1916 in literature

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The year 1916 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• The Journal of Negro History is founded by Carter Godwin Woodson, the father of "Black History" and "Negro History Week."
• During the summer, 15-year-old Margaret Mitchell writes the manuscript to a novella called Lost Laysen in two notebooks. She would later give the manuscript to a boyfriend and the book would remain lost until it was rediscovered in the mid-1990s and finally published in 1996. Meanwhile, Mitchell would go on to write Gone with the Wind.

New books

• Sherwood Anderson - Windy McPherson's Son
• Henri Barbusse - Under Fire
• L. Frank Baum - Rinkitink in Oz
  • - Mary Louise (as "Edith Van Dyne")
• Adrien Bertrand - L'Appel du sol
• John Edward Bruce - The Awakening of Hezekiah Jones
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Beasts of Tarzan
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman - With Her in Ourland
• Sarah Grand - The Winged Victory
• Louis Hemon ; Maria Chapdelaine
• William Dean Howells - The Leatherwood God
• James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Grace King - The Pleasant Ways of St. Medard
• Ring Lardner - You Know Me Al
• George Moore - The Brook Kerith: A Syrian Story
• Baroness Orczy - Leatherface
• Rabindranath Tagore - The Home and the World
• Booth Tarkington - Seventeen: A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family Especially William
• Mark Twain - The Mysterious Stranger
• Mary Augusta Ward - England's Effort
  • Lady Connie

New drama

• Harley Granville-Barker - Farewell to the Theatre
• Franz Kafka - The Warden of the Tomb (written)
• Susan Glaspell - Trifles
• Sophie Treadwell - Claws

Short stories

• Akutagawa Ryūnosuke - The Nose
• Thomas Burke - Limehouse Nights
  • Beryl and the Croucher
  • The Chink and the Child
  • Gina of the Chinatown

Poetry

• Robert Frost - Mountain Interval
• Antonio Machado - Campos de Castilla (revised edition)
• Carl Sandburg - Chicago Poems
• Gilbert Waterhouse - Rail-Head and other poems (published posthumously)

Non-fiction

• Hall Caine - Our Girls: Their Work for the War
• Albert Einstein - Relativity

Births

• March 4
  • Giorgio Bassani, Italian author (died 2000)
  • Hans Eysenck, psychologist (died 1997)
• April 12 - Beverly Cleary, children's author
• April 15 - Helene Hanff, author (died 1997)
• May 21 - Harold Robbins (died 1997)
• May 28 - Walker Percy (died 1990)
• July 14 - Natalia Ginzburg, author (died 1991)
• September 13 - Roald Dahl, author (died 1990)
• September 17 - Mary Stewart, novelist
• September 19 - Giles Romilly, journalist (died 1967)
• October 3 - James Herriot, popular author of "vet" stories (died 1995)
• October 16 - David Gascoyne, author and poet (died 2001)
• November 18 - Peter Weiss, German writer (died 1982)
• December 14 - Shirley Jackson, author (died 1965)
• December 17 - Penelope Fitzgerald, novelist (died 2000)

Deaths

• February 6 - Rubén Darío, writer
• February 28 - Henry James, writer
• April 26 - Mário de Sá-Carneiro, novelist and poet
• May 3 - Patrick Pearse, poet and Irish nationalist leader
• May 13 - Sholom Aleichem, Yiddish humorist
• May 31 - Gorch Fock, poet and novelist
• July 1 - Gilbert Waterhouse, war poet
• August 8 - Lily Braun, feminist writer
• September 22 - Edward Wyndham Tennant, war poet
• October 7 - James Whitcomb Riley, poet
• October 25 - John Todhunter, poet and dramatist
• November 14 - Saki, author
• November 15 - Molly Elliot Seawell, novelist
• November 22 - Jack London, novelist
• November 27 - Emile Verhaeren, Symbolist poet
• date unknown - Olindo Guerrini, poet
• date unknown - Émile Faguet, critic
• date unknown - Petar Kočić, poet

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam (Swedish)