This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1885.
—Opening lines of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Events
January 1 – The Dictionary of National Biography begins publication in London under the editorship of Leslie Stephen. February 18 – Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published in the United States for the first time, in New York by the author's own publishing house, Charles L. Webster, illustrated by E. W. Kemble, the first impression having been delayed for replacement of an unauthorized obscene alteration to one of the illustrative plates. Its first-person narrative in colloquial language is initially controversial but ultimately influential in the development of realism in American literature. March 7 – José Echegaray's play La vida alegre y muerte triste opens in Spain. March 19 – Bolesław Prus's first major naturalistic novel, The Outpost (Placówka), begins serialization in the Polish illustrated weekly, Wędrowiec. May – Henri Beauclair and Gabriel Vicaire, using the pseudonym Adoré Floupette, publish Les Déliquescences d'Adoré Floupette, a parodic collection of poems satirising French symbolism and the Decadent movement. May 16 – Sakuradoki Zeni no Yononaka ("The Season of Cherry Blossoms; The World of Money"), an adaptation by Genzo Katsu after Bunkai Udagawa of The Merchant of Venice set in the Edo period, is performed by the Nakamura Sojuro Kabuki company at the Ebisu-za Theater in Osaka, the first of Shakespeare's plays to be staged with actors in Japan. May 19 – The Revised Version Old Testament is published. June 1 – More than two million people join Victor Hugo's funeral procession in Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to the Panthéon, where he is the first author to be buried, following his death on May 22 in the city from pneumonia aged 83. June 29 – Thomas Hardy moves to a house he designed for himself and built by his brother at Max Gate on the outskirts of Dorchester, Dorset. unknown dates Arthur Napier is appointed first Merton Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford. John Ormsby's English translation of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote is published. For many years it is regarded as the most accurate translation of the novel. The first translation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace into English begins publication. It has been done by Clara Bell from a French version. The first translation of Amy Catherine Walton (Mrs. O. F. Walton)'s Christian novel Christie's Old Organ into Japanese, made by Tajima Kashi, is published, one of the earliest examples of children's literature in Japan. Daniel Owen's long novel Hunangofiant Rhys Lewis, Gweinidog Bethel is published as the first written in Welsh.
New books
Fiction
Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) – La regenta, vol. 2
Mathilde Blind - Tanantella: A Romance
Richard Francis Burton – The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments Hall Caine She's All the World to Me The Shadow of a Crime Mrs. W. K. Clifford – Mrs. Keith's Crime Antonio Fogazzaro – Daniele Cortis Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. – A Mortal Antipathy William Dean Howells – The Rise of Silas Lapham Richard Jefferies – After London Jerome K. Jerome – On the Stage — and Off Sarah Orne Jewett - A Marsh Island Henry Francis Keenan - The Money Makers (Published anonymously.) Eliza Lynn Linton – The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland Guy de Maupassant – Bel-Ami George Meredith – Diana of the Crossways Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra (publication concluded) Daniel Owen – Hunangofiant Rhys Lewis, Gweinidog Bethel Walter Pater – Marius the Epicurean Tsubouchi Shōyō (坪内 逍遥) – Tōsei Shosei Katagi (Portraits of Contemporary Students) Elizabeth Stannard (as John Strange Winter) – Booties' Baby: a story of the Scarlet Lancers Jules Vallés – Jacques Vingtras Jules Verne – Mathias Sandorf Émile Zola – Germinal
Children and young people
Lewis Carroll – A Tangled Tale
H. Rider Haggard – King Solomon's Mines
Robert Louis Stevenson
A Child's Garden of Verses (originally Penny Whistles) Prince Otto Mark Twain – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (U.S. publication)
Drama
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson – Geografi og Kærlighed
Arthur Wing Pinero – The Magistrate
Poetry
See 1885 in poetry
Non-fiction
J. W. Cross (ed.) – George Eliot's Life, as related in her letters and journals
Anténor Firmin – De l'Égalité des Races Humaines (On the Equality of Human Races) Tsubouchi Shōyō ((坪内 逍遥) – Shōsetsu Shinzui (The Essence of the Novel)