1920 in literature

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In poetry
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1918
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1920
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1923

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1920.

Events[]

  • February 2 – Beyond the Horizon, Eugene O'Neill's second full-length play, opens with a Morosco Theatre matinée in New York City, partly as a producer's experiment and partly to quiet the actor Richard Bennett, who sought to play the lead. Reviewers hail the play and O'Neill gains fame.[1]
  • February 27 – An inaugural meeting of the Bloomsbury Group's Memoir Club is arranged by Mary MacCarthy in London.[2]
  • Spring – The poet Anton Podbevšek and others organize the Novo Mesto Spring (Novomeška pomlad) event, the beginning of Slovenian Modernism.
  • March 15 – The Blue Flame, a four-act play by George V. Hobart and John Willard after Leta Vance Nicholson, opens at the Shubert Theatre (New York City) on Broadway before a year's U.S. tour. Though described by a critic as "one of the worst plays ever written,"[3] it is a commercial success, largely due to Theda Bara as the central character of a vamp.
  • March 22 – Federico García Lorca's first play, The Butterfly's Evil Spell (El maleficio de la mariposa) is poorly received at its première in Madrid.
  • March 26 – This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald sets him up as a writer and celebrity. An initial 3,000 copies sell out in three days. The book's reputation dims in later years, but Dorothy Parker will recall that it was seen as innovative when it first appeared.
  • April
    • Hart Crane publishes his poem "My Grandmother's Love Letters" in The Dial, his first major move toward recognition as a poet.
    • The pulp magazine Black Mask is launched in New York City as "An Illustrated Magazine of Detective Mystery, Adventure, Romance, and Spiritualism" by journalist H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" was published in May 1920.
  • April 3 – F. Scott Fitzgerald marries Zelda Sayre in the rectory of St. Patrick's Cathedral (Manhattan).
  • May 1 – F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" appears in the Saturday Evening Post and on the magazine's cover, illustrated by artist Norman Rockwell.
  • July – Krishna Lal Adhikari's Makaiko Kheti (The Cultivation of Maize) is published in Nepal; following claims that it contains "mischievous expressions to treason", the author is sentenced to nine years in prison (where he will die in 1923) and all known copies of the book are destroyed.[4]
  • August 22 – The Salzburg Festival in Austria is inaugurated with a performance of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play Jedermann (Everyman, 1911) in front of Salzburg Cathedral, directed by Max Reinhardt.[5]
  • October – Agatha Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, appears in the U.S., introducing her long-running Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in the setting of an English country house. The book is published in the U.K. on January 21, 1921.
  • November 1 – Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones plays at the Playwright's Theater in New York City with Charles Sidney Gilpin in the title role.[6]
  • November 9 – D. H. Lawrence's novel Women in Love appears in a limited U.S. subscribers' edition.[7]
  • December – The first edition of the Poems of the English war poet Wilfred Owen, killed in action in 1918, appears in London, introduced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon but with much of the editing carried out by Edith Sitwell. Only five of Owen's verses having been published in his lifetime, the collection introduces his work to many readers. It includes the 1917 poems "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce et Decorum est", one of the best-known poetic condemnations of war.[8]
  • December 23 – Arthur Schnitzler's play Reigen (La Ronde, 1900) receives a first authorized performance, in Berlin, where it is criticized on moral and anti-Semitic grounds.[9]
  • Christmas – Monteiro Lobato's children's story "A Menina do Narizinho Arrebitado" (Girl with the Upturned Nose), the origin of the Sítio do Picapau Amarelo novel series, is published in Brazil.
  • unknown dates
    • Karel Čapek's drama R.U.R: Rossum's Universal Robots, published in Prague, introduces the word robot into English.[10][11]
    • Publication in Paris of the first volume of the Collection Budé initiates editions of classical texts with parallel French translation: Plato's Hippias Minor (Hippias Mineur).[12]
    • Van Wyck Brooks' The Ordeal of Mark Twain controversially argues that Twain was "a victim of arrested development" with a dual personality.[13] It begins a reassessment of an author seen hitherto mainly as a humorous writer. The 1920s will bring similar reconsideration of many 19th-century American writers, notably Herman Melville[14] and Emily Dickinson.[15]

