This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1844.
Events
February 5 – The first three of many theatrical adaptations of A Christmas Carol open in London. March–July – Alexandre Dumas père's historical adventure story The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) is serialised in the Paris newspaper Le Siècle. August 28 – Alexandre Dumas père's near-recent historical adventure story The Count of Monte Cristo (Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) begins serialization in the Paris newspaper Journal des débats, and continues through to January 1846. Book publication also begins this year. October – George W. M. Reynolds begins publication of the bestselling "penny dreadful" city mysteries series The Mysteries of London. Autumn – Margaret Fuller joins Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune as literary critic, becoming the first full-time female book reviewer in American journalism. December 2 – Emily Brontë writes the poem "A Death-Scene". unknown date – The first volumes of Patrologia Latina, a 217-volume collection of works in Latin, are published in Paris by Jacques Paul Migne. These include the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian, among other authors.
New books
Fiction
José de Alencar – Os contrabandistas (unpublished, lost) Honoré de Balzac – Les Paysans Charles Dickens The Chimes Martin Chuzzlewit (serial publication ends) Benjamin Disraeli – Coningsby Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo The Three Musketeers Charles Lever – Tom Burke of Ours Joaquim Manuel de Macedo – A Moreninha Edgar Allan Poe – short stories "The Angel of the Odd" "The Premature Burial" G. W. M. Reynolds – The Mysteries of London Eugène Sue – The Wandering Jew (Le Juif Errant) William Makepeace Thackeray – The Luck of Barry Lyndon Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna – The Wrongs of Women Charlotte Mary Yonge – Abbeychurch, or, Self Control and Self Conceit
Children and young people
Heinrich Hoffmann – Struwwelpeter
Frederick Marryat – Settlers in Canada
Elizabeth Missing Sewell – Amy Herbert
Hans Christian Andersen – New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Second Collection (Nye Eventyr. Første Bind. Anden Samling) comprising "The Fir-Tree" ("Grantræet") and "The Snow Queen" ("Snedronningen")
Drama
Émile Augier – La Ciguë
Gustav Freytag – Die Brautfahrt, oder Kunz von der Rosen
Catherine Gore – Quid Pro Quo
Christian Friedrich Hebbel – Maria Magdalene
William H. Smith – The Drunkard
José Zorilla – Don Juan Tenorio
Poetry
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Poems
Lydia Maria Child – "Over the River and Through the Wood" Heinrich Heine – Neue Gedichte James Russell Lowell – Poems Coventry Patmore – Poems
Non-fiction
Robert Chambers (anonymously) – Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Friedrich Engels – The Condition of the Working Class in England (Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England) Joseph Ennemoser – Geschichte der Magie (History of Magic) Søren Kierkegaard (as Vigilius Haufniensis) – The Concept of Anxiety (Begrebet Angest) Karl Marx – "On the Jewish Question" ("Zur Judenfrage") John Stuart Mill – Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy William Smith (editor) – Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology Arthur Penrhyn Stanley – Life of Arnold Max Stirner – The Ego and Its Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum) Henry Fox Talbot – The Pencil of Nature (first book illustrated with photographs from a camera)