• January – The Books Kinokuniya (紀伊國屋書店) bookstore business is established in Tokyo.
• February 4 – Gertrude Stein is honored by the Académie des femmes,^[1] an informal gathering for woman writers, founded by the expatriate American Natalie Clifford Barney starts at her Paris salon. Others honored include Colette, Anna Wickham, Rachilde, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, and posthumously, Renée Vivien.^[2]
• February 24 – The new John Golden Theatre (Theatre Masque) opens in New York City at 252 West 45th Street (George Abbott Way) in midtown Manhattan.
• May 5 – Virginia Woolf's stream of consciousness novel To the Lighthouse is published by Hogarth Press in London. A second impression follows in June. It is seen as a landmark of high modernism,^[3]
• June 29 – T. S. Eliot, hitherto Unitarian, is baptised into the Church of England at Finstock. In November he takes British citizenship.^[4]
• July 5 – James Joyce's collection Pomes Penyeach is published by Shakespeare and Company in Paris.^[5]
• July 9 – P. G. Wodehouse's short story "Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey", published in the U.S. magazine Liberty, introduces Lord Emsworth's prize pig, the Empress of Blandings. The first UK appearance follows in the August issue of The Strand Magazine).
• August – T. S. Eliot's poem Journey of the Magi appears in Faber and Gwyer's Ariel poems series in London, illustrated by E. McKnight Kauffer.
• September – Eric Blair (George Orwell) decides while on leave from the Imperial Police in Burma to remain in the U.K. He moves to London to become a writer.
• October – Victor Gollancz founds the London publishing house Victor Gollancz Ltd.
• December – Agatha Christie's fictional amateur detective Miss Marple makes a first appearance in "The Tuesday Night Club", published in The Royal Magazine.^[6]
• unknown dates
  • A translation of Franz Roh's work of art criticism Nach Expressionismus – Magischer Realismus: Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei (After Expressionism – Magical Realism: Problems of the newest European painting, 1925) into Spanish by Revista de Occidente leads to the concept of magic realism becoming popular in Latin American literature.^[7]
  • The Strand Bookstore is founded in Manhattan by Benjamin Bass.^[8]

Fiction edit

• Djamaluddin Adinegoro – Darah Muda (Young Blood)
• Ion Agârbiceanu – Legea minții
• Anthony Berkeley – Cicely Disappears
• Arthur Bernède – Belphégor
• Tjoe Hong Bok – Setangan Berloemoer Darah (A Glove Covered in Blood)
• James Boyd – Marching On
• Lynn Brock – The Kink
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – The Outlaw of Torn
• James Branch Cabell – Something About Eve
• Willa Cather – Death Comes for the Archbishop
• Blaise Cendrars – La Confession de Dan Yack
• Agatha Christie – The Big Four
• J.J. Connington
  • Murder in the Maze
  • Tragedy at Ravensthorpe
• Jaime de Angulo – The Lariat
• Mazo de la Roche – Jalna
• Warwick Deeping – Kitty
• Ding Ling – Miss Sophia's Diary
• Arthur Conan Doyle – The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
• William Faulkner – Mosquitoes
• David Garnett – Go She Must!
• Anthony Gilbert – The Tragedy at Freyne
• George Goodchild – The Monster of Grammont
• Maxim Gorky – The Life of Klim Samgin (first volume, translated as Bystander)
• Julien Green – The Closed Garden
• H. Rider Haggard – Allan and the Ice-gods
• Ernest Hemingway – Men Without Women
• Hermann Hesse – Steppenwolf
• James Weldon Johnson – God's Trombones
• Franz Kafka – Amerika
• Margaret Kennedy – Red Sky at Morning
• Joseph Kessel – Nights of Princes
• Kwee Tek Hoay – Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang
• Ze'ev Jabotinsky – Samson
• D. H. Lawrence – John Thomas and Lady Jane
• Halldór Laxness – Vefarinn mikli frá Kasmír (The Great Weaver from Kashmir)
• Rosamond Lehmann – Dusty Answer
• Sinclair Lewis – Elmer Gantry
• Marie Belloc Lowndes – The Story of Ivy
• Philip MacDonald – Patrol
• Compton Mackenzie
  • Rogues and Vagabonds
  • Vestal Fire
• A. E. W. Mason – No Other Tiger
• François Mauriac – Thérèse Desqueyroux
• Vilhelm Moberg – Raskens
• Paul Morand – The Living Buddha
• Mourning Dove – Cogewea, the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range
• Yury Olesha – Envy
• E. Phillips Oppenheim – Miss Brown of X.Y.O.
• Baroness Orczy – Sir Percy Hits Back
• T. F. Powys – Mr. Weston's Good Wine
• J. B. Priestley – Benighted
• Marcel Proust (posthumous) – Le Temps retrouvé (Time Regained or The Past Recaptured; final instalment of In Search of Lost Time)
• Waverley Lewis Root – King of the Jews
• Joseph Roth – Flight without End
• Rafael Sabatini – The Nuptials of Corbal
• Dorothy L. Sayers – Unnatural Death
• Upton Sinclair – Oil!
• Cecil Street
  • The Ellerby Case
  • Mademoiselle From Armentieres
• Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy – The Garin Death Ray (Гиперболоид инженера Гарина)
• B. Traven – Der Schatz der Sierra Madre (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)
• Sigrid Undset
  • The Snake Pit
  • The Son Avenger
• Konstantin Vaginov – Goat Song
• S. S. Van Dine – The Canary Murder Case
• Edgar Wallace
  • The Forger
  • The Squeaker
  • Terror Keep
  • The Traitor's Gate
• Thornton Wilder – The Bridge of San Luis Rey
• Henry Williamson – Tarka the Otter^[9]
• P. G. Wodehouse
  • Meet Mr Mulliner
  • The Small Bachelor
• Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse^[10]
• Eiji Yoshikawa (吉川 英治) – Naruto Hitcho (鳴門秘帖, A Secret Record of Naruto; serialization concludes)
• Francis Brett Young – Portrait of Clare
• Arnold Zweig – Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa (The Case of Sergeant Grischa)^[11]

