1921 in literature

The year 1921 in literature involved some significant literary events and new books.

Events

• January 1 - The Jonathan Cape publishing business is established in Bloomsbury (London) by Herbert Jonathan Cape and Wren Howard.
• February - Margaret Caroline Anderson and Jane Heap, publishers of The Little Review, are convicted of obscenity in a New York court for publishing the "Nausicaa" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses.^[1]
• April 20 - Ferenc Molnár's play Liliom is first produced on Broadway in English.
• May 9 - The première of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore) at the Teatro Valle in Rome divides the audience.
• June 10 - D. H. Lawrence's novel Women in Love is first published in a trade edition, by Martin Secker in London.
• September 5 - The Cervantes Theatre (Buenos Aires) in Argentina opens with a production of Lope de Vega's La dama boba ("The foolish lady", 1613).^[2]
• September 26 - Opening of the Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich, England, an old chapel reconstructed as a recreation of an English Renaissance theatre building for the production of period drama by an amateur repertory company under the direction of Walter Nugent Monck.^[3]
• December 9 - John William Gott becomes the last person in England to be imprisoned for blasphemous libel.
• December 31 - Mexican poet Manuel Maples Arce distributes the first Stridentist manifesto, Comprimido estridentista, in the broadsheet Actual n°1 (Mexico City).
• Jorge Luis Borges returns to Buenos Aires after a period living in Europe.

New books

• Dorita Fairlie Bruce – The Senior Prefect
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan the Terrible
• James Branch Cabell – Figures of Earth
• Hall Caine – The Master of Man
• Willa Cather – Alexander's Bridge
• Arthur Chapman – Mystery Ranch
• Marie Corelli – The Secret Power
• Miloš Crnjanski – The Journal of Čarnojević (Дневник о Чарнојевићу, Dnevnik o Čarnojeviću)
• Walter de la Mare – Memoirs of a Midget
• Eleanor Farjeon – Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard
• Fran Saleški Finžgar - Pod svobodnim soncem
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Beautiful and Damned (serialized in Metropolitan Magazine (New York))
  • Flappers and Philosophers (short stories)
• Mikkjel Fønhus – Troll-Elgen^[4]
• John Galsworthy – To Let (last in The Forsyte Saga)
• H. Rider Haggard – She and Allan
• Georgette Heyer – The Black Moth
• A. S. M. Hutchinson – If Winter Comes^[5]
• Aldous Huxley – Crome Yellow
• Sheila Kaye-Smith – Joanna Godden
• Denis Mackail – Romance to the Rescue
• René Maran – Batouala
• L. M. Montgomery – Rilla of Ingleside
• George Moore – Heloise and Abelard
• Paul Morand - Tender Shoots
• Baroness Orczy
  • The First Sir Percy
  • Castles in the Air
• Alejandro Pérez Lugín - Currito of the Cross
• Gene Stratton Porter – Her Father's Daughter
• Marcel Proust
  • The Guermantes Way (Le Côté de Guermantes II, second part of vol. 3 of In Search of Lost Time)
  • Sodom and Gomorrah (Sodome et Gomorrhe I, first part of vol. 4 of In Search of Lost Time)
• Sukumar Ray - HaJaBaRaLa
• Iñigo Ed. Regalado - May Pagsinta'y Walang Puso
• Rafael Sabatini – Scaramouche
• Naoya Shiga – A Dark Night's Passing (暗夜行路, An'ya Kōro; serialized 1921–37)
• Booth Tarkington – Alice Adams
• Sigrid Undset – The Mistress of Husaby
• Eugene Walter – The Byzantine Riddle and other stories
• Elinor Wylie – Nets to Catch the Wind
• Francis Brett Young – The Black Diamond
• Yevgeny Zamyatin – We (Мы; completed)

Short stories

• Ryūnosuke Akutagawa – "Autumn Mountain" (秋山, Akiyama)

New drama

• Hjalmar Bergman – Thy Rod and Thy Staff
• Karel Čapek – R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
• Susan Glaspell – Inheritors and The Verge
• Roland Pertwee – Out to Win
• Luigi Pirandello – Six Characters in Search of an Author
• Tristan Tzara – The Gas Heart
• Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz – The Water Hen

Poetry

• Langston Hughes – "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", in The Crisis
• Charlotte Mew – Saturday Market
• William Carlos Williams – Sour Grapes
• William Butler Yeats – Michael Robartes and the Dancer

Non-fiction

• Adolphe Appia – L’oeuvre d’art vivant ("The living work of art")
• Sarah Bernhardt – The Idol of Paris
• Joseph Chaikov – Skulptur (first Yiddish-language work on the subject)^[6]
• D. H. Lawrence – Sea and Sardinia
• Edward Sapir – Language: an introduction to the study of speech
• Hendrik Willem van Loon – The Story of Mankind
• Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk – Further Essays on Capital and Interest
• Ludwig Wittgenstein – Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Births

• January 5 – Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Swiss writer (died 1990)
• January 19 – Patricia Highsmith, American crime writer (died 1995)
• February 4 – Betty Friedan, American feminist author (died 2006)
• February 15 – Radha Krishna Choudhary, Indian historian and writer (died 1985)
• March 1 – Richard Wilbur, American poet and translator
• March 24 – Wilson Harris, Guyanese poet, novelist and essayist
• May 23
  • James Blish, American science fiction author (died 1975)
  • Ray Lawler, Australian dramatist
• May 29 – Henry Scholberg, American bibliographer (died 2012)
• June 11 – Michael Meyer, English translator and biographer (died 2000)
• August 11 – Alex Haley, American writer (died 1992)
• August 17 – Elinor Lyon, English children's writer (died 2008)
• September 26 – Cyprian Ekwensi, Nigerian writer (died 2007)
• October 17 – George Mackay Brown, Scottish poet (died 1996)
• November 22 – Brian Cleeve, Irish author (died 2003)
• December 20 – Israil Bercovici, Romanian dramatist and historian (died 1988)

Deaths

• March 22 – Ernest William Hornung, English author (born 1866)
• April 6 – Maximilian Berlitz, German-born American textbook writer and language school proprietor (born 1852)
• May 5 – Alfred Hermann Fried, Austrian publicist (born 1864)
• May 12 – Emilia Pardo Bazán, Spanish novelist (born 1851)
• May 13 – Jean Aicard, French writer (born 1848)
• June 5 – Georges Feydeau, French playwright (born 1862)
• June 26 – Alfred Percy Sinnett, English Theosophist author (born 1840)
• July 4 – Antoni Grabowski, Polish Esperantist (born 1857)
• August 7 – Alexander Blok, Russian poet (born 1880)
• August 25 – Nikolay Gumilev, Russian poet (executed, born 1886)
• October 10 – Otto von Gierke, German historian (born 1841)
• November 8 – Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav, Slovak poet, dramatist and translator (born 1849)
• November 14 – Christabel Rose Coleridge English novelist and editor (born 1843)
• Unknown date – John Habberton, American critic (born 1842)^[7]

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Anatole France
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Zona Gale, Miss Lulu Bett
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Edith Wharton – The Age of Innocence

References