1904 in literature

The year 1904 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• January - Mark Twain begins dictating his autobiography.
• 16 June - "Bloomsday": the day on which the action of James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) takes place in Dublin.
• September - Mark Twain purchases a home at 21 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

New prose fiction

• L. Frank Baum - The Marvelous Land of Oz
• Hall Caine - The Prodigal Son
• G. K. Chesterton - The Napoleon of Notting Hill
• Joseph Conrad - Nostromo
• Alexandre Dumas - The Wolf Leader
• Claude Farrère - Fumée d'opium (Black Opium)
• John Galsworthy - The Island Pharisees
• Frederic Harrison - Theophano, The Crusade of the Tenth Century
• Robert Herrick - The Common Lot
• Hermann Hesse - Peter Camenzind
• William Henry Hudson - Green Mansions
• Robert Smythe Hichens - The Garden of Allah
• Henry James - The Golden Bowl
• M. R. James - Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
• Mary Johnston - Sir Mortimer
• Selma Lagerlöf - The Treasure
• Jack London - The Sea-Wolf
• Arthur Morrison - The Green Eye of Goona
• Luigi Pirandello - The Late Mattia Pascal
• Beatrix Potter - The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
• Frederick Rolfe - Hadrian the Seventh
• Romain Rolland - Jean-Christophe (vol. 1)
• May Sinclair - The Divine Fire
• Mark Twain - A Dog's Tale
• Jules Verne
  • A Drama in Livonia
  • Master of the World
• H. G. Wells - The Food of the Gods
• Owen Wister
  • A Journey In Search of Christmas
  • Philosophy 4
• Stefan Żeromski - Ashes

New drama

• J. M. Barrie - Peter Pan
• Anton Chekhov - The Cherry Orchard
• Octave Mirbeau - Farces and Moralities
• Erich Mühsam - The Con Men
• George Bernard Shaw - John Bull's Other Island
• J. M. Synge - Riders to the Sea
• Frank Wedekind - Pandora's Box

Poetry

• Giovanni Pascoli - Primi poemetti and 'Primi conviviali

Non-fiction

• Ernst Haeckel - Kunstformen der Natur
• Thorstein Veblen - The Theory of Business Enterprise

Births

• January 22 - Arkady Gaidar, Russian children's writer (died 1941)
• January 23 - Louis Zukofsky, modernist poet (died 1978)
• February 1 - S. J. Perelman, humorist, author (died 1979)
• February 4 - MacKinlay Kantor, historian (died 1977)
• March 26 - Joseph Campbell, author and expert on mythology (died 1987)
• April 27 - Cecil Day-Lewis, poet (died 1972)
• May 6 - Harry Martinson, Swedish author, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature (died 1978)
• July 13 - Pablo Neruda, poet (died 1973)
• August 4 - Witold Gombrowicz, playwright and novelist (died 1969)
• September - Abdulla Goran, Kurdish poet (died 1962)
• November 28 - Nancy Mitford, English novelist and biographer (died 1973)
• December 21 - Johannes Edfelt, Swedish poet, translator and critic (died 1997)
• December 26 - Alejo Carpentier, Cuban novelist (died 1980)

Deaths

• January 3 - Larin Paraske, Finnish folk poet
• January 20 - Hermann Eduard von Holst, historian
• February 8 - Alfred Ainger, biographer and critic
• February 22 - Sir Leslie Stephen, essayist and critic
• April 16 - Samuel Smiles, political journalist
• May 5 - Mór Jókai, Hungarian writer
• June 5 - Olivia Langdon Clemens, wife of Mark Twain
• July 3 - Theodor Herzl, journalist
• July 14 - Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and short story writer
• August 22 - Kate Chopin, author
• September 26 - Lafcadio Hearn, author of books about Japan
• October 11 - Trumbull Stickney, poet
• November 19 - Hans von Hopfen, poet and novelist

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray y Eizaguirre