1921 in literature

The year 1921 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Jorge Luis Borges returns to Buenos Aires after a period living in Europe.
• Margaret Caroline Anderson and Jane Heap, publishers of The Little Review, are convicted of obscenity in a New York court for publishing the "Nausicaa" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses.^[1]

New books

• Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan the Terrible
• James Branch Cabell – Figures of Earth
• Hall Caine – The Master of Man
• Willa Cather – Alexander's Bridge
• Arthur Chapman – Mystery Ranch
• Marie Corelli – The Secret Power
• Eleanor Farjeon – Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard
• F. Scott Fitzgerald – Flappers and Philosophers
• John Galsworthy – To Let – third in the Forsyte Saga
• H. Rider Haggard – She and Allan
• Georgette Heyer – The Black Moth
• Aldous Huxley – Crome Yellow
• Sheila Kaye-Smith – Joanna Godden
• Denis Mackail – Romance to the Rescue
• L. M. Montgomery – Rilla of Ingleside
• George Moore – Heloise and Abelard
• Shiga Naoya – A Dark Night's Passing
• Baroness Orczy
  • The First Sir Percy
  • Castles in the Air
• Gene Stratton Porter – Her Father's Daughter
• Rafael Sabatini – Scaramouche
• Booth Tarkington – Alice Adams
• Sigrid Undset – The Mistress of Husaby
• Eugene Walter – The Byzantine riddle and other stories
• Elinor Wylie – Nets to Catch the Wind

New drama

• Hjalmar Bergman – Thy Rod and Thy Staff
• Karel Čapek – R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
• Susan Glaspell – Inheritors and The Verge
• Roland Pertwee - Out to Win
• Luigi Pirandello – Six Characters in Search of an Author
• Tristan Tzara – The Gas Heart
• Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz – The Water Hen

Short stories

• Ryūnosuke Akutagawa – Autumn Mountain

Poetry

• Charlotte Mew – Saturday Market
• William Carlos Williams – Sour Grapes
• William Butler Yeats – Michael Robartes and the Dancer

Non-fiction

• Sarah Bernhardt – The Idol of Paris
• D. H. Lawrence – Sea and Sardinia
• Hendrik Willem van Loon – The Story of Mankind
• Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk – Further Essays on Capital and Interest
• Ludwig Wittgenstein – Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Births

• January 5 – Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Swiss writer (died 1990)
• January 19 – Patricia Highsmith, American author (died 1995)
• January 20 – Bernt Engelmann, author (died 1994)
• February 4 – Betty Friedan, feminist author, The Feminine Mystique (died 2006)
• February 15 – Radha Krishna Choudhary, Indian historian and writer (died 1985)
• March 1 – Richard Wilbur, American poet
• March 24 – Wilson Harris, Guyanese writer
• May 23 – James Blish, American science fiction author (died 1975)
• August 11 – Alex Haley, American writer (died 1992)
• September 26 – Cyprian Ekwensi, Nigerian writer (died 2007)
• October 17 – George Mackay Brown, Scottish poet (died 1996)
• November 22 – Brian Cleeve, Irish author (died 2003)
• date unknown
  • Israil Bercovici, dramatist and historian (died 1988)

Deaths

• March 22 – Ernest William Hornung, English author (born 1866)
• May 5 – Alfred Hermann Fried, publicist (born 1864)
• May 12 – Emilia Pardo Bazán, Spanish novelist (born 1851)
• May 13 – Jean Aicard, French writer (born 1848)
• June 5 – Georges Feydeau, French playwright (born 1862)
• June 26 – Alfred Percy Sinnett, Theosophist author (born 1840)
• July 4 – Antoni Grabowski, promoter of Esperanto (born 1857)
• August 7 – Alexander Blok, Russian poet (born 1880)
• August 20 – Ernest Daudet, novelist, historian and biographer
• October 10 – Otto von Gierke, German historian (born 1841)
• date unknown
  • Maximilian Berlitz, founder of Berlitz language schools (born 1852)
  • John Habberton, critic (born 1842)

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Anatole France
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Zona Gale, Miss Lulu Bett
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Edith Wharton – The Age of Innocence

References