This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1840.
Events
June – An amnesty to mark the accession of King Frederick William IV of Prussia frees the novelist Fritz Reuter from the Dömitz Fortress after two years' imprisonment on a charge of high treason. July 6 – Novelists Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray independently attend the hanging outside Newgate Prison in London of the murderer François Benjamin Courvoisier, who blames the influence of W. Harrison Ainsworth's Newgate novel Jack Sheppard (which concluded serialization in Bentley's Miscellany in February) for his crime. Thackeray writes the experience up as "Going to See a Man Hanged" in this month's issue of Fraser's Magazine; Dickens in The Daily News in February 1846. Thackeray's first novel, Catherine, serialization of which also concluded in February, had been intended as a critique of the Newgate novel. August 10 – Fortsas hoax: Bibliophiles gather in Binche, Belgium for an auction of 52 unique, meticulously catalogued books from the collection of the late Comte de Fortsas. The Count, the books and the auction all prove fictitious. unknown dates The Percy Society is established in Britain to publish scholarly editions of early works in English. William Martin publishes the first edition of Peter Parley's Annual, a periodical imitating earlier American works by Samuel Griswold Goodrich.
New books
Fiction
W. Harrison Ainsworth
Guy Fawkes (serialization) The Tower of London (serialization) Hans Christian Andersen – The Wicked Prince Henry Cockton – Valentine Vox James Fenimore Cooper – The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea Charles Dickens – The Old Curiosity Shop (serialization in Master Humphrey's Clock) Alexandre Dumas, père – Otho the Archer Thomas Ingoldsby (Richard Harris Barham) – The Ingoldsby Legends (collected in book form) Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald – Plague of Wine Mikhail Lermontov – A Hero of Our Time Harriet Martineau – The Hour and the Man Prosper Mérimée – Colomba John Neal Seventy-Six; or, Love and Battle (London publication) Logan, the Mingo Chief. A Family History (London publication) Edgar Allan Poe – Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque William Makepeace Thackeray – Catherine (serialization concludes)
Children
Hans Christian Andersen – The Wicked Prince (Den onde Fyrste, published in Salon, October) Esther Copley – Early Friendship. A Tale for Young People Frederick Marryat Olla Podrida Poor Jack
Drama
Namiki Gohei III – Kanjinchō (勧進帳) James Haynes – Mary Stuart Christian Hebbel – Judith James Kenney – The Sicilian Vespers Andreas Munch – Donna Clara Thomas Serle – Master Clarke Thomas Talfourd – Glencoe Jose Zorilla – El Zapatero y el Rey
Poetry
Victor Hugo – Les Rayons et les Ombres
Mikhail Lermontov – Mtsyri (The Novice) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – "The Wreck of the Hesperus" Taras Shevchenko – Kobzar (The Bard)
Non-fiction
Louis Agassiz – Études sur les glaciers
Richard Henry Dana Jr. – Two Years Before the Mast
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon – What is Property? or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government (Qu'est-ce que la propriété ? ou Recherche sur le principe du Droit et du Gouvernement) Dimitrie Ralet – Scrieri (Writings) Anton Schindler – Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven Agnes Strickland – Lives of the Queens of England (begins publication) Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America (De La Démocratie en Amérique) (vol. 2) Flora Tristan – Promenades dans Londres (Promenades in London) William Whewell – The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, founded upon their history
