1918 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1918.

Events[edit]

• January 1 – Popular British novelist and wartime propagandist Hall Caine is made a KBE.
• January 2 – Popular British novelist Marie Corelli is convicted under wartime legislation for hoarding food.^[1]
• January 23 – Robert Graves marries the painter Nancy Nicholson in London. Wedding guests include Wilfred Owen, whose first nationally published poem appears 3 days later ("Miners" in The Nation) and who will be killed by the end of the year.

U.S. poster

• March
  • The Telemachus episode of James Joyce's Ulysses is published (in serialised form) in the American journal The Little Review.
  • English novelist Alec Waugh is made a prisoner of war; he will be incarcerated in Mainz Citadel with monologuist J. Milton Hayes (also taken prisoner this year) and Hugh Kingsmill.
• April
  • Hu Shih, chief advocate of the use of the vernacular in Chinese literature at this time, publishes an essay, "Constructive Literary Revolution – A Literature of National Speech" in the magazine New Youth (Xin Qingnian) proposing a four-point reform program.
  • English writer 'May Sinclair' first uses the term "Stream of consciousness" to describe a narrative mode, in a discussion of Dorothy Richardson's novel sequence Pilgrimage in The Egoist.
• May 3 – Katherine Mansfield marries her long-time partner John Middleton Murry at Kensington register office in London.
• June – English poet Basil Bunting is imprisoned as a conscientious objector.
• August 17 – Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon meet for the last time, in London, and spend what Sassoon later describes as "the whole of a hot cloudless afternoon together."^[2]
• October 3 – Siegfried Sassoon visits his mentor Robbie Ross for the last time. Sassoon later writes that Ross, in saying goodbye, gave him a "presentiment of final farewell."^[2]
• November 4 – Wilfred Owen is killed in action, aged 25, at the Sambre–Oise Canal with only five of his poems published. News of his death reaches his parents in Shrewsbury a week later on Armistice Day. He is awarded a posthumous Military Cross a year later.
• December – The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (d. 1889; including The Wreck of the Deutschland, 1875/6) are published by Robert Bridges; few were published in Hopkins's lifetime, so this presents his innovative sprung rhythm and imagery to many readers for the first time.
• December 28 – Emperor Khải Định of Vietnam declares the traditional Chữ nôm script for writing the Vietnamese language to be abolished in favour of the Latin script Vietnamese alphabet.
• Winter – Parisian farceur Georges Feydeau contracts tertiary syphilis.
• The 2nd annual Pulitzer Prizes are awarded in the United States, including the first award for a novel.

New books[edit]

Fiction[edit]

• Ryūnosuke Akutagawa – "Hell Screen" (地獄変, Jigokuhen; short story)
• Arnold Bennett – The Roll-Call
• Willa Cather – My Ántonia
• Blaise Cendrars
  • I Have Killed (J'ai tué)
  • The Severed Hand (La main coupée)
• Marie Corelli – The Young Diana
• Grazia Deledda – L'incendio nell'oliveto (The fire in the olive-grove)
• Alfred Döblin – Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine (Wadzek's Struggle with the Steam Turbine)
• Sarah Lee Brown Fleming – Hope's Highway
• Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – Edgewater People
• August Gailit – Muinasmaa
• Owen Gregory – Meccania the Super-State
• Thea von Harbou – Das indische Grabmal
• Herbert George Jenkins – Patricia Brent, Spinster
• Wyndham Lewis – Tarr (in book form)
• Lu Xun – A Madman's Diary (狂人日記, Kuángrén rìjì, short story)
• Compton Mackenzie – The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett
• Brinsley MacNamara (John Weldon writing as Oliver Blyth) – The Valley of the Squinting Windows
• Heinrich Mann – Der Untertan
• Frans Masereel – 25 Images of a Man's Passion (wordless novel)
• André Maurois – Les Silences du Colonel Bramble
• George Moore – A Story-Teller's Holiday
• Baroness Orczy
  • Flower o' the Lily
  • The Man in Grey
• Leo Perutz – From Nine to Nine (Zwischen neun und neun, originally Freiheit)
• Romain Rolland – Colas Breugnon
• Junichiro Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎) – Gold and Silver (金と銀)
• Booth Tarkington – The Magnificent Ambersons
• Mary Augusta Ward – The War and Elizabeth
• Rebecca West – The Return of the Soldier
• Edith Wharton – The Marne

