1921 in literature

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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1921.

Events[]

January 1 – The publishing firm Jonathan Cape is founded in Bloomsbury, London, by Herbert Jonathan Cape and Wren Howard.^[1]
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.^[2]
March – Jorge Luis Borges returns to his native Buenos Aires in Argentina after a period living with his family in Europe.
April 20 – The Hungarian 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.
May – A production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre directed by Robert Atkins at The Old Vic, London, restores the unexpurgated text for the first time since Shakespeare's day.
June 6 – The première of Tristan Tzara's parodic The Gas Heart (Le Cœur à gaz) takes place at a Dada Salon at the Galerie Montaigne in Paris. It provokes audience derision.
June 10 – D. H. Lawrence's novel Women in Love is first published commercially by Martin Secker in London.
September 5 – The Cervantes Theatre (Buenos Aires) opens with a production of Lope de Vega's La dama boba (The Foolish Lady, 1613).^[3]
September 26 – The Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich, England, an old chapel, is turned into an English Renaissance theatre for period drama by an amateur repertory company directed by Walter Nugent Monck.^[4] It opens with As You Like It.
December 9 – John William Gott becomes the last person in England imprisoned for blasphemous libel.
December 31 – Mexican poet Manuel Maples Arce distributes the first Stridentist manifesto, Comprimido estridentista, in the broadsheet Actual No. 1 in Mexico City.

New books[]

Fiction[]

Elizabeth von Arnim - Vera
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa – "Autumn Mountain" (秋山, Akiyama)
Ruby M. Ayres
- The Second Honeymoon
- The Uphill Road
E.F. Benson
- Dodo Wonders
- Lovers and Friends
Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan the Terrible
James Branch Cabell – Figures of Earth
Hall Caine – The Master of Man
Karel Čapek – Trapné povídky (Embarrassing Stories, translated as Money and other stories)
Willa Cather – Alexander's Bridge
Arthur Chapman – Mystery Ranch
A. E. Coppard – Adam & Eve & Pinch Me: Tales
Mary Cholmondeley – The Romance of His Life
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
Ethel M. Dell - The Obstacle Race
Mary Frances Dowdall – Three Loving Ladies
Edna Ferber - The Girls
Fran Saleški Finžgar – Pod svobodnim soncem (Under the free sun)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Beautiful and Damned (serialized in Metropolitan Magazine (New York))
- Flappers and Philosophers (short stories)
Mikkjel Fønhus – Troll-Elgen^[5]
John Galsworthy – To Let (last book of The Forsyte Saga)
H. Rider Haggard – She and Allan
A. P. Herbert – The House by the River
Georgette Heyer – The Black Moth
A. S. M. Hutchinson – If Winter Comes^[6]
Aldous Huxley – Crome Yellow^[7]
Frigyes Karinthy – Capillaria
Sheila Kaye-Smith – Joanna Godden
Gaston Leroux – The Crime of Rouletabille
Marie Belloc Lowndes – What Timmy Did
Denis Mackail – Romance to the Rescue
Compton Mackenzie – Rich Relatives
René Maran – Batouala
L. M. Montgomery – Rilla of Ingleside
George Moore – Heloise and Abelard
Paul Morand – Tender Shoots (Tendres stocks, short stories)
E. Phillips Oppenheim – Jacob's Ladder
Baroness Orczy
- Castles in the Air (short stories)
- The First Sir Percy
Alejandro Pérez Lugín – Currito of the Cross (Currito de la Cruz)
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
Dorothy Richardson - Deadlock
Berta Ruck - Sweet Stranger
Rafael Sabatini – Scaramouche
Naoya Shiga – A Dark Night's Passing (暗夜行路, An'ya Kōro; serialized 1921–37)
May Sinclair - Mr. Waddington of Wyck
Annie M. Smithson - Carmen Cavanagh
Booth Tarkington – Alice Adams
Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy – The Road to Calvary (publication begins)
Sigrid Undset – Husfrue (The Wife or The Mistress of Husaby, second part of Kristin Lavransdatter)
Edgar Wallace
- The Book of All Power
- The Law of the Four Just Men^[8]
Eugene Walter – The Byzantine Riddle and other stories
Arthur Weigall – Burning Sands
Elinor Wylie – Nets to Catch the Wind
Francis Brett Young
- The Black Diamond
- The Red Knight
Yevgeny Zamyatin – We (Мы; completed)

Children and young people[]

Dorita Fairlie Bruce – The Senior Prefect (later entitled Dimsie Goes to School)
Eleanor Farjeon – Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard
Charles Boardman Hawes – The Great Quest
Hendrik Willem van Loon – The Story of Mankind (non-fiction)
Else Ury – Nesthäkchen Flies From the Nest^[9]

Drama[]

