1917 in literature


This article presents lists of literary events and publications in 1917.

Events

Uncertain dates

Fiction


  • Leonid Andreyev – The Life of Man
  • Guillaume Apollinaire – The Breasts of Tiresias
  • Bruce Bairnsfather and Arthur Elliot – The Better 'Ole
  • J. M. Barrie – Dear Brutus
  • Dorothy Brandon – Wild Heather
  • Ferdinand Bruckner – Der Herr in den Nebeln
  • Hall Caine – The Woman Thou Gavest Me
  • Gilbert Cannan – Everybody's Husband
  • Jean Cocteau – Parade
  • John Drinkwater – X = 0: A Night of the Trojan War
  • John Galsworthy – Justice
  • Mary P. Hamlin and George Arliss – Hamilton
  • Georg Kaiser
  • *The Burghers of Calais
  • *The Coral
  • *From Morning to Midnight
  • A. A. Milne – Wurzel-Flummery
  • Luigi Pirandello – Right You Are
  • Gertrude Stein – An Exercise in Analysis
  • Ridgely Torrence – Three Plays for a Negro Theater
  • Brita von Horn – :nl:Kring drottningen|Kring drottningen
  • Jesse Lynch Williams – Why Marry?

    Poetry

  • Lascelles Abercrombie – Emblems Of Love
  • May Wedderburn Cannan – In War Time
  • T. S. Eliot – Prufrock, and other observations
  • Robert Graves – Fairies and Fusiliers
  • Ivor Gurney – Severn and Somme
  • James Weldon Johnson – Fifty Years and Other Poems
  • Joseph Lee – Work-a-Day Warriors
  • Edna St. Vincent Millay - Renascense and Other Poems
  • Siegfried Sassoon – The Old Huntsman, and Other Poems
  • Alan Seeger – Poems
  • Edward Thomas – Poems
  • William Watson – The Man Who Saw: and Other Poems Arising out of the War
  • W. B. Yeats – The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and a Play in Verse

    Non-fiction

  • G. K. Chesterton – A Short History of England
  • Daniel Jones – An English Pronouncing Dictionary
  • Henry Festing Jones – Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon
  • Theodore Wesley Koch – Books in Camp, Trench and Hospital
  • Alfred W. Pollard – Shakespeare's Fight with the Pirates and the Problems of the Transmission of His Text
  • D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson – On Growth and Form

    Births

  • January 6 – Maeve Brennan, Irish-born short story writer and journalist
  • February 11 – Sidney Sheldon, American novelist
  • February 25 – Anthony Burgess, English novelist
  • March 1 – Robert Lowell, American poet
  • March 17 – Carlo Cassola, Italian novelist
  • April 9 – Johannes Bobrowski, German author
  • May 16 – Juan Rulfo, Mexican fiction writer
  • June 7 – Gwendolyn Brooks, American poet
  • June 13 – Augusto Roa Bastos, Paraguayan novelist
  • June 16 – Katharine Graham, American journalist
  • June 28 – A. E. Hotchner, American writer
  • July 8 – J. F. Powers, American author
  • July 15 – Robert Conquest, English-born historian and poet
  • August 24 – Ruth Park, New Zealand children's writer
  • October 5 – Magda Szabó, Hungarian novelist, dramatist and essayist
  • October 24 – Denys Val Baker, Welsh writer
  • October 31 – Patience Gray, English cookery and travel writer
  • November 3 – Conor Cruise O'Brien, Irish biographer and political writer
  • November 12 – Leila Berg, English children's author and education writer
  • November 28 – Marni Hodgkin, American children's book editor
  • December 14 – Tove Ditlevsen, Danish poet and fiction writer
  • December 21
  • *Diana Athill, English author and editor
  • *Heinrich Böll, German Nobel Prize winning novelist
Uncertain date
  • Fadwa Toukan, Palestinian poet

    Deaths

  • January 15 – William De Morgan, English novelist and potter
  • February 16 – Octave Mirbeau, French novelist and critic
  • April 3 – Arthur Graeme West, English war poet and military writer
  • April 9
  • *Edward Thomas, British poet and prose writer
  • *R. E. Vernède, English war poet
  • April 14 – L. L. Zamenhof, Polish creator of Esperanto
  • April 17 – Jane Barlow, Irish novelist and poet
  • April 21 – Francis Burnand, English dramatist and editor
  • May 13 – Gustav Jaeger, German naturalist
  • June 1 – Joseph Ashby-Sterry, English poet and comic writer
  • June 18 – Titu Maiorescu, Romanian culture critic, philosopher, and politician
  • July 31
  • *Francis Ledwidge, English war poet
  • *Hedd Wyn, Welsh-language poet
  • September 28 – T. E. Hulme, English critic
  • October 16 – Walter Flex, German author
  • November 15 – Émile Durkheim, French sociologist
  • November 18 – Adrien Bertrand, French novelist
  • December 27 – George Diamandy, Romanian journalist, dramatist, and political figure
Uncertain date
  • Georges de Peyrebrune, French novelist

    Awards

  • Nobel Prize for Literature: Karl Adolph Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan

    In literature

  • March 8 – The Russian February Revolution begins in Petrograd. This is the background to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novels in The Red Wheel sequence March 1917 and April 1917.
  • August 18 – First meeting between Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, the basis of Stephen MacDonald's drama Not About Heroes and Pat Barker's novel Regeneration.
  • World War I – The following novels are among those set during the war this year
  • *Philippe Claudel – Les Âmes grises
  • *Colette – Mitsou
  • *Frank Dalby Davison – The Wells of Beersheba: An Epic of the Australian Light Horse 1914-1918
  • *Helen Dunmore – Zennor in Darkness
  • *Ben Elton – The First Casualty