1917 in literature

This article presents lists of literary events and publications in 1917.

Events

Portrait of Siegfried Sassoon by Glyn Warren Philpot, 1917

• January
  • Francis Picabia produces the first issue of the Dada periodical 391 in Barcelona.
  • Philosopher Hu Shih, the primary advocate for the revolution in Chinese literature at this time to replace scholarly language with the vernacular, publishes an article in the magazine New Youth (Xin Qingnian) entitled "A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform", in which he originally emphasizes eight guidelines that all Chinese writers should take to heart.
  • J. R. R. Tolkien, on medical leave from the British Army at Great Haywood, begins writing The Book of Lost Tales (the first version of The Silmarillion), starting with the "Fall of Gondolin"; thus Tolkien's mythopoeic Middle-earth legendarium is first chronicled in prose.^[1][2]
• February 4/5 – English writer Hugh Kingsmill is taken prisoner while fighting in France.^[3]
• February 16 – The publishing house of Boni & Liveright is established in New York City by Horace Liveright with Albert Boni, and establishes the "Modern Library" imprint.
• April – Leonard and Virginia Woolf take delivery of the hand printing press they require in order to establish the Hogarth Press at their home, Hogarth House in Richmond upon Thames.^[4] Their first publication is Two Stories.
• June 4 – The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for a biography (for Julia Ward Howe); Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days; and Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.
• June 18 – Luigi Pirandello's drama Right You Are (if you think so) (Così è (se vi pare)) is premièred in Milan.
• July – Siegfried Sassoon issues his "Soldier's Declaration" against prolongation of World War I and is sent (with assistance from Robert Graves) by the military authorities to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where, on August 18, Wilfred Owen introduces himself.^[5] With Sassoon's encouragement, Owen writes his two great war poems, "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce et Decorum est" at this time, although like almost all his poetry they remain unpublished until after his death in action next year.
• c. Summer – The Siuru expressionistic and neo-romantic literary movement in Estonia is formed by a group of young poets and writers.^[6][7]
• September 6 – At the National Eisteddfod of Wales held at Birkenhead, the Chairing of the Bard ceremony ends dramatically with the chair being draped in black, signifying that the winner, Hedd Wyn, had died a month earlier in battle.^[8]
• October 20 – 51-year-old poet W. B. Yeats marries 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees at Harrow Road register office in London (with Ezra Pound as best man) a couple of months after having had a proposal of marriage to his ex-mistress's daughter, Iseult Gonne, rejected.
• December 25 – Jesse Lynch Williams' Why Marry?, the first dramatic play to win a Pulitzer Prize, opens at the Astor Theatre (New York).
• The colonial government of the Dutch East Indies establishes the Kantoor voor de Volklectuur ("Office for People's Reading"), later renamed Balai Pustaka.^[9]
• The Marc Chagall illustrated version of The Magician (דער קונצענמאכער, Der Kuntsenmakher) by I. L. Peretz (d. 1915) is published in Vilnius.^[10]

New books

Poetry

Book by T. S. Eliot

Main article: 1917 in poetry

• Lascelles Abercrombie – Emblems Of Love
• May Wedderburn Cannan – In War Time
• T. S. Eliot – Prufrock, and other observations
• Robert Graves – Fairies and Fusiliers
• Ivor Gurney – Severn and Somme
• James Weldon Johnson – Fifty Years and Other Poems
• Joseph Lee – Work-a-Day Warriors
• Edna St. Vincent Millay - Renascense and Other Poems
• Siegfried Sassoon – The Old Huntsman, and Other Poems
• Alan Seeger (posthumously) – Poems (including "I have a rendezvous with Death")
• Edward Thomas (posthumously) – Poems (including "Adlestrop")
• William Watson – The Man Who Saw: and Other Poems Arising out of the War
• W. B. Yeats – The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and a Play in Verse

