This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1863.

• January 1 – The essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson commemorates today's Emancipation Proclamation in the United States by composing "Boston Hymn" and surprising a crowd of 3,000 with a debut reading of it at Boston Music Hall.
• January 31 – Jules Verne's novel Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen (Cinq semaines en ballon) is published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel in Paris. It will be the first of Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires.
• February 3 – Samuel Langhorne Clemens, in signing a humorous letter to the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada, first uses the pen name Mark Twain.
• February 28 – Flaubert and Turgenev meet for the first time, in Paris.^[1]
• June 12 – The Arts Club is founded by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Frederic Leighton and others in London's Mayfair, as a social meeting place for those involved or interested in the creative arts.
• June 13 – Samuel Butler's dystopian article "Darwin among the Machines" is published (as by "Cellarius") in The Press newspaper in Christchurch, New Zealand; it will be incorporated into his novel Erewhon (1872).
• November – Mendele Mocher Sforim's first Yiddish language story, "Dos Kleine Menshele" (The Little Man), is published in the Odessa weekly Kol Mevasser.^[2]
• December 29 – An estimated 7000 people attend the funeral of William Makepeace Thackeray at Kensington Gardens and nearly 2000 his burial in London's Kensal Green Cemetery.^[3]
• unknown dates
  • The Freies Deutsches Hochstift association acquires the Goethe House (his 1749 birthplace) in Frankfurt am Main.^[4]
  • The Romanian Junimea literary society is established in Iași. It will exercise a major influence on Romanian culture until the 1910s.^[5]
  • Elvira, or the Love of a Tyrant, a novel by the Neapolitan author Giuseppe Folliero de Luna, becomes the first published in the Maltese language, as Elvira Jew Imħabba ta’ Tirann.
  • Peruvian writer Ricardo Palma begins periodical publication of his Peruvian Traditions (Tradiciones peruanas).
  • Publication begins in the U.K. of a seminal edition of The Works of William Shakespeare (the "Cambridge Shakespeare"), edited by William George Clark and William Aldis Wright, published by Macmillan and printed by Cambridge University Press.^[6]

• February 9 – Anthony Hope (Anthony Hope Hawkins), English novelist and playwright (died 1933)
• February 14 – Virginia Frazer Boyle, American author, poet (died 1938)
• March 3 – Arthur Machen (Arthur Llewellyn Jones), Welsh novelist and short story writer (died 1947)
• March 9 — Emelie Tracy Y. Swett, American author (d. 1892)
• March 12 – Gabriele D'Annunzio, Italian poet (died 1938)
• March 17 – Olivia Shakespear (née Tucker), British novelist, playwright and patron of the arts (died 1938)
• April 9 – Henry De Vere Stacpoole, Irish novelist (died 1951)
• April 20 — Helen Dortch Longstreet, American social advocate, librarian, and newspaper woman (died 1962)
• April 26 – Arno Holz, German Naturalist poet and dramatist (died 1929)
• April 29 – Constantine Cavafy, Greek Alexandrine poet (died 1933)
• June 10 – Louis Couperus, Dutch fiction writer (died 1923)
• June 20 – Florence White, English food writer (died 1940)
• July 13 – Margaret Murray, Indian-born English archeologist and historian (died 1963)
• August 7 – Gene Stratton Porter, American novelist and naturalist (died 1924)
• September 1 – Violet Jacob (Violet Kennedy-Erskine), Scottish historical novelist and poet (died 1946)
• September 8 – W. W. Jacobs, English short story writer (died 1943)
• September 22 – Ferenc Herczeg (Franz Herzog), Hungarian dramatist (died 1954)
• November 1
  • Charlotte O'Conor Eccles, Irish-born London writer, translator and journalist (died 1911)
  • Arthur Morrison, English writer (died 1945)
• November 18 – Richard Dehmel, German poet (died 1920)
• November 21 – Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (Q.), English novelist and anthologist (died 1944)^[13]
• December 16 – George Santayana, American novelist and poet (died 1952)

• May 13 – August Hahn, German Protestant theologian (born 1792)
• July 3 – William Barksdale, American journalist and Confederate general (killed in action, born 1821^[14]
• July 10 – Clement Clarke Moore, American classicist and poet (born 1779)
• September 17 – Alfred de Vigny, French poet, dramatist and novelist (born 1797)^[15]
• September 20 – Jacob Grimm, German philologist and fairy-tale author (born 1785)^[16]
• October 6 – Frances Trollope, English novelist and writer (born 1779)
• October 8 – Richard Whately, English theologian and archbishop (born 1787)
• December 13 – Christian Friedrich Hebbel, German poet and dramatist (born 1813)
• December 17 – Émile Saisset, French philosopher (born 1814)
• December 24 – William Makepeace Thackeray, Indian-born English novelist and travel writer (stroke, born 1811)^[17]

• Newdigate Prize – Thomas Llewellyn Thomas^[18]