This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1849.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

—Dickens, opening of David Copperfield

• February – J. A. Froude's semi-autobiographical, epistolary philosophical novel of religious doubt The Nemesis of Faith is published by John Chapman in London. A copy is burned by William Sewell, Dean of Exeter College, Oxford, himself a novelist.^[1][2][3][4]
• March–November – La Tribune des Peuples, a pan-European romantic nationalist periodical, is published by Adam Mickiewicz.^[5]
• April 22 – Fyodor Dostoyevsky and fellow members of the literary Petrashevsky Circle in Russia are arrested for expressing their progressive views. Sentenced to death on November 16 and facing a firing squad on December 23, he and some others are reprieved at the last moment and exiled to the katorga prison camps in Siberia.

• May 1 – Charles Dickens's Bildungsroman David Copperfield begins serial publication by Bradbury and Evans in London.
• May 10 – The Astor Place Riot takes place in Manhattan over a dispute between two Shakespearean actors, the American Edwin Forrest and the Englishman William Macready. Over 20 people are killed when troops fire on the rioters.
• May 28 – Anne Brontë dies of tuberculosis aged 29 at Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast of England, where she is buried. Until 2013, her headstone mistakenly gives her age as 28.^[6]
• September 20 – Honoré de Balzac travels to Poland to meet Eveline Hanska, whom he will marry shortly before his death next year.
• October 3 – Death of Edgar Allan Poe: Edgar Allan Poe is found in Baltimore delirious, "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance".^[7] He dies on October 7 aged 40, of an uncertain cause, in Washington College Hospital.
• October–December – Thomas De Quincey's essay The English Mail-Coach appears in issues of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
• November – The English scholarly correspondence magazine Notes and Queries is first published.
• November 13 – The public hanging in London of Marie Manning (murderer) is attended independently by Charles Dickens and Herman Melville; Dickens writes a letter published in the following day's issue of The Times decrying the "wickedness and levity of the immense crowd".
• November 14 – A public festival is held in Denmark to mark the 70th birthday of Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger.
• Uncertain dates
  • The Leipzig publisher B. G. Teubner begins publishing the Bibliotheca Teubneriana series of editions of the Classics.
  • Who's Who is published for the first time in the United Kingdom.
  • Philip Massinger's play Believe as You List receives its first publication, 218 years after its theatrical première.^[8]

• January 9 – Laura Kieler (née Petersen), Norwegian novelist and dramatic inspiration (died 1932)
• January 22 – August Strindberg, Swedish dramatist (died 1912)
• February 18 – Alexander Kielland, Norwegian novelist (died 1906)
• February 27 – Václav Beneš Třebízský, Czech novelist (died 1884)
• March 10 — Mary Evelyn Hitchcock, American author and explorer (died 1920)
• April 1 — Mary K. Buck, Bohemian-born American author (died 1901)
• April 24
  • Emma Whitcomb Babcock, American litterateur and author (died 1926)
  • Helen Taggart Clark, American columnist, short story writer, and poet (died 1918)
• June 9 – Karl Tanera, German military writer and novelist (died 1904)
• July 22 – Emma Lazarus, American poet (died 1887)
• July 30 – Lettie S. Bigelow, American poet and author (died 1906)
• August 8 – Hume Nisbet, Scottish thriller writer, poet and artist (died 1923)
• August 9 – Amy Catherine Walton (née Deck, writing as Mrs. O. F. Walton), English writer of Christian children's books (died 1939)
• August 23 – W. E. Henley, English poet (died 1903)
• August 30 – J. M. Dent, English publisher (died 1926)
• September 3 – Sarah Orne Jewett, American writer (died 1909)^[9]
• October 7 – James Whitcomb Riley, American writer and poet (died 1916)
• October 31 – Marie Louise Andrews, American writer and editor (died 1891)
• December 16– Mary Hartwell Catherwood, American author and poet (died 1902)^[10]
• November 24 – Frances Hodgson Burnett, English children's writer and playwright (died 1924)
• date unknown

• Elisabeth Cavazza, American author, journalist and music critic (died 1926)
• Harriet Abbott Lincoln Coolidge, American philanthropist, author and reformer (died 1902)

• January 6 – Hartley Coleridge, English poet and critic (alcohol-related, born 1796)^[11]
• February 8 – France Prešeren, Slovenian poet (liver disease, born 1800)
• February 19 – Bernard Barton, English Quaker poet (born 1784)
• May 22 – Maria Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish novelist (born 1768)
• May 28 – Anne Brontë, English novelist and poet (tuberculosis, born 1820)^[12]
• June 4 – Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, Irish novelist and literary hostess (born 1789)
• July 7 – Goffredo Mameli, Italian poet (infection from bayonet wound, born 1827)
• July 12 – Horace (Horatio) Smith, English poet and novelist (born 1799)^[13]
• July 25 – James Kenney, English dramatist (born 1780)
• July 27 – Charlotte von Ahlefeld, German novelist (born 1781)
• July 31 – Sándor Petőfi, Hungarian poet and revolutionary (probably killed in Battle of Segesvár, born 1823)
• August 25 – Adele Schopenhauer, German novelist and paper-cut artist (born 1797)
• October 7 – Edgar Allan Poe, American poet, short story writer and critic (born 1809)