1893 - Literature

Literature

The 5-year-old London publishing house J. M. Dent begins publication of pocket-sized Temple Classics (see Everyman's Library, 1904).

Nonfiction: The Division of Labor in Society (De la division de travail social) by French social scientist Emile Durkheim, 35; History of the Roman Empire from Its Foundation to the Death of Marcus Aurelius by J. B. Bury; Children of the Poor by Jacob Riis.

Cultural historian-biographer-poet John Addington Symonds dies at Davos-Platz, Switzerland, April 19 at age 52; classical scholar Benjamin Jowett at Headley Park, Hampshire, October 1 at age 76 (he has worked for 30 years on a translation of Plato's Republic that will appear next year and remain the classic English-language version); historian Francis Parkman dies at Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, November 8 at age 70.

Fiction: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Newark, New Jersey-born New York writer Stephen Crane, 21, who has the naturalistic portrayal of a slumdweller's descent into prostitution published under a pseudonym at his own expense (the slim, handsome, moustached author has himself been sleeping in dime-a-night Bowery flophouse beds, wearing filthy clothes, and reeking of garlic and nicotine); The Black Heavenly Body (L'Astre noir) by Paris journalist-novelist Léon Daudet, 25, a son of Alphonse Daudet.

Short-story writer Guy de Maupassant dies of syphilis at Paris July 6 at age 42, having been placed in a strait jacket (his younger brother died in an insane asylum of the same disease 4 years ago).

Poetry: Les Trophées by Cuban-born French poet José Maria de Hérédia, 50; Poems by English poet Francis Thompson, 33, includes "The Hound of Heaven."

Juvenile: Jill, a Flower Girl and A Young Mutineer; A Story for Girls by L. T. Meade; Beechcroft at Rockstone by Charlotte M. Yonge.