1908 in literature

1st ed.

• February 15 – The weekly boys' story paper The Magnet is first published in London, containing "The Making of Harry Wharton", the first serial story of the fictional Greyfriars School written by Charles Hamilton as Frank Richards and introducing the character of Billy Bunter.
• March – Ezra Pound leaves America for Europe. In April, he moves to Venice, where in July he publishes himself his first collection of poems, A Lume Spento (dedicated to his friend Philadelphia artist William Brooke Smith, who has just died of tuberculosis). In August he settles in London, where he will remain until 1920 and in December publish A Quinzaine for this Yule.[1]
• June 18 – Mark Twain buys a house in Redding, Connecticut.[2]
• Summer – The Marlowe Society stages a production at the New Theatre, Cambridge (England), of Milton's masque Comus, directed by Rupert Brooke.
• July – Katherine Mansfield moves to London; she will never return to her native New Zealand.
• September 30 – Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird (L'Oiseau bleu) is premièred, at Konstantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre.
• October 3 – The Avenida Theatre opens on Buenos Aires' Avenida de Mayo with a production of Lope de Vega's El castigo sin venganza (Justice Without Revenge, 1631) directed by María Guerrero.
• November 18 – The release in France of La Mort du duc de Guise marks the first film with a screenplay by an eminent man of letters, the playwright Henri Lavedan;[3] it is also directed by two men of the theatre, Charles Le Bargy and André Calmettes, and features actors of the Comédie-Française.
• December – Ford Madox Hueffer begins publication of the literary magazine The English Review in London. The first issue contains original work by Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy and W. H. Hudson, and begins serialization of H. G. Wells's realist semi-autobiographical satirical novel Tono-Bungay.
• December 1 – Cuala Press, set up at Churchtown, Dublin, as a private press independent of the former Dun Emer Press in connection with the Irish Literary Revival and Arts and Crafts movement by Elizabeth "Lolly" Yeats with editorial support from her brother W. B. Yeats, produces its first publication, Poetry and Ireland: Essays by W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson (died 1902).[4]

Uncertain dates

• Ethiopian linguist Afevork Ghevre Jesus's ልብ ፡ ወለድ ፡ ታሪክ ። (Libb Wolled Tārīk, "A Heart-Born Story"), the first novel in Amharic, is published in Rome.[5]
• The Malay tale Hikayat Hang Tuah (c. 1700) is first published, edited by Sulaiman bin Muhammed Nur and William Shellabear.[6]
• The Romanian writer Urmuz is known to be working on his manuscript stories, the Bizarre Pages, printed only after 1922.[7]

• January 9 – Simone de Beauvoir, French feminist philosopher (died 1986)
• January 16 – Pavel Nilin, Soviet novelist and playwright (died 1981)
• January 18 – Jacob Bronowski, Polish-born scientist and poet (died 1974)
• January 20
  • Fleur Cowles, American journalist, editor and illustrator (died 2009)
  • Jean S. MacLeod, Scottish-English romantic novelist (died 2011)
• February 4 – Julian Bell, English poet (killed 1937)
• February 29 – Dee Brown, American novelist and historian (died 2002)
• March 6 – Dame Felicitas Corrigan, English writer and Benedictine nun (died 2003)
• March 8 – Ebrahim Al-Arrayedh, Indian-born Bahraini poet (died 2002)
• March 22 – Louis L'Amour, American author (died 1988)
• May 17 – Frederic Prokosch, American novelist and poet (died 1989)
• May 25 – Theodore Roethke, American poet (died 1963)
• May 27 – Peggy Ramsay, born Margaret Venniker, Australian-born British theatrical agent (died 1991)
• May 28 – Ian Fleming, English espionage novelist (died 1964)
• June 14 – Kathleen Raine, English poet, scholar, and translator (died 2003)[10]
• June 27 – João Guimarães Rosa, Brazilian novelist (died 1967)
• July 23 – Elio Vittorini, Italian author (died 1966)
• August 21 – M. M. Kaye, Indian-born English novelist and autobiographer (died 2004)
• August 23 – Arthur Adamov, French Absurdist playwright (died 1970)
• August 28
  • Robert Merle, French novelist (died 2004)
  • Marguerite Young, American novelist, poet and biographer (died 1995)
• September 4 – Richard Wright, African-American novelist and poet (died 1960)
• September 9 – Cesare Pavese, Italian poet and novelist (died 1950)
• September 17 – John Creasey, English crime writer (died 1973)
• October 5 – Joshua Logan, American stage and film writer and director (died 1988)
• October 13 – Robert Liddell, English biographer, novelist and poet (died 1992)
• October 24 – Phyllis Shand Allfrey (Phyllis Byam Shand), Dominican writer (died 1986)
• November 8 – Zhou Yang, Chinese literary theorist (died 1989)
• November 8 – Martha Gellhorn, American journalist (suicide 1998)
• November 9 – Lucian Boz, Romanian and Australian literary critic (died 2003)
• November 21 – Elizabeth George Speare, American children's writer (died 1994)
• November 23 – Nelson S. Bond, American author, playwright and scriptwriter (died 2006)
• November 28
  • Claude Lévi-Strauss, Belgian-born French anthropologist (died 2009)
  • Mary Oppen, American poet, activist and photographer (died 1990)
• November 30 – Buddhadeb Bosu, Bengali poet and writer (died 1974)
• December 14 – Mária Szepes, Hungarian novelist and screenwriter (died 2007)

• January 14 – Holger Drachmann, Danish poet and dramatist (born 1846)
• January 18 – Edmund Clarence Stedman, American poet and critic (born 1833)
• January 25 – Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé), English novelist (born 1839)
• February 7 – Alexander Ertel, Russian novelist and short story writer (born 1855)
• March 4 – Mrs. Henry Clarke (Amy Key), English historical novelist and children's writer (born 1853)
• March 19 – Eduard Zeller, German philosopher (born 1814)
• March 25 – Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov, Russian poet, dramatist and critic (born 1821)
• April 20 – Henry Chadwick, English-born American baseball writer and historian (born 1824)
• May 7 – Ludovic Halévy, French playwright and author (born 1834)
• June 5 – Jonas Lie, Norwegian writer (born 1944)
• June 16 – Mary Elizabeth Hawker, Scottish-born English fiction writer (born 1848)
• July 3 – Joel Chandler Harris, American journalist and author (born 1848)
• July 28 – Otto Pfleiderer, German theologian (born 1839)
• August 4 – Bronson Howard, American dramatist (born 1842)
• August 14 – Anton Giulio Barrili, Italian novelist (born 1836)
• September 29 – Machado de Assis, Brazilian writer (born 1839)
• November 8 – Victorien Sardou, French dramatist (born 1831)

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Rudolf Christoph Eucken
• Newdigate prize: Julian Huxley