Children and young people[edit]

• Elsa Beskow – Tant Grön, tant Brun och tant Gredelin (Aunt Green, Aunt Brown and Aunt Lavender)
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
• Johnny Gruelle – Raggedy Ann Stories
• Norman Lindsay – The Magic Pudding: Being The Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff
• Ferenc Móra – Kincskereső kisködmön (A Little Fortune-Hunting Frock Coat)
• Beatrix Potter – The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse

Drama[edit]

• Bertolt Brecht – Baal (written)
• John Drinkwater – Abraham Lincoln
• Marcel Gerbidon and Paul Armont – School for Coquettes (L'École des cocottes)
• Susan Glaspell – Tickless Time
• Hugo von Hofmannsthal – The Difficult Man
• James Joyce – Exiles
• Georg Kaiser – Gas
• Alice Dunbar Nelson – Mine Eyes Have Seen
• Gregorio Martínez Sierra – Sueño de Una Noche de Agosto (Dream of an August Night)
• Vladimir Mayakovsky – Mystery-Bouffe («Мистерия-Буфф», Misteriya-Buff)
• Emma Orczy (Baroness Orczy) – The Legion of Honour (adaptation of A Sheaf of Bluebells)
• Luigi Pirandello
  • But It's Nothing Serious (Ma non è una cosa seria)
  • The Rules of the Game (Il giuoco delle parti, literally The Game of Rôles)

Poetry[edit]

• Guillaume Apollinaire – Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War, 1913-1916
• Laurence Binyon – The New World: Poems
• Vera Brittain – Verses of a VAD
• Toirdhealbhach Mac Suibhne (Terence MacSwiney) – Battle-cries
• Walter de la Mare – The Marionettes
• Siegfried Sassoon – Counter-Attack and Other Poems
• Edward Thomas (posthumous) – Last Poems
• Tristan Tzara – Vingt-cinq poèmes

Non-fiction[edit]

• Henry Adams – The Education of Henry Adams
• Enid Bagnold – A Diary Without Dates
• Clive Bell – Pot-boilers
• Laurence Binyon – For Dauntless France
• William Inge – The Philosophy of Plotinus
• Daniel Jones – An Outline of English Phonetics
• Federico García Lorca – Impressiones y Paisajes (Impressions and Landscapes)
• Walther Rathenau – An Deutschlands Jugend
• Oswald Spengler – The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes)
• Dr Marie Stopes
  • Married Love
  • Wise Parenthood
• Lytton Strachey – Eminent Victorians
• Mary Augusta Ward – A Writer's Recollections

Births[edit]

