1909 in literature
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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1909.
Events
- January â T. E. Hulme's poems "Autumn" and "A City Sunset" are included in the Poets' Club anthology For Christmas MDCCCCVIII, as the first examples of Imagism.
- January 15 â Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's drama La donna è mobile opens at the Teatro Alfieri, Turin.[1]
- February 1 â The first issue appears of La Nouvelle Revue Française, a literary magazine founded in Paris by André Gide, Jacques Copeau, Jean Schlumberger, Gaston Gallimard, and others.[2]
- February 20 â Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto first appears in the French newspaper Le Figaro.
- March 2 â Katherine Mansfield, while pregnant by another man, marries the singing teacher George Bowden, whom she barely knows. She leaves him the same evening to resume lesbian relations with Ida Baker.[3]
- April
- April 24 â The Metropolitan Library (京å¸å¾ä¹¦é¦, JÄ«ngshÄ« TúshÅ«guÇn) in Beijing, predecessor of the National Library of China, is founded by the Qing government.
- September 6 â Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot opens in New York City.
- September 23 â Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) begins serialization in the Paris newspaper Le Gaulois.
- September 29 â Franz Kafka's short story "The Aeroplanes at Brescia (Die Aeroplane in Brescia)", based on a real event, is published in the Prague newspaper Bohemia, as the first description of airplanes in German literature.[5]
- November â A production by Kaoru Osanai of Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman at the Free Theater in Tokyo inaugurates shingeki drama in Japan.[6]
- November 2 â First English-language performance of a play by Anton Chekhov opens, The Seagull, translated and directed by George Calderon, by the Glasgow Repertory Theatre company at the Royalty Theatre, Glasgow.[7]
- unknown date â Babelstornið (The Tower of Babel), by Rasmus Rasmussen, writing as Regin à LÃð, becomes the first Faroese language novel to be published.[8]
New books
Fiction
- Florence Barclay â The Rosary[9]
- Maurice Barrès â Colette Baudoche
- André Billy â La Derive
- Algernon Blackwood
- The Education of Uncle Paul
- Jimbo: A Fantasy
- René Boylesve â La Jeune Fille bien élevée (The Well-raised Girl)
- Hall Caine â The White Prophet
- Gilbert Cannan â Peter Homunculus
- Ion Luca Caragiale â Kir Ianulea
- Robert W. Chambers â The Danger Mark
- Herbert Croly â The Promise of American Life[10]
- Em Kol Chai (Chava Shapiro) â Kovetz Tziurim (×§××¥ צ××ר××, A Collection of Sketches)
- Concha Espina â That Luzmela Girl
- Charles Hoy Fort â The Outcast Manufacturers
- Anatole France â Balthazar
- Jacques Futrelle â Elusive Isabel
- John Galsworthy â Fraternity
- Charles Garvice â A Fair Impostor
- Robert Hichens â Bella Donna
- Olha Kobylianska â V Nediliu Rano Zillia Kopala (She Gathered Herbs on Sunday Morning)
- Alfred Kubin â Die andere Seite (The Other Side)
- Maurice Leblanc â The Hollow Needle
- Gaston Leroux â Le fauteuil hanté (The Haunted Chair)
- Jack London â Martin Eden[11]
- John Masefield â Multitude and Solitude
- Silas Weir Mitchell â The Red City
- Baroness Orczy
- Randall Parrish â My Lady of the South
- Eden Phillpotts â The Haven[12]
- Luigi Pirandello â I vecchi e i giovani (The Old and the Young, part 1)
- WÅadysÅaw Reymont â ChÅopi (The Peasants; publication completed)[13]
- Stein Riverton â Jernvognen (The Iron Carriage)
- Olivia Shakespear â Uncle Hilary
- Gertrude Stein â Three Lives
- Gene Stratton-Porter â A Girl of the Limberlost
- Hermann Sudermann â The Song of Songs
- Mark Twain â Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (book publication)
- Edgar Wallace
- Robert Walser â Jakob von Gunten
- Mary Augusta Ward â Daphne
- H. G. Wells
- Mabel Osgood Wright â Poppea of the Post Office
Children and young people
- L. Frank Baum
- The Road to Oz
- Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work (as Edith Van Dyne)
- Angela Brazil â The Nicest Girl in the School
- Lucy Maud Montgomery â Anne of Avonlea
- Beatrix Potter
- P. G. Wodehouse â Mike
Drama

- Paul Armont and Nicolas Nancey â Théodore et Cie
- Sem Benelli â The Jester's Supper (La cena delle beffe)
- Clyde Fitch â The City
- John Galsworthy â Strife
- Harley Granville-Barker â The Madras House
- Cicely Hamilton â A Pageant of Great Women
- Agha Hashar Kashmiri â Khwab-e-Hasti (The Dream World of Existence)
- Oskar Kokoschka â Murderer, the Hope of Women (Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen)
- Else Lasker-Schüler â Die Wupper (published)
- André de Lorde â L'horrible expérience
- Ferenc Molnár â Liliom
- Quintero brothers â El patinillo
- George Bernard Shaw â The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet
Poetry
- Guillaume Apollinaire â L'Enchanteur pourrissant (The Putrifying Enchanter)
- François Mauriac â Les Mains jointes (Clasped Hands)
- John Millington Synge â Poems and Translations
Non-fiction
- Henry James â Italian Hours
- William James â A Pluralistic Universe
- Jane's All the World's Aircraft (first annual edition)