Children and young people edit

• Walter R. Brooks – To and Again (reissued 1949 as Freddy Goes to Florida, first of the Freddy the Pig series)
• Franklin W. Dixon – The Tower Treasure
• Will James – Smoky the Cowhorse
• May Justus – Peter Pocket: A Little Boy of the Cumberland Mountains
• John Masefield – The Midnight Folk
• A. A. Milne – Now We Are Six (verse)
• Edward Wyke Smith – The Marvellous Land of Snergs (proto-Hobbits)
• Ruth Plumly Thompson – The Gnome King of Oz (21st in the Oz series overall and the seventh written by her)
• Constancio C. Vigil
  • Botón Tolón
  • Cuentos para niños
  • La hormiguita viajera
  • Los escarabajos y la moneda de oro

Drama edit

• Isaac Babel – Sunset
• Philip Barry – Paris Bound
• Noel Pemberton Billing – High Treason
• Bertolt Brecht – In The Jungle of Cities (Im Dickicht der Städte in its final version)
• Mikhail Bulgakov – Flight («Бег», Beg, written)
• Hamilton Deane – Dracula (1927 revision of a 1924 stage adaptation)
• James Bernard Fagan – The Greater Love
• Federico García Lorca
  • Mariana Pineda
  • The Curse of the Butterfly (El Maleficio de la Mariposa), first production 1927 in the Teatro Eslava, Madrid
• Joseph Goebbels – Der Wanderer (only performances; written 1923)
• Walter C. Hackett – The Wicked Earl
• DuBose Heyward and Dorothy Heyward – Porgy
• Vsevolod Ivanov – Armoured Train 14-69 («Бронепоезд 14-69», Bronepoezd 14-69)
• Georgia Douglas Johnson – Plumes
• George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber – The Royal Family
• John Howard Lawson – Loud Speaker
• Alexander Lernet-Holenia – Szene als Einleitung zu einer Totenfeier für Rainer Maria Rilke
• Frederick Lonsdale – The High Road
• W. Somerset Maugham – The Letter
• Harrison Owen – The Happy Husband
• Ernst Toller – Hoppla, We're Alive! (Hoppla, wir leben!)
• Ben Travers – Thark
• Jim Tully – Twenty Below
• John Van Druten
  • Chance Acquaintance
  • Diversion
• Bayard Veiller – The Trial of Mary Dugan
• Roger Vitrac – The Mysteries of Love (Les Mystères de l'amour)
• Frank Vosper – The Combined Maze
• Edgar Wallace
  • Double Dan
  • The Terror
• Emlyn Williams – Full Moon
• Carl Zuckmayer – Schinderhannes

Poetry edit

• Robert Desnos – La Liberté ou l'amour! (Liberty or Love!)
• Allama Iqbal – Zabur-i-Ajam (Persian Psalms)
• James Joyce – Pomes Penyeach
• Don Marquis – archy and mehitabel

