Hans Brinker; or, The Silver Skates
  • Lewis Carroll publishes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell dies (November 12)
  • William Butler Yeats is born (June 13)
  • The New York Saturday Press publishes “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” by Mark Twain (November 18)
  • The U.S. Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery (December 18)
  • African Americans in Texas learn that the War between the States is over and that they are freed from slavery: June 19 becomes known as “Juneteenth” (June 19)
  • Rudyard Kipling is born (December 30)