Calendar of Literary Facts

1866

  • Henry Alford and Alexander Strahan found The Contemporary Review in London
  • John Greenleaf Whittier publishes Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl
  • Fedor Dostoevsky publishes Prestupleniye i nakazaniye (Crime and Punishment)
  • Paul Verlaine publishes Poemes saturniens
  • War between Italy and Austria ends with the Treaty of Vienna
  • Alfred Nobel invents dynamite
  • War erupts within the German states as Prussia invades Hesse, Saxony, and Hanover
  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti publishes The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne publishes Poems and Ballads
  • Charles L. Mitchell and Edward G. Walker are elected to serve in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, becoming the first blacks to be elected to high office in the U.S.
  • Diamond mining begins in Kimberley, South Africa
  • The Parnassian Movement flourishes in French poetry
  • Chief Seattle dies
  • George Ade is born (February 9)
  • Jacinto Benavente is born (August 12)
  • H. G. Wells is born (September 21)
  • Beatrix Potter is born (July 28)
  • Ramón del Valle-Inclán is born (October 28)
  • J. E. Casely-Hayford is born (September 29)
  • Romain Rolland is born (January 29)