Births

• January 6 – Maeve Brennan, Irish-born short story writer and journalist (died 1993)
• February 11 – Sidney Sheldon, American novelist (died 2007)
• February 25 – Anthony Burgess, English novelist (died 1993)
• March 1 – Robert Lowell, American poet (died 1977)
• March 17 – Carlo Cassola, Italian novelist (died 1987)
• April 9 – Johannes Bobrowski, German author (died 1965)
• May 16 – Juan Rulfo, Mexican fiction writer (died 1986)
• June 7 – Gwendolyn Brooks, American poet (died 2000)
• June 13 – Augusto Roa Bastos, Paraguayan novelist (died 2005)
• June 16 – Katharine Graham, American journalist (died 2001)
• July 8 – J. F. Powers, American author (died 1999)
• July 15 – Robert Conquest, English-born historian and poet (died 2015)
• August 24 – Ruth Park, New Zealand children's writer (died 2010)
• October 5 – Magda Szabó, Hungarian novelist, dramatist and essayist (died 2007)
• October 24 – Denys Val Baker, Welsh writer (died 1984)
• October 31 – Patience Gray, English cookery and travel writer (died 2005)
• November 3 – Conor Cruise O'Brien, Irish biographer and political writer (died 2008)
• November 12 – Leila Berg, English children's author and education writer (died 2015)
• November 28 – Marni Hodgkin (Marion Rous), American children's book editor (died 2015)
• December 21 – Heinrich Böll, German Nobel Prize winning novelist (died 1985)
• Unknown date – Fadwa Toukan, Palestinian poet (died 2003)

Deaths

• January 15 – William De Morgan, English novelist and potter (born 1839)
• February 16 – Octave Mirbeau, French novelist and critic (born 1848)
• April 3 – Arthur Graeme West, English war poet and military writer (killed in action, born 1891)
• April 9
  • Edward Thomas, British poet and prose writer (killed in action, born 1878)^[11]
  • R. E. Vernède, English war poet (killed in action, born 1875)
• April 14 – L. L. Zamenhof, Polish creator of Esperanto (born 1859)
• April 17 – Jane Barlow, Irish novelist and poet (born 1856)
• April 21 – Francis Burnand, English dramatist and editor (born 1836)
• May 13 – Gustav Jaeger, German naturalist (born 1832)
• June 1 – Joseph Ashby-Sterry, English poet and comic writer (born 1836 or 1838)
• June 18 – Titu Maiorescu, Romanian culture critic, philosopher, and politician (born 1840)
• July 31
  • Francis Ledwidge, English war poet (killed in action, born 1887)
  • Hedd Wyn, Welsh-language poet (killed in action, born 1887)^[12]
• September 28 – T. E. Hulme, English critic (killed in action, born 1883)
• October 16 – Walter Flex, German author (died of wounds, born 1887)
• November 15 – Émile Durkheim, French sociologist (born 1858)
• November 18 – Adrien Bertrand, French novelist (died of wounds, born 1888)^[13]
• December 27 – George Diamandy, Romanian journalist, dramatist, and political figure (angina, born 1867)
• Unknown date – Georges de Peyrebrune, French novelist (born 1841)

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Karl Adolph Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan

In literature

• March 8 (February 23 O.S.) – The Russian February Revolution begins in Petrograd. This is the background to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novels in The Red Wheel sequence March 1917 and April 1917 (publication begins 1989).
• August 18 – First meeting between Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, the basis of Stephen MacDonald's drama Not About Heroes (1982) and Pat Barker's novel Regeneration (1991).
• World War I – The following novels are among those set during the war this year
  • Philippe Claudel – Les Âmes grises (2005)
  • Colette – Mitsou (novella, 1919)
  • Frank Dalby Davison – The Wells of Beersheba: An Epic of the Australian Light Horse 1914-1918 (1933)
  • Helen Dunmore – Zennor in Darkness (1993)
  • Ben Elton – The First Casualty (2005)

References