List of years in literature       (table)
… 1871 .  1872 .  1873 .  1874  . 1875  . 1876  . 1877 … 1878 1879 1880 -1881- 1882 1883 1884 … 1885 .  1886 .  1887 .  1888  . 1889  . 1890  . 1891 …      In poetry: 1878 1879 1880 -1881- 1882 1883 1884
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The year 1881 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• March 4 - A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, begins.
• The first of the three-volume History of Woman Suffrage, was published by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
• The Pushkin Prize is established by the Russian Academy of Sciences.

New books

• William Harrison Ainsworth - Stanley Brereton
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Asphodel
• Robert Buchanan - God and the Man
• Gesualdo Bufalino - Diceria dell'untore
• Bankim Chatterjee - Rajsimha
• Wilkie Collins - The Black Robe
• Antonio Fogazzaro - Malombra
• Anatole France - Sylvestre Bonnard
• Thomas Hardy - A Laodicean
• Joris-Karl Huysmans - En menage
• Robert G. Ingersoll - The Great Infidels
• Henry James - The Portrait of a Lady
• Roden Noël - A Little Child's Monument
• Margaret Oliphant - Harry Joscelyn
• Joseph Henry Shorthouse - John Inglesant
• Jules Verne - Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
• Mary Augusta Ward - Milly and Olly

New drama

• Henrik Ibsen - Ghosts (Gengangere) (published)

Non-fiction

• Jefferson Davis - The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

Births

• January 9 - Giovanni Papini, Italian writer (d. 1956)
• March 25 - Mary Webb, British writer (d. 1927)
• October 15 - P. G. Wodehouse, British-American writer (d. 1975)

Deaths

• January 28 - Fyodor Dostoevsky, author
• April 19 - Benjamin Disraeli, writer, politician
• George Robert Aberigh-Mackay - English author

Awards