• January 16
  • Philip José Farmer, American science fiction writer (died 2009)
  • Stirling Silliphant, American writer, producer (died 1996)
• February 1 – Muriel Spark, Scottish novelist (died 2006)
• February 6 – Lothar-Günther Buchheim, German novelist, war correspondent and painter (died 2007)
• March 9 – Mickey Spillane, American mystery writer (died 2006)
• March 10 – Theodore Cogswell, American science fiction author (died 1987)
• March 15 – Richard Ellmann, American literary biographer (died 1987)
• April 23
  • Maurice Druon, French historical novelist (died 2009)
  • James Kirkup, English poet (died 2009)
• May 16 – Juan Rulfo, Mexican author (died 1986)
• July 9 – John Heath-Stubbs, English poet and translator (died 2006)
• July 14 – Arthur Laurents, American novelist and screenwriter (died 2011)
• July 24 – Antonio Candido, Brazilian literary critic (died 2017)
• August 9 – Robert Aldrich, American writer and filmmaker (died 1983)
• August 20 – Jacqueline Susann, American novelist (died 1974)
• August 27 – Leon Levițchi, Romanian translator (died 1991)
• September 19 – Penelope Mortimer, Welsh-born English novelist and biographer (died 1999)
• October 19 – Louis Althusser, French Marxist philosopher (died 1990)
• October 29 – Ștefan Baciu, Romanian and Brazilian poet, novelist and literary promoter (died 1993)
• November 2 – Roger Lancelyn Green, English biographer (died 1987)
• November 16 – Nicholas Moore, English poet (died 1986)
• November 20 – Naomi Frankel, German-born Israeli novelist (died 2009)
• November 25 – Peter Opie, English writer on children's literature and lore (died 1982)
• November 29 – Madeleine L'Engle, American writer for children and teens (died 2007)
• December 7 – Liu Yichang, Chinese novelist, editor and publisher (died 2018)
• December 11 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist (died 2008)
• December 30 – Al Purdy, Canadian poet (died 2000)

Deaths[edit]

• January 1 – William Wilfred Campbell, Canadian poet (born 1860)
• January 6 – Dora Sigerson Shorter, Irish poet, novelist and sculptor (born 1866)^[3]
• January 28 – John McCrae, Canadian military surgeon and war poet (pneumonia, born 1872)^[4]
• February 8 – Lascăr Vorel, Romanian visual artist and short story writer (kidney disease, born 1879)
• April 1 – Isaac Rosenberg, English poet and artist (killed in action, born 1890)
• April – William Hope Hodgson, English author and essayist (killed in action, born 1877)
• May 8 – Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, Austrian writer and traveler (born 1851)
• May 27 – Francis George Fowler, English grammarian (tuberculosis contracted on military service, born 1871)^[5]
• June 10 – Arrigo Boito (Tobia Gorio), Italian poet and composer (born 1842)
• June 26 – Peter Rosegger, Austrian poet (born 1843)
• June 28 – Alexander Turnbull, New Zealand bibliophile (born 1868)
• July 30 – Joyce Kilmer, American poet (killed in action, born 1886)
• October 5 – Robbie Ross, journalist (heart failure, born 1869)
• November 4
  • Wilfred Owen, English poet (killed in action, born 1893)
  • Andrew Dickson White, American diplomat and author (born 1832)
• November 9 – Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet, dramatist, novelist and critic (influenza, born 1880)^[6]
• November 24 – Annie Hall Cudlip, English novelist, journalist and editor (born 1838)
• December 1 – Margit Kaffka, Hungarian novelist, short story writer and poet (influenza, born 1880)
• December 2 – Edmond Rostand, French poet and dramatist (influenza, born 1868)
• December 15 – Salvatore Farina, Italian novelist (born 1846)

Awards[edit]

• Nobel Prize for Literature: not awarded
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Jesse Lynch Williams, Why Marry?
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Sara Teasdale: Love Songs
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Ernest Poole – His Family

In literature[edit]

• The following novels relate to the end of World War I:
  • Pat Barker – The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road (1993–1995)
  • Alfred Döblin – November 1918 (1939–1950)
  • Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu – Yaban ("The Strange", 1932)
  • Thomas Keneally – Gossip from the Forest (1975)
• R. C. Sherriff's drama Journey's End (1928) is set on the Western Front (World War I) March 18–21
• Sjón's novel Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was (Mánasteinn – drengurinn sem aldrei var til, 2013) is set this autumn, referencing the 1918 flu pandemic and eruption of the Katla volcano
• According to Stephenie Meyer's novel Twilight (2005), Edward Cullen is turned into a vampire to prevent him from dying in the 1918 flu pandemic in Chicago

References[edit]