1923 in literature

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The year 1923 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• April 21 - The first of a series of innovative modern dress productions of Shakespeare plays, Cymbeline, directed by H. K. Ayliff, opens at Barry Jackson's Birmingham Repertory Theatre in England.^[1]
• July 6 - A riot breaks out at the re-staging of Tristan Tzara's Dadaist play The Gas Heart at the Théâtre Michel, Paris, between those artists aligned with André Breton and those aligned with Tzara; the conflict leads to a permanent split in the Dada movement and the founding of Surrealism as an alternative.
• Fictional detective Lord Peter Wimsey makes his first appearance in print.

New fiction

• Sherwood Anderson - Many Marriages
• Arnold Bennett - Riceyman Steps
• Max Brand - Seven Trails
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the Golden Lion
• Hall Caine - The Woman of Knockaloe
• Willa Cather - A Lost Lady
• Agatha Christie - The Murder on the Links
• Colette - Le Blé en herbe
• Joseph Conrad - The Rover
• Marie Corelli - Love and the Philosopher
• Zona Gale - Faint Perfume
• Jaroslav Hašek - The Good Soldier Švejk
• Ernest Hemingway - Three Stories and Ten Poems
• Georgette Heyer - The Great Roxhythe
• Aldous Huxley - Antic Hay
• D. H. Lawrence - Kangaroo
• Hugh Lofting - The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
• Felix Salten - Bambi, A Life in the Woods
• Dorothy L. Sayers - Whose Body?
• James Stephens - Deirdre
• Wallace Stevens - Harmonium
• Italo Svevo - La Coscienza di Zeno
• Alexei Tolstoy - Aelita
• Jean Toomer - Cane
• H. G. Wells - Men Like Gods
• Margaret Wilson -The Able McLaughlins
• P. G. Wodehouse
  • The Inimitable Jeeves
  • Leave It to Psmith

New drama

• Bertolt Brecht - In The Jungle of Cities
• Georg Kaiser - Side by Side
• Elmer Rice - The Adding Machine
• Jules Romains - Knock
• George Bernard Shaw - Saint Joan
• Ernst Toller - Hinkemann
• Sergei Tretyakov - Do You Hear, Moscow? and Earth in Turmoil
• Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz - The Madman and the Nun and The Crazy Locomotive

Poetry

• E. E. Cummings - Tulips and Chimneys
• Robert Frost - New Hampshire
• Sukumar Ray - Abol Tabol
• William Carlos Williams
  • Go Go
  • Spring and All

Non-fiction

• Vladimir Arsenyev - Dersu Uzala
• Le Corbusier - Vers une architecture (Toward an Architecture)
• Khalil Gibran - The Prophet
• Robert Henri - The Art Spirit
• Max Weber - Wirtschaftsgeschichte

Births

• January 6 - Jacobo Timerman, Argentine writer (died 1999)
• January 10 - Ingeborg Drewitz, writer (died 1986)
• January 16 - Anthony Hecht, American poet (died 2004)
• January 29 - Paddy Chayefsky, American writer (died 1981)
• January 31 - Norman Mailer, American writer & journalist (died 2007)
• February 2 - James Dickey, American poet & author (died 1997)
• February 9 - Brendan Behan, Irish author (died 1964)
• March 27 - Louis Simpson, Jamaican-born American poet
• March 30 - Milton Acorn, Canadian poet, writer, & playwright (died 1986)
• May 1 - Joseph Heller, American novelist (died 1999)
• May 21 - Dorothy Hewett, Australian poet, playwright & novelist (died 2002)
• June 24 - Yves Bonnefoy, French poet & essayist
• July 2 - Wisława Szymborska, Polish poet & essayist (died 2012)
• July 17 - James Purdy, American writer
• September 13 - Miroslav Holub, Czech poet (died 1998)
• October 5 - Stig Dagerman, Swedish author & journalist (died 1954)
• October 15 - Italo Calvino, Italian writer (died 1985)
• October 24 - Denise Levertov, British-born American poet (died 1997)
• November 20 - Nadine Gordimer, South African writer

Deaths

• January 3 - Jaroslav Hašek, Czech novelist (born 1883)
• January 9 - Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand writer (born 1888)
• February 1 - Ernst Troeltsch, German theologian (born 1865)
• February 8 - Bernard Bosanquet, English philosopher & political theorist (born 1848)
• June 10 -
  • Louis Couperus, Dutch novelist & poet (born 1863)
  • Pierre Loti, French novelist & travel writer (born 1850)
• June 22 - Morris Rosenfeld, Yiddish poet (born 1862)
• June 24 - Edith Södergran, Finnish-Swedish poet (born 1892)
• August 24 - Kate Douglas Wiggin, American children's author (born 1856)
• October 6 - Oscar Browning, English historian (born 1837)
• December 1 - Virginie Loveling, Flemish poet & novelist (born 1836)
• December 4 - Maurice Barrès, French novelist & journalist (born 1862)
• date unknown
  • Henry Bradley, philologist and lexicographer (born 1845)
  • George Wharton James, journalist (born 1858)

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Arnold Bennett, Riceyman Steps
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Sir Ronald Ross, Memoirs, Etc.
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Hugh Lofting, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
• Nobel Prize for Literature: William Butler Yeats
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Owen Davis, Icebound
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Edna St. Vincent Millay: The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver: A Few Figs from Thistles: Eight Sonnets in American Poetry, 1922. A Miscellany
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Willa Cather - One of Ours

References