1918 in literature

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The year 1918 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• January 23 - Robert Graves marries the painter Nancy Nicholson. Wedding guests include Wilfred Owen.
• March - The Telemachus episode of James Joyce's Ulysses is published (in serialised form) in the American journal The Little Review.
• The 2nd annual Pulitzer Prizes are awarded.
• Author Hall Caine made a KBE.
• Poet Basil Bunting is imprisoned as a conscientious objector.

New books

• Arnold Bennett - The Roll-Call
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
• Willa Cather - My Ántonia
• Blaise Cendrars
  • I Have Killed
  • The Severed Hand
• Marie Corelli - The Young Diana
• Sarah Lee Brown Fleming - Hope's Highway
• Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Edgewater People
• "Owen Gregory" - Meccania the Super-State
• Wyndham Lewis - Tarr
• Baroness Orczy
  • Flower o' the Lily
  • The Man in Grey
• Leo Perutz - From Nine to Nine
• Romain Rolland - Colas Breugnon
• Booth Tarkington - The Magnificent Ambersons
• Mary Augusta Ward - The War and Elizabeth
• Rebecca West - The Return of the Soldier
• Edith Wharton - The Marne

New drama

• Bertolt Brecht - Baal (written)
• John Drinkwater - Abraham Lincoln
• Marcel Gerbidon & Paul Armont - School for Coquettes
• Susan Glaspell - Tickless Time
• Hugo von Hofmannsthal - The Difficult Man
• James Joyce - Exiles
• Georg Kaiser - Gas
• Vladimir Mayakovsky - Mystery Bouffe
• Emma Orczy - The Legion of Honour (adaptation of A Sheaf of Bluebells)

Short stories

• Ryūnosuke Akutagawa - Hell Screen

Poetry

• Guillaume Apollinaire - Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War
• Laurence Binyon - The New World: Poems
• Walter de la Mare - The Marionettes
• Siegfried Sassoon - Counter-Attack
• Tristan Tzara - Vingt-cinq poèmes

Non-fiction

• Henry Adams – The Education of Henry Adams
• Laurence Binyon – For Dauntless France
• Walther Rathenau – An Deutschlands Jugend
• Lytton Strachey – Eminent Victorians
• Oswald Spengler – The Decline of the West
• Mary Augusta Ward – A Writer's Recollections

Births

• January 16
  • Stirling Silliphant, writer, producer (died 1996)
  • Philip José Farmer, science fiction writer (died 2009)
• February 1 - Dame Muriel Spark, author (died 2006)
• February 6 - Lothar-Günther Buchheim, author of Das Boot (died 2007)
• March 9 - Mickey Spillane, mystery writer (died 2006)
• March 10 - Theodore Cogswell, science fiction author (died 1987)
• May 16 - Juan Rulfo, Mexican author (died 1986)
• July 14 - Arthur Laurents, novelist and screenwriter
• August 9 - Robert Aldrich, writer and filmmaker (died 1983)
• August 20 - Jacqueline Susann, best-selling novelist (died 1974)
• October 19 - Louis Althusser, French Marxist philosopher (died 1990)
• November 2 - Roger Lancelyn Green, biographer (died 1987)
• November 16 - Nicholas Moore, poet (died 1986)
• November 29 - Madeleine L'Engle, author of books for children & teens (died 2007)
• December 11 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian writer (died 2008)
• December 30 - Al Purdy, poet (died 2000)
• date unknown
  • November - Peter Opie, expert in children's literature (died 1982)

Deaths

• January 28 - John McCrae, war poet
• April 1 - Isaac Rosenberg, poet
• June 10 - Arrigo Boito, poet and composer
• June 26 - Peter Rosegger, poet
• October 5 - Robert Baldwin Ross, friend and literary executor of Oscar Wilde
• November 4
  • Wilfred Owen, poet
  • Andrew Dickson White, diplomat and author
• November 9 - Guillaume Apollinaire, poet
• December 2 - Edmond Rostand, dramatist
• December 15 - Salvatore Farina, novelist
• date unknown - Francis George Fowler, expert on grammar and usage
• date unknown - Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, Austrian writer and traveller

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: not awarded
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Jesse Lynch Williams, Why Marry?
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Sara Teasdale: Love Songs
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Ernest Poole - His Family