1908 in literature

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The year 1908 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

• June 18 - Mark Twain purchases a house in Redding, Connecticut.

New prose fiction

• Afawarq Gabra Iyasus - Libb Wolled Tārīk ("A Heart-Born Story"), the first novel in Amharic
• Leonid Andreyev - The Seven Who Were Hanged
• Francis Aveling - Arnoul the Englishman
• José Toribio Medina - Los Restos Indígenas de Pichilemu
• L. Frank Baum - Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
  • - Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville (as "Edith Van Dyne")
• Arnold Bennett - Buried Alive
  • The Old Wives' Tale
• Algernon Blackwood - John Silence, Physician Extraordinary
• Alexander Bogdanov - Red Star
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon - During Her Majesty's Pleasure
• Rhoda Broughton - Mamma
• G. K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday
• Louisa Cooke Don Carlos - A Battle in the Smoke
• Marie Corelli - Holy Orders
• James Oliver Curwood - The Courage of Captain Plum and The Gold Hunters
• Anatole France - Penguin Island
• E. M. Forster - A Room with a View
• John Fox, Jr. - The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
• Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Shoulders of Atlas
• Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows
• Jeannie Gunn - We of the Never Never
• William Hope Hodgson - The House on the Borderland
• Selma Lagerlöf - The Girl from the Marsh Croft
• Jack London - The Iron Heel
• W. Somerset Maugham - The Magician
• Lucy Maud Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables
• Baroness Orczy - The Elusive Pimpernel
• Beatrix Potter - The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck
• Mary Roberts Rinehart - The Circular Staircase
• Arthur Schnitzler - Der Weg ins Freie
• Georges Sorel - Reflections on Violence
• Mary Augusta Ward - The Testing of Diana Mallory
• H. G. Wells - A Modern Utopia
  • The War in the Air

New drama

• Maurice Maeterlinck - The Blue Bird
• Octave Mirbeau - Home
• Emma Orczy - Beau Brocade
• Alicia Ramsey - Byron
• Edward Sheldon - Salvation Nell
• J.M. Synge - The Tinker's Wedding

Poetry

• Edward Carpenter - Iolaus: Anthology of Friendship
• W. H. Davies - Nature Poems

Non-fiction

• Sarah Bernhardt - My Double Life
• G. K. Chesterton - All Things Considered
• Jack London - War of the Classes

Births

• January 9 - Simone de Beauvoir, feminist philosopher (died 1986)
• January 18 - Jacob Bronowski, scientist and poet (died 1974)
• February 8 - Emil Staiger, scientist of literature (died 1987)
• February 11 - Sutan Takdir Alishahbana, Indonesian linguist and author
• February 29 - Dee Brown, novelist and historian (died 2002)
• March 6 - Dame Felicitas Corrigan, Benedictine author (died 2003)
• March 22 - Louis L'Amour, author (died 1988)
• May 17 - Frederic Prokosch, novelist and poet (died 1989)
• May 25 - Theodore Roethke, American poet (died 1963)
• May 28 - Ian Fleming, author (died 1964)
• June 27 - João Guimarães Rosa, Brazilian novelist (died 1967)
• July 23 - Elio Vittorini, Italian author (died 1966)
• August 21 - M. M. Kaye, Far Pavilions author (died 2004)
• August 23 - Arthur Adamov, playwright (died 1970)
• September 4 - Richard Wright, author (died 1960)
• September 9 - Cesare Pavese, Italian poet and novelist (died 1950)
• September 17 - John Creasey, author (died 1973)
• October 5 - Joshua Logan, stage and film writer and director (died 1988)
• November 28 - Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropologist

Deaths

• January 18 - Edmund Clarence Stedman, poet and critic (born 1833)
• January 25 - Ouida, writer (born 1839)
• March 19 - Eduard Zeller, philosopher (born 1814)
• April 20 - Henry Chadwick, baseball writer and historian (born 1824)
• July 3 - Joel Chandler Harris, journalist and author (born 1848)
• July 28 - Otto Pfleiderer, theologian (born 1839)
• November 8 - Victorien Sardou, dramatist (born 1831)

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Rudolf Christoph Eucken
• Newdigate prize: Julian Huxley