1921 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1921.

Events

• January 1 – The Jonathan Cape publishing business is established in Bloomsbury (London) by Herbert Jonathan Cape and Wren Howard.
• February – 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]
• March – Jorge Luis Borges returns to his native Buenos Aires in Argentina after a period living with his family in Europe.
• April 20 – Ferenc Molnár's play Liliom is first produced on Broadway in English.
• May 9 – The première of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore) at the Teatro Valle in Rome divides the audience.
• May – A performance of Pericles, Prince of Tyre at The Old Vic in London directed by Robert Atkins restores the unexpurgated text for the first time since the Shakespearean era.
• June 6 – The première of Tristan Tzara's parodic The Gas Heart (Le Cœur à gaz) at a Dada Salon at the Galerie Montaigne in Paris provokes audience derision.
• June 10 – D. H. Lawrence's novel Women in Love is first published commercially by Martin Secker in London.
• September 5 – The Cervantes Theatre (Buenos Aires) opens with a production of Lope de Vega's La dama boba (The Foolish Lady, 1613).^[2]
• September 26 – Opening of the Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich, England, an old chapel reconstructed as a recreation of an English Renaissance theatre building for the production of period drama by an amateur repertory company under the direction of Walter Nugent Monck.^[3] The opening production is As You Like It.
• December 9 – John William Gott becomes the last person in England to be imprisoned for blasphemous libel.
• December 31 – Mexican poet Manuel Maples Arce distributes the first Stridentist manifesto, Comprimido estridentista, in the broadsheet Actual n°1 (Mexico City).

New books

Births

• January 5 – Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Swiss writer (died 1990)
• January 19 – Patricia Highsmith, American crime writer (died 1995)
• February 4 – Betty Friedan, American feminist author (died 2006)
• February 15 – Radha Krishna Choudhary, Indian historian and writer (died 1985)
• March 1 – Richard Wilbur, American poet and translator (died 2017)
• March 24 – Wilson Harris, Guyanese-born poet, novelist and essayist (died 2018)
• May 23
  • James Blish, American science fiction author (died 1975)
  • Ray Lawler, Australian dramatist
• May 29 – Henry Scholberg, American bibliographer (died 2012)
• June 11 – Michael Meyer, English translator and biographer (died 2000)
• August 11 – Alex Haley, American writer (died 1992)
• August 17 – Elinor Lyon, British children's writer (died 2008)
• September 12 – Stanisław Lem, Polish science fiction novelist, philosopher, satirist and physician (died 2006)
• September 15 – Richard Gordon, English author (died 2017)
• September 26 – Cyprian Ekwensi, Nigerian writer (died 2007)
• October 2 – Edmund Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery), English crime writer (died 1978)
• October 9 – Tadeusz Różewicz, Polish poet, dramatist and writer (died 2014)
• October 17 – George Mackay Brown, Scottish poet (died 1996)
• November 6 – James Jones, American novelist (died 1977)
• November 22 – Brian Cleeve, Irish author (died 2003)
• December 20 – Israil Bercovici, Romanian dramatist and historian (died 1988)

Deaths

• March 22 – E. W. Hornung, English author (born 1866)
• April 6 – Maximilian Berlitz, German-born American textbook writer and language school proprietor (born 1852)
• May 5 – Alfred Hermann Fried, Austrian 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)
• July 7 – Luca Caragiale, Romanian poet, novelist and translator (pneumonia, born 1893)
• June 26 – Alfred Percy Sinnett, English Theosophist author (born 1840)
• July 4 – Antoni Grabowski, Polish Esperantist (born 1857)
• August 7 – Alexander Blok, Russian poet (born 1880)
• August 25 – Nikolay Gumilev, Russian poet (executed, born 1886)
• October 10 – Otto von Gierke, German historian (born 1841)
• November 8 – Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav, Slovak poet, dramatist and translator (born 1849)
• November 14 – Christabel Rose Coleridge English novelist and editor (born 1843)
• Unknown date – John Habberton, American critic (born 1842)^[7]

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