Non-fiction edit

• Stanley Baldwin – On England and Other Addresses
• Nan Britton – The President's Daughter
• Alexandra David-Néel – My Journey to Lhasa / Voyage d'une Parisienne à Lhassa
• John Dewey – Philosophy and Civilization^[12]
• J. W. Dunne – An Experiment with Time
• Walter Evans-Wentz (translator) – The Tibetan Book of the Dead (translation of Bardo Thodol)
• E. M. Forster – Aspects of the Novel
• Sigmund Freud – The Future of an Illusion (Die Zukunft einer Illusion)
• Charles Homer Haskins - The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century
• Martin Heidegger – Being and Time (Sein und Zeit)
• Christopher Hussey – The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View
• Ernst Kantorowicz – Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite
• Ronald Knox - The Belief of Catholics
• John Livingston Lowes – The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination
• Bertrand Russell – An Outline of Philosophy
• Helen Waddell – The Wandering Scholars

• January 8 – Charles Tomlinson, English poet (died 2015)
• January 16 – Oldřich Daněk, Czech dramatist (died 2000)
• January 24
  • Lasse Pöysti, Finnish writer, playwright and actor (died 2019)
  • Marvin Kaplan, American actor, screenwriter and playwright (died 2016)
• January 25 – John Calder, Canadian-born Scottish publisher (died 2018)
• January 28 – Vera Williams, American author and illustrator (died 2015)
• February 1 – Galway Kinnell, American poet (died 2014)^[13]
• February 6 – William Gardner Smith, expatriate American novelist and journalist (died 1974)
• February 16 – Shahidullah Kaiser, Bangladeshi novelist (died 1971)
• February 21 – Erma Bombeck, American humorist (died 1996)
• March 6 – Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian novelist (died 2014)^[14]
• March 15 – Hanns Joachim Friedrichs, German journalist (died 1995)
• March 18 – George Plimpton, American writer and actor (died 2003)^[15]
• March 24 – Martin Walser, German author^[16]
• March 22 – Vera Henriksen, née Roscher Lund, Norwegian historical novelist (died 2016)
• April 2 – Kenneth Tynan, English theatre critic (died 1980)^[17]
• April 24 – Trudi Birger, German Holocaust survivor and writer (died 2002)^[18]
• April 25 – Albert Uderzo, French author and illustrator (died 2020)^[19]
• May 1 – Tamar Bornstein-Lazar, Israeli children's writer (died 2020)
• May 10 – Nayantara Sahgal, Indian author^[20]
• May 19 – Yusuf Idris, Egyptian writer (died 1991)
• May 25 – Robert Ludlum, American novelist (died 2001)^[21]
• May 27 – Malayattoor Ramakrishnan, Indian Malayali novelist (died 1997)
• May 28 – William A. Hilliard, American journalist (died 2017)
• June 6 – Alan Seymour, Australian playwright (died 2015)
• June 1 – Moyra Caldecott, English writer of historical fiction (died 2015)^[22]
• June 13 – Paul Ableman, English writer of erotic fiction and playwright (died 2006)
• June 20 – Simin Behbahani, Persian poet (died 2014)
• June 23 – Jacobo Langsner, Romanian-born Uruguayan screenwriter and playwright (died 2020)
• June 24 – Frederick Vreeland, American diplomat and writer
• June 27 – Dominic Jeeva (டொமினிக் ஜீவா), Ceylonese Tamil fiction writer and essayist (died 2021)
• June 30 – James Goldman, American screenwriter and playwright (died 1998)
• July 4 – Neil Simon, American playwright (died 2018)^[23]
• July 15 – Ann Jellicoe, British playwright, stage director and actress (died 2017)
• July 16 – Shirley Hughes, English writer and illustrator of children's books (died 2022)
• July 22 – Katharine Topkins, American novelist
• July 27 – John Seigenthaler, American journalist, writer and political figure (died 2014)
• July 28
  • John Ashbery, American poet (d. 2017)^[24]
  • Pasquale Festa Campanile, Italian screenwriter, film director and novelist (died 1986)^[25]
• July 31 – Peter Nichols, English playwright (died 2019)
• August 9 – Robert Shaw, English-born actor, novelist and playwright (died 1978)^[26]
• August 15 – Patrick Galvin, Irish poet and dramatist (died 2011)
• August 17 – Stefan Geosits, Burgenland Croatian writer and translator
• August 23 – Dick Bruna, Dutch author and illustrator (died 2017)^[27]
• August 24 – David Ireland, Australian novelist (died 2022)^[28]
• August 27 – Fouad al-Tikerly, Iraqi novelist and writer (died 2008)
• September 4 – Bernardino Zapponi, Italian novelist (died 2000)
• September 30 – W. S. Merwin, American poet (died 2019)^[29]
• October 7 – Robert Westall, English novelist and children's writer (died 1993)
• October 16 – Günter Grass, German novelist (died 2015)^[30]
• October 31 – Sybil Wettasinghe, Ceylonese children's writer and illustrator (died 2020)^[31]
• November 2 – Steve Ditko, American comic-book writer and artist (died 2018)^[32]
• November 16 – Franz Jalics, Hungarian Jesuit priest and author
• November 24
  • Ahmadou Kourouma, Ivorian novelist (died 2003)^[33](estimated date)
  • Charles Osborne, Australian-born British writer and arts administrator (died 2017)
• December 4 – Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Spanish writer (died 2019)^[34]
• December 13 – James Wright, American poet (died 1980)
• December 16 - Peter Dickinson, English author and poet (died 2015)
• December 24
  • Mary Higgins Clark, American novelist (died 2020)^[35]
  • Diane de Margerie, French translator