New books[]

Fiction[]

Children and young people[]

Drama[]

Poetry[]

Main article: 1920 in poetry
  • Louis Aragon – "Feu de joie"[18]
  • Edmund Blunden – The Waggoner and Other Poems
  • Robert Bridges – October and Other Poems
  • T. S. Eliot – Poems (Twelve poems including "Lune de Miel" and "The Hippopotamus")
  • Robert Frost – Miscellaneous Poems
  • Aaro Hellaakoski – Me Kaksi
  • Bolesław Leśmian – Meadow (Łąka)
  • Edna St. Vincent Millay – A Few Figs From Thistles
  • Hope Mirrlees – Paris: A Poem
  • Wilfred Owen – Poems
  • Ezra Pound – Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
  • Carl Sandburg – Smoke and Steel
  • Siegfried Sassoon – Picture Show
  • Anton Schnack – Tier rang gewaltig mit Tier (Beast Strove Mightily with Beast)
  • Georg Trakl – Der Herbst des Einsamen (The Autumn of the Lonely)
  • Miguel de Unamuno – El Cristo de Velázquez

Non-fiction[]

  • Sarah Bernhardt – Petite Idole
  • Marc Bloch – Rois et serfs. Un chapitre d'histoire capétienne[19]
  • Sigmund Freud – Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Jenseits des Lustprinzips)
  • William Inge – The Idea of Progress
  • Ernst Jünger – Storm of Steel (In Stahlgewittern)
  • Robert T. Kerlin (editor) – The Voice of the Negro
  • J. Thomas Looney – Shakespeare Identified
  • H. L. Mencken – Prejudices: Second Series
  • Harold Monro – Some Contemporary Poets (1920)
  • Joseph Shield Nicholson – The Revival of Marxism, final book[20]
  • Charles à Court Repington – The First World War, 1914–1918
  • Radu Rosetti – Povești moldovenești
  • Frederick Jackson Turner – The Frontier in American History
  • H. G. Wells – The Outline of History

Births[]

