Events
- January
- The Soviet magazine Oktyabr begins publishing Mikhail Sholokhov's novel And Quiet Flows the Don («Тихий Дон», Tikhiy Don) in instalments.
- 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 It will not be published unexpurgated in Britain until 1960.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's "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories" are published in The American Magazine.[6]
- Leslie Charteris's Meet the Tiger, the first adventure of Simon Templar ("the Saint"), is published in the U.K.. 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.[7]
- October
- W. H. Auden goes to Berlin and is soon joined by Christopher Isherwood.[8]
- Luk Phu Chai (A Real Man), perhaps the first major original Thai novel, is published by Siburapha (Kulap Saipradit).[9]
- 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 (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."[10] 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.[11][12]
- 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.[13]
- 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.
- unknown dates
- Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's novel Pather Panchali first appears as a serial in a Calcutta periodical.[14]
- The clerihew, a comic pseudo-biographical verse form associated with Edmund Clerihew Bentley, is first mentioned in print.[15]
- It is claimed that one in four of all secular books printed and sold in England this year are the work of Edgar Wallace.[16]
