January 2–April 16 – James Payn publishes his most popular story, Lost Sir Massingberd, in Chambers's Journal.[1] He follows it in the magazine (August 6 – December 24) by Married Beneath Him.
March (dated January–February) – The first issue of the Russian literary magazine Epoch («Эпо́ха»), edited by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his brother Mikhail (died July 22), is published in Saint Petersburg. This and the March and April issues contain the first publication of Fyodor's existentialnovellaNotes from Underground («Записки из подполья», Zapiski iz podpol'ya).
July 2 – The Female Detective is published under the pseudonym "Andrew Forrester, Junior" in London, presenting the first female professional detective in fiction. Around December, she is followed by Mrs Paschal in Revelations of a Lady Detective, published anonymously by William Stephens Hayward. R. D. Blackmore's first published work of fiction, the sensation novelClara Vaughan, also issued anonymously this year in England, has a heroine solving a mystery.
^Lease, Benjamin (1972). That Wild Fellow John Neal and the American Literary Revolution. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. p. 206. ISBN0-226-46969-7.