Isaac Asimov.
  • January 2 (probable date) – Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American science-fiction author and biochemist (died 1992)[21]
  • January 7 – Dorothy Maclean, Canadian writer and educator, co-founder of the Findhorn Foundation (died 2020)
  • January 14
    • Jean Dutourd, French novelist (died 2011)[22]
    • Che Lan Vien, Vietnamese poet (died 1989)
  • January 22 – Philippa Pearce, English children's writer (died 2006)
  • January 24 – Keith Douglas, English poet (died 1944)
  • February 11 – Daniel F. Galouye, American science-fiction author (died 1976)
  • February 12 – William Roscoe Estep, American historian and educator (died 2000)
  • February 19 – Jaan Kross, Estonian writer (died 2007)
  • February 21 – Ishigaki Rin (石垣 りん), Japanese poet (died 2004)
  • February 28 – Zaim Topčić, Yugoslav and Bosnian writer (died 1990)
  • February 29 – Howard Nemerov, American poet (died 1991)
  • March 10 – Boris Vian, French novelist (died 1959)
  • March 11 – D. J. Enright, English writer (died 2002)
  • March 19 – Kjell Aukrust, Norwegian author, poet and artist (died 2002)
  • March 25 – Paul Scott, English novelist, playwright and poet (died 1978)
  • March 31 – Marga Minco (Sara Menco), Dutch novelist and journalist
  • April 5 – Arthur Hailey, English-born Canadian novelist (died 2004)
  • April 11 – Marlen Haushofer, Austrian novelist (died 1970)
  • April 17 – Bengt Anderberg, Swedish poet, novelist, children's writer (died 2008)
  • May 8 – Sloan Wilson, American author and poet (died 2003)
  • May 9 – Richard Adams, English novelist, author of Watership Down (died 2016)
  • June 2 – Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Polish-born German literary critic (died 2013)
  • June 8 – Gwen Harwood, Australian poet (died 1995)
  • June 9 – Isobel English (Guesdon Jolliffe), English novelist (died 1994)
  • June 13 – Ruth Guimarães, Afro-Brazilian classicist, fiction writer and poet (died 2014)
  • June 18
    • Aster Berkhof, Belgian novelist (died 2020)
    • Rosemary Dobson, Australian poet (died 2012)
  • June 20 – Amos Tutuola, Nigerian writer (died 1997)
  • July 3 – Max Wilk, American playwright, screenwriter and author of fiction and nonfiction (died 2011)
  • July 12 – Pierre Berton, Canadian author (died 2004)
  • August 3 – P. D. James, English crime novelist (died 2014)[23]
  • August 4 – John Figueroa, Jamaican poet (died 1999)
  • August 9 – Tormod Skagestad, Norwegian poet, novelist and playwright (died 1997)
  • August 16 – Charles Bukowski, American writer (died 1994)
  • August 18 – Harbhajan Singh, Punjabi poet and critic (died 2002)
  • August 21 – Christopher Robin Milne, English writer and bookseller (died 1996)
  • August 22 – Ray Bradbury, American science-fiction writer (died 2012)[24]
  • October 7 – Daniel Vidart, Uruguayan anthropologist, writer, historian, and essayist (died 2019)
  • October 8 – Frank Herbert, American science-fiction writer (died 1986)[25]
  • October 15 – Mario Puzo, American author of The Godfather (died 1999)[26]
  • October 17 – Miguel Delibes, Spanish novelist (died 2010)[27]
  • November 7 – Elaine Morgan, Welsh writer on anthropology (died 2013)[28]
  • November 16
    • Colin Thiele, Australian author (died 2006)
    • Peter Viertel, American author (died 2007)
  • November 23 – Paul Celan, Romanian poet (died 1970)
  • December 3 – Sheila K. McCullagh, English children's writer (died 2014)
  • December 10 – Clarice Lispector, Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist (died 1977)
  • December 15 – Albert Memmi, Tunisian writer in French (died 2020)
  • December 20 – Väinö Linna, Finnish novelist (died 1992)

Deaths[]

  • January 2 – Paul Adam, French novelist (born 1862)
  • January 4 – Benito Pérez Galdós, Spanish novelist (born 1843)
  • January 18 – Giovanni Capurro, Italian poet (born 1825)
  • February 8 – Richard Dehmel, German poet (born 1863)
  • February 29 – A. H. Bullen, English editor and publisher (born 1857)
  • March 9 – Haralamb Lecca, Romanian dramatist, poet and translator (paralysis, born 1873)
  • March 15 – Edith Holden, English diarist and illustrator (drowned, born 1871)
  • March 26 – Mary Augusta Ward (Mrs. Humphry Ward), Tasmanian-born English novelist (born 1851)
  • May 7 – Hugh Thomson, British illustrator (born 1860)
  • May 11 – William Dean Howells, American realist novelist (born 1837)
  • May 21 – Eleanor H. Porter, American novelist (born 1868)
  • June 5
    • Rhoda Broughton, Welsh novelist and short-story writer (born 1840)
    • Julia A. Moore, American poet (born 1847)
  • June 14 – Max Weber, German political economist (born 1864)
  • June 27 – Adolphe Basile Routhier, Canadian poet (born 1839)
  • September 29 – José Domingo Gómez Rojas, Chilean poet (meningitis, born 1896)
  • October 17 – John Reed, American journalist (born 1887)
  • October 20 – Bithia Mary Croker, Irish-born novelist (born c. 1848)
  • November 1 – Walter Bradford Woodgate, English boating writer and oarsman (born 1841)
  • November 9 – Alberto Blest Gana, Chilean novelist (born 1830)
  • November 22 – Manuel Pérez y Curis, Uruguayan poet (born 1884)
  • November 24 – Alexandru Macedonski, Romanian poet, novelist and dramatist (heart disease, born 1854)
  • December 18 – Matthías Jochumsson, Icelandic poet, playwright and translator (born 1835)

