1904 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1904.
Events
- January
- *Mark Twain begins dictating his Autobiography.
- *The first issue of Süddeutsche Monatshefte is published in Munich by Paul Nikolaus Cossmann.
- January 17 – Anton Chekhov's last play, The Cherry Orchard, opens at the Moscow Art Theatre directed by Constantin Stanislavski.
- February 25 – J. M. Synge's tragedy Riders to the Sea is first performed at Molesworth Hall, Dublin, by the Irish National Theatre Society.
- March 1 – Sophie Radford de Meissner's translation of Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy's 1863 historical drama Ivan the Terrible is first played at the New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway, New York City, by Richard Mansfield.
- April 24 – A Lithuanian press ban in the Russian Empire is lifted. Petras Vileišis installs a printing press in his Vileišis Palace in Vilnius.
- April 25 – Herbert Beerbohm Tree establishes what will become the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, at His Majesty's Theatre in the London's Haymarket.
- May 10 – Virginia Woolf suffers a mental breakdown after the death on February 22 of her father, Sir Leslie Stephen.
- June 16 – The original "Bloomsday", the day James Joyce first walks out with his future wife Nora Barnacle, to the Dublin suburb of Ringsend. He sets the action of his novel Ulysses on this date.
- June 28 – Chekhov, suffering from tuberculosis at Badenweiler, writes to his sister Masha saying his health is improving. He dies just over two weeks later.
- September – Mark Twain buys a home at 21 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
- November 1
- *George Bernard Shaw's comedy about Ireland, John Bull's Other Island, opens at the Royal Court Theatre, London, under the management of Harley Granville-Barker after W. B. Yeats rejects it for Dublin's Abbey Theatre.
- *The Stephen family have moved to a home at 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London, where Virginia Woolf joins them about November 8. Here the Bloomsbury Group will form.
- November – Hall Caine's novel The Prodigal Son is published by Heinemann in London and opens in a dramatic adaptation at the Grand Theatre, Douglas, Isle of Man.
- December – The only known surviving copy of the first quarto edition of Shakespeare's play Titus Andronicus is discovered in Sweden.
- December 21 – The first of Virginia Woolf's published writings, "Haworth, November 1904", an account of a visit to the Brontë family home, appears anonymously in a women's supplement to a clerical journal, The Guardian.
- December 24 – The Coliseum Theatre in London opens.
- December 27
- *The Irish National Theatre Society opens to the public in Dublin. The bill consists of three one-act plays: On Baile's Strand and Cathleen Ní Houlihan by Yeats, and Spreading the News by Lady Gregory.
- *J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up premières at the Duke of York's Theatre in London with Nina Boucicault in the title rôle and Gerald du Maurier as Captain Hook and Mr Darling; du Maurier is the uncle of the Llewellyn Davies boys, who inspired the story.
- unknown dates
- *Probably early this year, Kenneth Grahame begins telling the bedtime stories to his son that are the origin of The Wind in the Willows.
- *Alexander Blok's poetry cycle Stikhi o prekrasnoi Dame, written to his new wife, ushers in the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.
- *Seven-year-old Wasif Jawhariyyeh begins keeping diaries, later acclaimed as masterpieces of modern Arabic and Jerusalem literature.
- *The Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom , written in 1785, is first published, by the Berlin sexologist Dr. Iwan Bloch.
- *Translations of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace into English by Constance Garnett and by Leo Wiener are published.
New books
Fiction
- Hall Caine – The Prodigal Son
- G. K. Chesterton – The Napoleon of Notting Hill
- Joseph Conrad – Nostromo
- Machado de Assis – Esaú e Jacó
- Grazia Deledda – Cenere
- Alexandre Dumas translated by Alfred Richard Allinson – The Wolf Leader
- Claude Farrère – Fumée d'opium
- Ludwig Ganghofer – Storms in May
- John Galsworthy – The Island Pharisees
- Frederic Harrison – Theophano, The Crusade of the Tenth Century
- O. Henry – Cabbages and Kings
- Robert Herrick – The Common Lot
- Hermann Hesse – Peter Camenzind
- William Henry Hudson – Green Mansions
- Robert Smythe Hichens
- * The Garden of Allah
- * The Woman with the Fan
- Henry James – The Golden Bowl
- M. R. James – Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
- Mary Johnston – Sir Mortimer
- James Joyce – "The Sisters"
- Jack London – The Sea-Wolf
- Arthur Morrison – The Green Eye of Goona
- I. L. Peretz – "The Magician"
- Vincas Pietaris – Algimantas
- Luigi Pirandello – The Late Mattia Pascal
- Henrik Pontoppidan – Lucky Per
- Gene Stratton Porter – