1919 in literature


This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1919.

Events

Fiction


  • Ramón del Valle-Inclán – Divine Words
  • Edward Salisbury Field – Wedding Bells
  • Susan Glaspell – Bernice
  • Harley Granville-Barker – The Secret Life
  • Ian Hay – Tilly of Bloomsbury
  • Avery Hopwood – The Gold Diggers
  • Karl Kraus – The Last Days of Mankind
  • Kwee Tek Hoay – Allah jang Palsoe
  • Else Lasker-Schüler – Die Wupper
  • H. F. Maltby – A Temporary Gentleman
  • W. Somerset Maugham – Caesar's Wife
  • A. A. Milne
  • *The Camberley Triangle
  • *Mr. Pim Passes By
  • Liviu Rebreanu – The Quadrille
  • Ernst Toller – Transformation

    Poetry

  • E. J. Brady – The House of the Winds
  • Uri Zvi Greenberg – In tsaytns roysh
  • Siegfried Sassoon – The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon
  • August Stramm – Tropfblut
  • Giuseppe Ungaretti
  • *Allegria di naufragi
  • *La guerra
  • Louis Untermeyer – Modern American Poetry

    Non-fiction

  • Henri Bergson – L'Energie spirituelle: essais et conférences
  • Francis P. Duffy with Joyce Kilmer – Father Duffy's Story: A Tale of Humor and Heroism, Of Life and Death with the Fighting Sixty-Ninth
  • Johan Huizinga – The Waning of the Middle Ages
  • William Inge – Outspoken Essays
  • John Maynard Keynes – The Economic Consequences of the Peace
  • Karl Kraus – Weltgericht
  • Dorothy Lawrence – Sapper Dorothy Lawrence: The Only English Woman Soldier
  • H. L. Mencken – The American Language
  • Arthur Ransome – Six Weeks in Russia 1919
  • Carl Sandburg – The Chicago Race Riots, July 1919
  • Prof. William Strunk, Jr. – The Elements of Style
  • H. G. Wells – The Outline of History
  • Arthur Graeme West – The Diary of a Dead Officer
  • Frances Garnet Wolseley, 2nd Viscountess Wolseley – Gardens, their Form and Design

    Births

  • January 1 – J. D. Salinger, American novelist
  • January 7 – Robert Duncan, American poet
  • January 10 – Ugo Sansonetti, Italian writer and masters athlete
  • January 20 – Silva Kaputikyan, Armenian poet
  • January 24 – Juan Eduardo Zúñiga, Spanish fiction writer, literary scholar and translator
  • January 25 – Edwin Newman, American writer and journalist
  • March 18 – G. E. M. Anscombe, Irish-born English analytic philosopher
  • March 24
  • *Lawrence Ferlinghetti, American beat poet, writer, painter, socialist activist and bookseller
  • *Robert Heilbroner, American economic philosopher
  • *Graciela Palau de Nemes, Cuban-born literary critic
  • May 16 – John Robinson, English Bible scholar, religious writer and bishop
  • May 17 – Robert H. Adleman, American novelist and historian
  • June 6 – Helen Forrester, English memoirist and novelist
  • June 8 – Władysław Siemaszko, Polish publicist, lawyer and writer
  • June 27 – Jaswant Singh Kanwal, Punjabi novelist
  • June 28 – Ion Dezideriu Sîrbu, Romanian philosopher, novelist and dramatist
  • July 15 – Iris Murdoch, Irish-born novelist
  • July 23
  • *Davis Grubb, American novelist and short story writer
  • *Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Argentine comic book writer
  • July 31 – Primo Levi, Italian novelist and memoirist
  • August 1 – Stanley Middleton, English novelist
  • August 31 – Amrita Pritam, Punjabi poet and novelist
  • September 13 – George Weidenfeld, Viennese-born English publisher
  • September 23 – Tōta Kaneko, Japanese writer
  • September 26 – Matilde Camus, Spanish poet
  • October 22 – Doris Lessing, Persian-born English novelist
  • November 23 – P. F. Strawson, English philosopher
  • November 26 – Frederik Pohl, American science fiction author
  • November 29 – Frank Kermode, Manx-born literary critic
  • December 17
  • *Charlotte Jay, Australian suspense writer
  • *Es'kia Mphahlele, South African writer

    Deaths

  • January 4 – Matilda Betham-Edwards, English novelist, poet and travel writer
  • January 11 – Kazimierz Zalewski, Polish dramatist, critic and publisher
  • January 15 – Rosa Luxemburg, Polish-born German revolutionary socialist
  • January 31 – Paul Lindau, German dramatist
  • February 26 – Anne Thackeray Ritchie, English novelist and essayist
  • May 2 – Gustav Landauer, German philosopher and revolutionary
  • May 6 – L. Frank Baum, children's writer
  • May 10 – Ferdinando Fontana, Italian journalist, dramatist, and poet
  • May 17 – Guido von List, Viennese poet, dramatist, and occultist
  • May 30 – Barbu Nemțeanu, Romanian poet and translator
  • June 14 – Weedon Grossmith, English writer, actor and playwright
  • June 19 – Petre P. Carp, Romanian politician, polemicist, and translator
  • June 23 – Kolachalam Srinivasa Rao, Indian dramatist
  • July 8 – John Fox, Jr., American novelist and short story writer
  • August 11 – Andrew Carnegie, Scottish American industrialist and writer
  • September 12 – Leonid Andreyev, Russian dramatist, novelist and short-story writer
  • October 22 – W. N. P. Barbellion, English naturalist and diarist
  • October 30 – Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American author and poet
  • November 3 – Abraham Valdelomar, Peruvian poet, essayist and dramatist

    Awards

  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction : Hugh Walpole, The Secret City
  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography : Henry Festing Jones, Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon – A Memoir
  • Nobel Prize for Literature: Carl Spitteler
  • Prix Goncourt: Marcel Proust, A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
  • Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography: Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
  • Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
  • Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Margaret Widdemer, Old Road to Paradise and Carl Sandburg, Corn Huskers
  • Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

    In literature

  • John Dos Passos – 1919