This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1856.
Events
January 1 – M. H. Gill, printer to Dublin University, purchases the publishing and bookselling business of James McGlashan, renaming it McGlashan & Gill, the predecessor of Gill & Macmillan.[1]
July 19–26 – Wilkie Collins' "Anne Rodway", a story in diary form about a needlewoman and her fiancé investigating the murder of a friend, appears in Household Words, as the first English story to feature a woman as the main detective character.[3]
October – Marian Evans, who has yet to adopt the pseudonym George Eliot, publishes an anonymous article, "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists", in the Westminster Review.[5]
^Sutherland, John; Fender, Stephen (2011). Love, Sex, Death & Words: Surprising Tales from a Year in Literature. London: Icon. p. 441. ISBN978-184831-247-0.
^King Alfred surveying Oxford University at the present time: A prize poem, recited in the Theatre, Oxford, June 4th, 1856 (Newdigate prize poem; T & G Shrimpton, 1856)