Hjalmar Bergman – Farmor och vår Herre (Grandmother and Our Lord, translated as Thy Rod and Thy Staff)
Dorothy Brandon – Araminta Arrives
Karel Čapek – R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) (performed)
Karel and Josef Čapek – Pictures from the Insects' Life (Ze života hmyzu, published)
Clemence Dane – A Bill of Divorcement
Brandon Fleming – The Eleventh Commandment
Gerald du Maurier – Bulldog Drummond (with H.C. McNeile)
Susan Glaspell – Inheritors (written) and The Verge (performed)
Ian Hay – A Safety Match
A. de Herz – Mărgeluș (Tiny Bead)
Avery Hopwood – The Demi-Virgin
René Morax – Le Roi David
Roland Pertwee – Out to Win
Luigi Pirandello – Six Characters in Search of an Author
Sophie Treadwell - Rights
Tristan Tzara – The Gas Heart
Edgar Wallace – M'Lady
Raden Adipati Aria Muharam Wiranatakusumah – Lutung Kasarung
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz – The Water Hen (Kurka Wodna)

Poetry[]

Robert Frost – Mountain Interval (second print)
Langston Hughes – "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", in The Crisis
Amy Lowell - Legends
Katherine Tynan - The Handsome Brandons
William Carlos Williams – Sour Grapes
William Butler Yeats – Michael Robartes and the Dancer

Non-fiction[]

Adolphe Appia – L'Œuvre d'art vivant (The Living Work of Art)
Charles Bean (ed.) – Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, vol. 1
Joseph Chaikov – Skulptur (first Yiddish-language work on the subject)^[10]
Grace King– Creole Families of New Orleans
Frank H. Knight – Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit
D. H. Lawrence
- Sea and Sardinia
- (as Lawrence H. Davison) – Movements in European History
Edward Sapir – Language: an introduction to the study of speech
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk – Further Essays on Capital and Interest
Ludwig Wittgenstein – Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Zitkala-Sa – American Indian Stories

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 5 – Marion Eames, Welsh novelist writing mainly in Welsh (died 2007)^[11]
February 15 – Radha Krishna Choudhary, Indian historian and writer (died 1985)
March 1 – Richard Wilbur, American poet and translator (died 2017)
March 3 – Paul Guimard, French novelist (died 2004)
March 24 – Wilson Harris, Guyanese-born poet, novelist and essayist (died 2018)
April 21 – Angela Bianchini, Italian fiction writer and literary critic (died 2018)
May 23
- James Blish, American science fiction author (died 1975)
- Ray Lawler, Australian dramatist
May 29
- Mona Van Duyn, American poet (died 2004)
- Henry Scholberg, American bibliographer (died 2012)
June 11 – Michael Meyer, English translator and biographer (died 2000)
June 14 – John Bradburne, English poet and missionary (killed 1979)
August 11 – Alex Haley, American writer (died 1992)
August 17 – Elinor Lyon, British children's writer (died 2008)^[12]
August 18 – Frédéric Jacques Temple, French poet and writer (died 2020)
September 12 – Stanisław Lem, Polish science fiction novelist, philosopher, satirist and physician (died 2006)
September 15 – Richard Gordon, English author (died 2017)
September 16 – Mohamed Talbi, Tunisian historian (died 2017)^[13]
September 26 – Cyprian Ekwensi, Nigerian writer (died 2007)
October 2 – Edmund Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery), English crime writer (died 1978)
October 9 – Tadeusz Różewicz, Polish poet, dramatist and writer (died 2014)
October 17 – George Mackay Brown, Scottish poet (died 1996)^[14]
November 6 – James Jones, American novelist (died 1977)
November 22 – Brian Cleeve, Irish author (died 2003)
December 20 – Israil Bercovici, Romanian dramatist and historian (died 1988)

Deaths[]

February 24 – John Habberton, American critic (born 1842)^[15]
March 22 – E. W. 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)^[16]
July 7 – Luca Caragiale, Romanian poet, novelist and translator (pneumonia, born 1893)
August 7 – Alexander Blok, Russian poet (born 1880)
August 25 – Nikolay Gumilev, Russian poet (executed, born 1886)
September 22 - Ivan Vazov, Bulgarian poet, novelist and playwright (born 1850)^[17]
October 10 – Otto von Gierke, German historian (born 1841)^[18]
November 8 – Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav, Slovak poet, dramatist and translator (born 1849)
November 14 – Christabel Rose Coleridge English novelist and editor (born 1843)

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 in 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[]

