1874 - Literature

Literature

Nonfiction: The Principles of Science by economist-logician William Stanley Jevons, who attacks the late John Stuart Mill's inductive logic and proposes alternatives; Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) by University of Würzburg philosophy professor Franz (Clemens) Brentano, 36, a nephew of the late poet Clemens Brentano; Fossil Horses in America by paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh; Encyclopaedia of Wit and Wisdom by humorist Josh Billings, who says, "It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so."

Historian Jules Michelet dies at Hyères February 9 at age 75, his idealism and illusions about Germany having been shattered by the Franco-Prussian War.

Fiction: Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy; Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope; "Nedda" by Sicilian short-story writer Giovanni Verga, 34, who pioneers the Italian version of naturalism that will be called verismo; Die Messalinen Wiens by German novelist Leopold von Sacher Masoch, 38, from whose name the word masochism will be derived (see "sadism," 1791).

Poetry: Romances sans paroles by French poet Paul Verlaine, 30, who in 1871 left his wife after 18 months of marriage to live with the poet Arthur Rimbaud, now 20. Verlaine was encouraged and influenced by Rimbaud, but in July of last year shot Rimbaud in the wrist during a lovers' quarrel and is serving a 2-year prison sentence; Une saison en enfer by Arthur Rimbaud, who has had his hopes dashed for a new, amoral society and for writing an unconventional new kind of poetry. Rimbaud will go into business as a North African merchant and trader, amassing a fortune before his death in 1891; Ode by English poet Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy: "We are the musicmakers,/ And we are the dreamers of dreams."

Juvenile: Two Little Wooden Shoes by Ouida, who settles at Florence, where she will live for the next 20 years.