- I. M. E. Blandin â History of Higher Education of Women in the South, Prior to 1860[14]
- Alfred W. Pollard â Shakespeare Folios and Quartos: a Study in the Bibliography of Shakespeare's Plays, 1594â1685[15]
- C. I. Scofield (ed.) â Scofield Reference Bible[16]
- Charlotte Fell Smith â John Dee, 1527â1608
- Eraclie Sterian â Ãn noaptea nunÈii (On Your Wedding Night)
- A. E. Waite â The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
- Alice Zimmern â Women's Suffrage in Many Lands
Births
- January 20 â Mae Virginia Cowdery, African American poet (died 1953)
- January 18 â Oskar DaviÄo, Serbian novelist and poet (died 1989)
- January 29 â Phoebe Hesketh (Phoebe Rayner), English poet (died 2005)
- February 15 â Miep Gies (Hermine Santruschitz), Austrian-born biographer (died 2010)
- February 24 â August Derleth, American anthologist (died 1971)
- March 6 â StanisÅaw Jerzy Lec, Polish aphorist and poet (died 1966)
- March 17 â Margiad Evans, Anglo-Welsh poet, novelist and illustrator (died 1958)
- March 22 â Gabrielle Roy, French Canadian author (died 1983)
- March 28 â Nelson Algren, American novelist (died 1981)
- March 31 â Robert Brasillach, French author (died 1945)
- April 8 â John Fante, American novelist (died 1983)
- May 1 â Yiannis Ritsos, Greek poet (died 1990)
- May 5 â Miklós Radnóti, Hungarian poet (died 1944)
- May 9 â Robert Garioch, Scottish poet (died 1981)
- June 6 â Isaiah Berlin, German-born philosopher (died 1997)
- June 19 â Osamu Dazai (太宰 æ²»), Japanese author (died 1948)
- June 28 â Eric Ambler, English spy novelist (died 1998)
- June 29 â C. Hamilton Ellis, English writer (died 1987)
- July 1 â Juan Carlos Onetti, Uruguayan writer (died 1994)
- July 8 â Petar Å egedin, Croatian diplomat, novelist and essayist (died 1998)
- July 17 â G. P. Wells, English zoologist, son and co-author of H. G. Wells (died 1985)
- July 28 â Malcolm Lowry, English novelist (died 1957)
- July 29 â Chester Himes, American writer (died 1984)
- July 30 â C. Northcote Parkinson, English historian and author (died 1993)
- August 3 â Walter Van Tilburg Clark, American novelist (died 1971)
- August 11 â Uku Masing, Estonian religious philosopher, linguist and writer (died 1985)
- August 19 â Jerzy Andrzejewski, Polish author (died 1983)
- September 9 â Noel Barber, British novelist (died 1988)
- October 24 â Sheila Watson (Sheila Doherty), Canadian novelist and critic (died 1998)
- November 12 â Laxmi Prasad Devkota, Nepali poet, playwright, and novelist (died 1959)
- November 26 â Eugène Ionesco (Eugen Ionescu), Romanian-born French playwright (died 1994)
- November 27 â James Agee, American writer (died 1955)
- December 7 â Alexandru Talex, Romanian journalist, critic and biographer (died 1998)
- December 14 â Ronald Welch (Ronald Oliver Felton), Welsh novelist and children's writer writing in English (died 1982)
- December 16 â Edgar Mittelholzer, Guyanese novelist (suicide 1965)
Deaths
- January 1 â Mollie Evelyn Moore Davis, American poet, writer, and editor (born 1844)
- January 14 â William à Beckett, English journalist (born 1844)
- January 22 â Hattie Tyng Griswold, American author (born 1842)
- February 11 â Russell Sturgis, American art critic (born 1836)
- March 24 â John Millington Synge, Irish dramatist and poet (born 1871)
- March 27 (probable) â John Davidson, Scottish poet (born 1857)
- April 9
- Francis Marion Crawford, American novelist (born 1854)
- Paschal Grousset, French journalist and science fiction writer (born 1844)
- April 12 â Algernon Charles Swinburne, English poet (born 1837)
- April 21 â Denys Corbet, Guernsey poet writing in Guernsey French and English (born 1826)
- April 26 â Marcus Dods, Scottish theologian (born 1834)
- May 18 â George Meredith, English novelist and poet (born 1828)
- June 11 â Jacob Mikhailovich Gordin, American dramatist (born 1853)
- June 24 â Sarah Orne Jewett, American writer (born 1849)[17]
- July 8 â Albert Craig (The Surrey Poet), English cricket writer (born 1850)
- July 9 â Rosa Nouchette Carey, English children's writer (born 1840)[18]
- August 15 â Euclides da Cunha, Brazilian writer, shot (born 1866)
- August 18 â Theodore Martin, Scottish-born writer (born 1816)
- August 21 â George Cabot Lodge, American poet (born 1873)[19]
- August 23 â Liu E (åé¶, Liu O), Chinese scholar, entrepreneur and novelist (born 1857)
- August 26 â George Manville Fenn, English novelist and educationalist (born 1831)
- September 4 â Clyde Fitch, American playwright (born 1865)
- September 19 â József Borovnyák, Slovene writer, politician and priest (born 1826)
- October 16 â Jakub Bart-ÄiÅ¡inski, Upper Sorbian poet, writer, playwright and translator (born 1856)
- October 24 â Henry Charles Lea, American historian (born 1825)
- November 5 â H. L. Fischer, Pennsylvania German-language writer and translator (born 1822)[20]
- November 18 â Renée Vivien, English-born French-language Symbolist poet (born 1877)
- December 14 â Frederick Greenwood, English novelist and journalist (born 1830)
Awards
- Chancellor's Gold Medal: Dennis Holme Robertson
- Nobel Prize in Literature: Selma Lagerlöf (first female recipient)
- Newdigate Prize: Frank Ashton-Gwatkin
- Knighthood: Arthur Wing Pinero
- Prix Goncourt: Marius-Ary Leblond, En France[21]