• January 4 – Süleyman Nazif, Turkish poet (born 1870)^[36]
• January 9 – Houston Stewart Chamberlain, English-born German author (b. 1855)^[37]
• January 21 – Margret Holmes Bates, American novelist and poet (born 1844)
• January 24 – Agnes Maule Machar, Canadian poet and author (born 1837)^[38]
• February 5 – Osório Duque-Estrada, Brazilian poet, essayist, journalist and literary critic (born 1870)^[39]
• February 26 – Alfred Remy, German-born American philologist and music writer (born 1870)
• February 27 – Roi Cooper Megrue, American playwright (b. 1882)^[40]
• March 3 – Mikhail Artsybashev, Russian writer (born 1878)^[41]
• March 10 – George W. Forbes, American journalist and librarian (born 1864)^[42][43]
• March 18 – Philip Wicksteed, English theologian and critic (born 1844)^[44]
• March 31 – Mabel Collins, British theosophist and author (born 1851)
• April 2 – Ottokár Prohászka, Hungarian Roman Catholic theologian and bishop (born 1858)
• April 16 – Gaston Leroux, French novelist (born 1868)^[45]
• April 17 – Florence Carpenter Dieudonné, American fantasy fiction writer (born 1850)
• April 19 – Minnie S. Davis, American author and mental scientist (born 1835)
• May 2 – Fukuda Hideko, Japanese feminist author (born 1865)^[46]
• May 20 – N. Samuel of Tranquebar, Ceylonese poet and author (born 1850)
• May 25 – Henri Hubert, French sociologist (born 1872)^[47]
• May 29 – Georges Eekhoud, Belgian novelist (born 1854)
• June 1 – J. B. Bury, Irish historian (born 1861)
• June 9 – Adolfo León Gómez, Colombian poet (born 1857)
• June 14 – Jerome K. Jerome, English humorous writer (born 1859)^[48]
• June 20 – Clara Louise Burnham, American novelist (born 1854)^[49]
• July 5 – Lesbia Harford, Australian poet (born 1891)
• July 16 – Emily Selinger, American author, painter, and educator (born 1848)
• July 17 – Harriet Earhart Monroe, American lecturer, educator, writer, producer (born 1842)^[50]
• July 24 – Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (芥川 龍之介), Japanese short story writer and poet (suicide, born 1892)
• July 26
  • Kazimir Barantsevich, Russian writer (born 1851)
  • Federico De Roberto, Italian novelist and dramatist (born 1861)
• August 13 – James Oliver Curwood, American novelist and conservationist (born 1878)
• August 24 – Manuel Díaz Rodríguez, Venezuelan writer (born 1871)
• September 14 – Hugo Ball, German poet (born 1886)
• September 15 – Herman Gorter, Dutch poet and socialist (born 1864)
• October 8
  • Ricardo Güiraldes, Argentine novelist and poet (Hodgkin's disease, born 1886)^[51]
  • Mary Webb, English novelist (born 1881)^[52]
• October 22 – Borisav Stanković, Serbian realist writer (born 1876)
• October 23 – Bernhard Alexander, Hungarian philosopher and polymath (born 1850)
• October 29 – Hermann Muthesius, German architect and author (born 1861)
• November 23 – Stanisław Przybyszewski, Polish novelist, dramatist, and poet (born 1868)
• December 5 – Fyodor Sologub, Russian dramatist and essayist (born 1863)
• December 17 – Hubert Harrison, African-American writer, critic, and activist (born 1883)
• date unknown – Emma Scarr Booth, British-born American novelist and poet (born 1835)

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Francis Brett Young, The Portrait of Clare
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce, Viscount Bryce of Dechmont, O.M.
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Will James, Smoky the Cow Horse
• Newdigate Prize for poetry: G. E. Trevelyan, Julia, Daughter of Claudius (first female winner)
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Henri Bergson
• Prix Goncourt: Maurice Bedel, Jérôme 60° latitude nord^[53]
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Paul Green, In Abraham's Bosom
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Leonora Speyer, Fiddler's Farewell
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Louis Bromfield, Early Autumn