Events New Books David Copperfield - Charles Dickens The Diamond and the Pearl - Catherine Gore The Lancashire Witches - William Harrison Ainsworth Little Fadette - George Sand Mardi - Herman Melville Memoirs From Beyond the Grave - François-René de Chateaubriand On the Duty of Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau The Oregon Trail - Francis Parkman Redburn - Herman Melville Shirley: A Tale - Charlotte Bronte Births January 22 - August Strindberg, Swedish writer (+ 1912) November 24 - Frances Hodgson Burnett writer (+ 1924) Deaths May 22 - Maria Edgeworth, writer May 28 - Anne Bronte, writer October 7 - Edgar Allen Poe, author Awards