This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1877.

• January 24 – Émile Zola's L'Assommoir (sometimes translated as "The Dram Shop"), seventh in his novel sequence Les Rougon-Macquart, is first published in book format a few weeks after its serialisation ends in Le Bien public (Paris). It sells more than 50,000 copies by the end of the year.
• February 24–March 17 – Robert Louis Stevenson's first published work of fiction, the novella "An Old Song", appears anonymously in four episodes in the magazine London. It is first attributed to Stevenson in 1980.^[1]
• July – The ending of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is published in Russkiy vestnik.^[2]
• July 15 – "Coppino Law" in Italy makes elementary schools mandatory, free and secular.
• October – Robert Louis Stevenson publishes the short story "A Lodging for the Night" (in Temple Bar magazine), later collected in New Arabian Nights.
• October 15 – Edward L. Wheeler's first story featuring Deadwood Dick, set on the American frontier, opens the first number of Beadle's Half-Dime Library, published in New York.^[3]
• November 5 – The Mitchell Library is established in Glasgow.^[4]
• November 14 – Henrik Ibsen's first contemporary realist drama The Pillars of Society is premièred at the Odense Teater (having been first published on October 11 in Copenhagen).^[5]
• November 24 – Anna Sewell's novel Black Beauty, his grooms and companions: the autobiography of a horse "translated from the equine" is published by Jarrolds of Norwich in England. Her only book, published five months before her death arising from long-standing illness, it rapidly establishes its position as an all-time bestseller, going on to sell fifty million copies^[6] and becoming the sixth best seller in the English language.^[7]
• December 30 – Swedish dramatist August Strindberg marries his mistress, the divorced actress Siri von Essen, a member of the Finnish-Swedish minor nobility.

• January 4 – Sextil Pușcariu, Romanian linguist, philologist and journalist (died 1948)
• February 7 – Alfred Williams, English "hammerman poet" (died 1930)
• March 6 – Rose Fyleman, English writer and poet (died 1957)^[9]
• April 14 – Donald Maxwell, English travel writer and illustrator (died 1936)^[10]
• April 29 – Henri Stahl, Romanian historian, short story writer, memoirist and stenographer (died 1942)
• June 11 – Renée Vivien, born Pauline Mary Tarn, English-born French-language Symbolist poet (died 1909)
• July 2 – Hermann Hesse, German-Swiss poet, novelist and painter (died 1962)
• August 27 – Lloyd C. Douglas, American novelist and pastor (died 1951)
• September 1 – Rex Beach, American novelist and playwright (died 1949)
• September 9 – James Agate, English diarist and critic (died 1947)
• November 15 – William Hope Hodgson, English fiction writer (killed in action 1918)

• January 29 – Caroline Howard Jervey, American author, poet, and teacher (born 1823)
• February 18 – Henrietta A. Bingham, American writer and editor (born 1841)
• April – Ernst Moritz Ludwig Ettmüller, German philologist (born 1802)
• June 15 – Caroline Norton (née Caroline Sheridan), English poet, pamphleteer and social reformer (born 1808)
• June 17 – John Stevens Cabot Abbott, American historian and pastor (born 1805)
• August 30 – Toru Dutt, multilingual Indian Bengali poet, novelist and translator, of pulmonary tuberculosis (born 1856)
• September 12 – Emily Pepys, English child diarist (born 1833)
• October 10 – Johann Georg Baiter, Swiss philologist and critic (born 1801)
• October 16 – Théodore Barrière, French dramatist (born 1823)
• October 28 – Julia Kavanagh, Irish novelist (born 1824)
• December 12 – José de Alencar, Brazilian novelist (born 1829)