1929 in literature

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The year 1929 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Candide by Voltaire is declared obscene by the United States Customs and seized in 1930.
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is banned in the USSR because of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's interest in the occult.
• George Orwell returns to the UK after living in Paris.
• Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir meet for the first time at the École Normale. Twenty-one-year-old de Beauvoir becomes the youngest person ever to obtain the agrégation in philosophy, and comes second in the final exam, beaten only by Sartre.
• Ellery Queen publishes his first mystery novel.

New books

• Richard Aldington - Death of a Hero
• Hamilton Basso - Relics and Angels
• Anthony Berkeley
  • The Poisoned Chocolates Case
  • The Piccadilly Murder
• Mary Borden - The Forbidden Zone
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the Lost Empire
• Mateiu Caragiale - Craii de Curtea-Veche
• Agatha Christie
  • The Seven Dials Mystery
  • Partners in Crime
• Jean Cocteau - Les Enfants Terribles
• Colette - Sido
• Aleister Crowley - The Stratagem and other Stories
• Alfred Döblin - Berlin Alexanderplatz
• Lloyd C. Douglas - Magnificent Obsession
• Arthur Conan Doyle - The Maracot Deep
• William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury
• Jessie Redmon Fauset - Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral
• Edna Ferber - Cimarron
• C. S. Forester - Brown on Resolution
• Zona Gale - Borgia
• Rómulo Gallegos - Doña Bárbara
• Floyd Gibbons - The Red Napoleon
• Henry Green - Living
• Julien Green - The Dark Journey
• Dashiell Hammett - Red Harvest, The Dain Curse
• Graham Greene - The Man Within
• Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms
• Richard Hughes - A High Wind in Jamaica
• Erich Kästner - Emil und die Detektive
• Anna Kavan - A Charmed Circle
• Eric P. Kelly - The Trumpeter of Krakow
• Oliver La Farge - Laughing Boy
• Nella Larsen - Passing
• Sinclair Lewis - Dodsworth
• Claude McKay - Banjo
• Alberto Moravia - Gli indifferenti (Time of Indifference)
• Leopold Myers - The Near and the Far
• Katherine Anne Porter - Flowering Judas
• Ellery Queen - The Roman Hat Mystery
• Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues)
• Elmer Rice - Street Scene
• O. E. Rolvaag - Peder Victorious
• John Steinbeck - Cup of Gold: A Life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, With Occasional Reference to History
• Wallace Thurman - The Blacker the Berry
• Sigrid Undset - In the Wilderness
• S. S. Van Dine - The Scarab Murder Case
• Thomas Wolfe - Look Homeward, Angel

New drama

• Henri Bernstein - Mélo
• Bertolt Brecht - The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent
• Patrick Hamilton - Rope
• Kaj Munk - I Brændingen
• Stanisława Przybyszewska - The Danton Case
• Elmer Rice - Street Scene
• Jean Giraudoux - Amphitryon 38
• George Bernard Shaw - The Apple Cart

Poetry

• Robinson Jeffers - Dear Judas and Other Poems
• W. B. Yeats - The Winding Stair

Non-fiction

• Ada Boni - Il talismano della felicità (The Talisman of Happiness)
• G. K. Chesterton - The Everlasting Man
• Mahatma Gandhi - The Story of My Experiments with Truth
• Robert Graves - Goodbye to All That
• Walter Lippmann - A Preface to Morals
• A. A. Milne - Those Were the Days
• Alice Prin - Kiki's Memoirs
• Various authors - Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress: essays in support of James Joyce
• E. B. White & James Thurber - Is Sex Necessary?
• Alfred North Whitehead - Process and Reality
• Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own

Births

• January 26 - Jules Feiffer, American cartoonist & writer
• February 17 - Chaim Potok, American author (died 2002)
• February 18 - Len Deighton, British novelist
• April 1 - Milan Kundera, Czech-French novelist
• May 16 - Adrienne Rich, American poet and essayist
• June 11 - George Garrett, American poet & novelist (died 2008)
• July 31 - Lynne Reid Banks, British author
• August 18 - Anatoly Kuznetsov, Russian dissident novelist (died 1979)
• August 21 - X. J. Kennedy, American poet & translator
• August 27 - Ira Levin, American novelist & playwright (died 2007)
• August 29 - Thom Gunn, Anglo-American poet (died 2004)
• November - Steve Carter, American playwright
• November 13 - Theo Aronson, British biographer (died 2003)
• December 12 - John Osborne, English playwright & screenwriter (died 1994)
• December 16 - James Moore, Cornish author
• December 19 - Howard Sackler, American dramatist & screenwriter (died 1982)

Deaths

• March 26 - Katharine Lee Bates, lyricist of "America the Beautiful" (born 1859)
• April 16 - Sir John Morris-Jones, Welsh grammarian & poet (born 1864)
• April 21 - Lucy Clifford, British novelist (born 1846)
• June 8 - Bliss Carman, Canadian poet (born 1861)
• June 22 - Alfred Brunswig, German philosopher (born 1877)
• June 25 - Georges Courteline, French dramatist & novelist (born 1858)
• July 15 - Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Austrian novelist & poet (born 1874)
• July 31 - José de Castro, Portuguese journalist (born 1868)
• August - Mary MacLane, Canadian feminist writer (born 1881)
• December 10 - Harry Crosby, American publisher and poet (born 1898) (suicide)
• date unknown
  • Max Lehmann, German historian (born 1845)
  • Hans Prutz, German historian (born 1843)
  • Grace Rhys, Irish novelist & poet (born 1865)
  • Dallas Lore Sharp, American nature writer (born 1870)

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: J. B. Priestley, The Good Companions
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Lord David Cecil, The Stricken Deer: or The Life of Cowper
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Eric P. Kelly, The Trumpeter of Krakow
• Newdigate prize: Phyllis Hartnoll
• Nobel Prize in literature: Thomas Mann
• O. Henry Award: Dorothy Parker for Big Blonde (short story)
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Elmer L. Rice, Street Scene
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Stephen Vincent Benét: John Brown's Body
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Julia Peterkin - Scarlet Sister Mary