1928 in literature

Stockholm Public Library

• January
  • The Soviet magazine Oktyabr begins to serialize Mikhail Sholokhov's novel And Quiet Flows the Don («Тихий Дон»).
  • Ford Madox Ford publishes Last Post in the U.K., as the last in his World War I tetralogy Parade's End, which has been appearing since 1924.
• January 16 – The English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy's ashes are interred in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, London. Pallbearers include Stanley Baldwin, J. M. Barrie, John Galsworthy, Edmund Gosse, A. E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, Ramsay MacDonald and George Bernard Shaw.[1] Meanwhile Hardy's heart is interred where he wished to be buried, in the grave of his first wife, Emma, in the churchyard of his parish of birth, Stinsford ("Mellstock") in Dorset.[2] Later in the year, his widow Florence publishes the first part of a biography, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840–1891 (Macmillan), in fact largely dictated by Hardy.[3]
• February – Weird Tales magazine publishes H. P. Lovecraft's story "The Call of Cthulhu" in the United States.
• March 31 – Stockholm Public Library, designed by Gunnar Asplund, opens.
• April 19 – Publication of the Oxford English Dictionary is completed.
• Spring – George Orwell moves from London to Paris; his first articles as a professional writer appear later in the year.[4]
• June – The literary magazine Contemporáneos is first published in Mexico by Jaime Torres Bodet, giving a name to the group Los Contemporáneos.
• June 27 – The English writer Evelyn Waugh marries Evelyn Gardner, daughter of Lady Winifred Burghclere, in St Paul's Church, Portman Square, London, with only Harold Acton, Alec Waugh (the author's brother) and Pansy Pakenham present.[5] They move into a flat in Canonbury Square, Islington. In September the author's first completed novel, Decline and Fall, is published by Chapman & Hall, of which his father, Arthur Waugh, is managing director. It is illustrated by the author. It reaches a third impression by the end of the year. The marriage lasts until the following September.
• July – D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is published in Florence. It will not be published unexpurgated in Britain until 1960.
• August 27 – Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe in Galway is founded as the national Irish-language theater, opening with Micheál Mac Liammóir's version of Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne.
• August 31 – The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper), adapted by Bertolt Brecht, Elisabeth Hauptmann and composer Kurt Weill (with set designer Caspar Neher) from The Beggar's Opera, is launched at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin, with Harald Paulsen and Lotte Lenya in the principal rôles.
• September
  • S. S. Van Dine publishes "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories" in The American Magazine.
  • Leslie Charteris publishes Meet the Tiger in the U.K., the first adventure of Simon Templar ("the Saint"). Charteris will write dozens of novels and stories with the character in 1928–1963; successor writers will continue until 1983.
• September 21 – The Gorseth Kernow is set up at Boscawen-Un in Cornwall by Henry Jenner (Gwas Myghal) and others.
• October
  • W. H. Auden goes to Berlin and is soon joined by Christopher Isherwood.[6]
  • Luk Phu Chai (A Real Man), perhaps the first major original Thai novel, is published by Siburapha (Kulap Saipradit).[7]
• October 14 – The Gate Theatre in Dublin is founded by English actors and lovers Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio to stage works by European and American dramatists.
• November–December – Erich Maria Remarque's antiwar novel All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) appears in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung. Hans Herbert Grimm's Schlump is also published (anonymously) by Kurt Wolff in Berlin this year.
• November 1 – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, President of Turkey, introduces the Roman-based 29-letter Turkish alphabet to replace the Ottoman script as official writing system for the Turkish language.
• November 6 – Xu Zhimo writes his poem 再別康橋 (simplified Chinese 再别康桥, Zài Bié Kāngqiáo, "On Leaving Cambridge Once More").
• November 9–16 – Radclyffe Hall's novel The Well of Loneliness, published on July 27 by Jonathan Cape in London with an appreciation by Havelock Ellis, is tried and convicted at Bow Street Magistrates' Court on the grounds of obscenity under the Hicklin test, for its theme of lesbian love, after a campaign against it by James Douglas in the Sunday Express. The presiding magistrate, Sir Chartres Biron, holds that the book contains "not one word which suggested that anyone with the horrible tendencies described was in the least degree blameworthy. All the characters in the book were presented as attractive people and put forward with admiration."[8] Other lesbian literature published in England this year evades prosecution: Elizabeth Bowen's novel The Hotel, Virginia Woolf's fictional Orlando: A Biography, and Compton MacKenzie's satirical Extraordinary Women. Djuna Barnes' novel Ladies Almanack, published in Paris, also alludes to the controversy.[9][10]
• December 9 – R. C. Sherriff's drama Journey's End, set on the Western Front (World War I), is premièred by the Incorporated Stage Society at the Apollo Theatre in London, with Laurence Olivier in a principal rôle.[11]
• December 19 – Italo Svevo (Aron Schmitz), returning from an Alpine resort to Trieste, suffers a car accident. He dies next day leaving his novel Il Vegliardo (The Old Man) unfinished in mid-word.