^ The Bookseller. J. Whitaker. 1970. p. 2640.
^ Ellmann, Richard (1982). James Joyce. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 502–04. ISBN 0-1950-3103-2.
^ "Teatro Nacional Cervantes" (in Spanish). Retrieved 2014-01-14.
^ "Norwich Players' New Theatre". The Times. No. 42836. London. 1921-09-27. p. 8.
^ Elster, Kristian (1924). Illustreret Norsk litteraturhistorie (in Norwegian). Vol. 2. Kristiania: Gyldendal. p. 808.
^ Leavis, Q. D. (1965). Fiction and the Reading Public (rev. ed.). London: Chatto & Windus.
^ Aldous Huxley (2001). Crome Yellow. Dalkey Archive Press. ISBN 978-1-56478-304-2.
^ Edgar Wallace (3 March 2010). The Four Just Men. House of Stratus. p. 99. ISBN 978-0-7551-2247-9.
^ Rudolf Käser; Beate Schappach (31 October 2014). Krank geschrieben: Gesundheit und Krankheit im Diskursfeld von Literatur, Geschlecht und Medizin (in German). transcript Verlag. p. 147. ISBN 978-3-8394-1760-7.
^ Apter-Gabriel, Ruth (1987). Tradition and revolution: the Jewish renaissance in Russian avant-garde art, 1912-1928. Israel Museum. p. 67. ISBN 9789652780713.
^ J. Beverley Smith. "Eames, Marion Griffith (1921-2007), historical novelist". Dictionary of Welsh Biography. National Library of Wales. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
^ "Elinor Lyon: Author of 'camping and tramping' adventure tales peopled with feisty, fearless girls and boys". The Independent. 23 October 2011. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
^ Ataullah Siddiqui (15 April 1997). Christian-Muslim Dialogue in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 136. ISBN 978-0-312-16510-9.
^ Maggie Fergusson, George Mackay Brown: The Life, John Murray, 2006, ISBN 0-7195-5659-7 p. 8
^ Non Series #138- Trif and Trixy // John Habberton autograph 7 March 2012. Accessed 9 January 2012.
^ Julius Glück, El la klasika periodo de Esperanto (Grabowski kaj Kabe), en Muusses Esperanto Biblioteko No. 5, Purmerend, 1937. p. 6.
^ Frank Northen Magill (1958). Masterplots Cyclopedia of World Authors. Salem Press. p. 1106.
^ Otto von Gierke (2 May 2002). Community in Historical Perspective. Cambridge University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-521-89323-7.

[1] The Bookseller. J. Whitaker. 1970. p. 2640.

[2] Ellmann, Richard (1982). James Joyce. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 502–04. ISBN 0-1950-3103-2.

[3] "Teatro Nacional Cervantes" (in Spanish). Retrieved 2014-01-14.

[4] "Norwich Players' New Theatre". The Times. No. 42836. London. 1921-09-27. p. 8.

[5] Elster, Kristian (1924). Illustreret Norsk litteraturhistorie (in Norwegian). Vol. 2. Kristiania: Gyldendal. p. 808.

[6] Leavis, Q. D. (1965). Fiction and the Reading Public (rev. ed.). London: Chatto & Windus.

[7] Aldous Huxley (2001). Crome Yellow. Dalkey Archive Press. ISBN 978-1-56478-304-2.

[8] Edgar Wallace (3 March 2010). The Four Just Men. House of Stratus. p. 99. ISBN 978-0-7551-2247-9.

[9] Rudolf Käser; Beate Schappach (31 October 2014). Krank geschrieben: Gesundheit und Krankheit im Diskursfeld von Literatur, Geschlecht und Medizin (in German). transcript Verlag. p. 147. ISBN 978-3-8394-1760-7.

[10] Apter-Gabriel, Ruth (1987). Tradition and revolution: the Jewish renaissance in Russian avant-garde art, 1912-1928. Israel Museum. p. 67. ISBN 9789652780713.

[11] J. Beverley Smith. "Eames, Marion Griffith (1921-2007), historical novelist". Dictionary of Welsh Biography. National Library of Wales. Retrieved 6 March 2021.

[12] "Elinor Lyon: Author of 'camping and tramping' adventure tales peopled with feisty, fearless girls and boys". The Independent. 23 October 2011. Retrieved 20 January 2021.

[13] Ataullah Siddiqui (15 April 1997). Christian-Muslim Dialogue in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 136. ISBN 978-0-312-16510-9.

[14] Maggie Fergusson, George Mackay Brown: The Life, John Murray, 2006, ISBN 0-7195-5659-7 p. 8

[15] Non Series #138- Trif and Trixy // John Habberton autograph 7 March 2012. Accessed 9 January 2012.

[16] Julius Glück, El la klasika periodo de Esperanto (Grabowski kaj Kabe), en Muusses Esperanto Biblioteko No. 5, Purmerend, 1937. p. 6.

[17] Frank Northen Magill (1958). Masterplots Cyclopedia of World Authors. Salem Press. p. 1106.

[18] Otto von Gierke (2 May 2002). Community in Historical Perspective. Cambridge University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-521-89323-7.

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