Awards[]

References[]

  1. ^ New York City, Proposed Times Square Hotel UDAG: Environmental Impact Statement. 1981. p. 4.
  2. ^ Rosenbaum, S. P. (2014). The Bloomsbury Group Memoir Club. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137360359.
  3. ^ Morehouse, Ward (1949). Matinee Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Our Theater. New York: Whittlesey House. p. 175.
  4. ^ "The Book on Makai Parba". SpotlightNepal. 2015-07-02. Archived from the original on 2020-10-05. Retrieved 2020-10-06.
  5. ^ Michael P. Steinberg (1990). The Meaning of the Salzburg Festival: Austria as Theater and Ideology, 1890-1938. Cornell University Press. p. 164. ISBN 978-0-8014-2362-8.
  6. ^ Frank, Glenda (2006). "The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill". eOneill.com. Retrieved 2017-09-21.[permanent dead link]
  7. ^ D.H. Lawrence (20 February 2019). Studies in Classic American Literature. RosettaBooks. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-7953-5159-4.
  8. ^ Ian Scott-Kilvert (1979). British Writers. Scribner. p. 459. ISBN 978-0-684-16637-7.
  9. ^ Letters to Siegfried Trebitsch. 1986. p. 221.
  10. ^ Asimov, Isaac (September 1979). "The Vocabulary of Science Fiction". Asimov's Science Fiction.
  11. ^ Zunt, Dominik (2004). "Who did actually invent the word "robot" and what does it mean?". Karel Čapek (1890-1938). Archived from the original on 2012-02-04. Retrieved 2011-12-06.
  12. ^ Percy Gardner; Ernest Arthur Gardner; Max Cary (1922). The Journal of Hellenic Studies. Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. p. 283.
  13. ^ LeMaster, J. R.; Wilson, James D. (2013). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain. Routledge. p. 99. ISBN 978-1-135-88135-1.
  14. ^ Johnson, Bradley A. (2011). The Characteristic Theology of Herman Melville: Aesthetics, Politics, Duplicity. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 117. ISBN 978-1-63087-620-3.
  15. ^ Academic American encyclopedia. Grolier Incorporated. 1 February 1995. p. 344. ISBN 978-0-7172-2059-5.
  16. ^ William Aubrey Darlington (1920). Alf's Button. Frederick A. Stokes Company.
  17. ^ Martha Eulalia Altisent (2008). A Companion to the Twentieth-century Spanish Novel. Boydell & Brewer Ltd. p. 18. ISBN 978-1-85566-174-5.
  18. ^ Auster, Paul (ed.) (1982). The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry, with Translations by American and British Poets. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-394-52197-8.
  19. ^ Susan W. Friedman (11 November 2004). Marc Bloch, Sociology and Geography: Encountering Changing Disciplines. Cambridge University Press. p. 185. ISBN 978-0-521-61215-9.
  20. ^ Groenewegen, Peter. "Joseph Shield Nicholson (1850–1927): An early student of Marshall at Cambridge, later quite critical of Marshall and his Economics" (PDF). History of Economic Thought Society of Australia. Retrieved 2015-08-30.
  21. ^ Analog Science Fiction & Fact. Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact. July 2002. p. 112.
  22. ^ Réalités. Réalités Monthly Magazine. 1957. p. 54.
  23. ^ Reynolds, Stanley (27 November 2014). "PD James obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 November 2014.
  24. ^ Martin Harry Greenberg; Joseph D. Olander (1980). Ray Bradbury. Taplinger Publishing Company. p. 214. ISBN 978-0-8008-6638-9.
  25. ^ William F. Touponce (1988). Frank Herbert. Twayne Publishers. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-8057-7514-3.
  26. ^ Chase's Annual Events. Contemporary Books. 1994. p. 413. ISBN 978-0-8092-3732-6.
  27. ^ Eaude, Michael (14 March 2010). "Miguel Delibes obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 January 2020.
  28. ^ Erika Lorraine Milam. "Elaine Morgan obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 January 2020.


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