Uncertain dates

• Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's novel Pather Panchali first appears as a serial in a Calcutta periodical.[12]
• The clerihew, a comic pseudo-biographical verse form associated with Edmund Clerihew Bentley, is first mentioned in print.[13]
• It is claimed that one in four of all secular books printed and sold in England are written by Edgar Wallace.[14]

Edgar Wallace with trademark trilby hat and cigarette holder at the height of his success in 1928

• January 1 – Iain Crichton Smith, Scottish writer (died 1998)[17]
• January 7 – William Peter Blatty, American novelist and screenwriter (died 2017)
• January 8 – Sander Vanocur, American journalist
• January 10 – Philip Levine, American poet (died 2015)
• January 16 – William Kennedy, American writer and journalist
• January 17 – Roman Frister, Polish writer (died 2015)
• January 21 – János Kornai (as János Kornfelder), Hungarian economist
• January 24 – Desmond Morris, English anthropologist and writer
• February 5 – Andrew Greeley, Irish-American priest and novelist (died 2013)
• February 9 – Roger Mudd, American journalist
• February 25 – Richard G. Stern, American novelist and educator (died 2013)
• February 29 – Jean Adamson, English children's author and illustrator[18]
• March 4 – Alan Sillitoe, English novelist (died 2010)
• March 12 – Edward Albee, American dramatist (died 2016)
• March 13 – Jane Grigson, English cookery writer (died 1990)
• March 22 – E. D. Hirsch, American academic literary critic and educator
• March 30 – Tom Sharpe, English satirical author (died 2013)
• April 4 – Maya Angelou, American poet (died 2014)
• April 7 – Alan J. Pakula, American screenwriter (died 1998)
• April 11 – Lionel Abrahams, South African novelist, poet and essayist (died 2004)
• April 17 – Cynthia Ozick, American author
• April 24 – Martin Seymour-Smith, English poet, biographer and critic (died 1998)
• May 4 – Thomas Kinsella, Irish poet
• May 24 – William Trevor, Irish fiction writer and playwright (died 2016)
• June 10 – Maurice Sendak, American children's author and illustrator (died 2012)
• June 28 – Stan Barstow, English novelist (died 2011)
• July 16
  • Anita Brookner, English novelist (died 2016)
  • Robert Sheckley, American writer (died 2005)
• July 24 – Griselda Gambaro, Argentine writer
• July 26 – Bernice Rubens, Welsh novelist (died 2004)
• August 7 – Anthony Lejeune, English writer, editor and broadcaster (died 2018)
• August 12 – Beni Virtzberg, Israeli forester, Holocaust survivor and writer (died 1968)
• September 6 – Robert M. Pirsig, American philosopher and author
• September 20 – Donald Hall, American poet and poet laureate
• September 30 – Elie Wiesel, American Jewish author and 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner (died 2016)
• October 3 – Alvin Toffler, American futurist writer (died 2016)
• October 10 – Sheila F. Walsh, English novelist (died 2009)
• October 17 – Rosemary Tonks, English poet, prose writer and children's writer (died 2014)
• November 2
  • Steve Ditko, American cartoonist (died 2018)
  • Paul Johnson, English historian and journalist
• November 9 – Anne Sexton, American poet (died 1974)
• November 12 – Marjorie W. Sharmat, American children's writer
• November 11 – Carlos Fuentes, Mexican writer (died 2012)
• November 20 – Dolf Verroen, Dutch writer of children's literature
• November 28 – Bano Qudsia, Punjab-born Pakistani fiction writer (died 2017)
• December 3 – Karin Bang, Norwegian novelist and poet (died 2017)
• December 16 – Philip K. Dick, American science fiction author (died 1982)

• January 8 – Juan B. Justo, Argentine journalist (born 1865)
• January 11 – Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet (born 1840)
• January 19 – Hans Hinrich Wendt, German theologian (born 1853)
• January 28 – Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Spanish novelist, journalist and politician (born 1867)
• February 19 – Mildred Aldrich, American journalist (born 1853)
• February 29 – Adolphe Appia, Swiss writer and scenery and lighting designer (born 1862)
• March 4 – Paul Sabatier, French religious writer (born 1858)
• March 18 – Paul van Ostaijen, Flemish poet (born 1896)
• March 24
  • Didrik Hegermann Grønvold, Norwegian novelist (born 1855)
  • Charlotte Mew, English poet (born 1869; suicide)
• April 10 – Stanley J. Weyman, English novelist (born 1855)
• April 19 – Ladislav Klíma, Czech novelist and philosopher (born 1878)
• May 5 – Barry Pain, English writer (born 1864)
• May 16 – Edmund Gosse, English poet and critic (born 1849)
• May 22 – Francisco López Merino, Argentine poet (suicide, born 1904)
• May 25 – George Ranetti, Romanian humorist and playwright (born 1875)
• July 1 – Avery Hopwood, American playwright (heart attack, born 1882)
• July 8 – Crystal Eastman, American journalist (born 1881)
• August – Isaac Markens, American journalist (born 1846)[19]
• August 16 – Antonín Sova, Czech poet (born 1864)
• August 24 – Oskar Jerschke, German dramatist (born 1861)
• October 24 – Henry Festing Jones, English biographer, editor and lawyer (born 1851)[20]
• December 16 – Elinor Wylie, American poet and novelist (stroke, born 1885)
• December 19 – Italo Svevo, Italian writer (born 1861)
• December 23 – Ludwig Rosenthal, German antiquarian bookseller (born 1840)

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: John Buchan, Montrose
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Gayneck, the Story of a Pigeon
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Sigrid Undset
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Eugene O'Neill, Strange Interlude
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Edwin Arlington Robinson, Tristram
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey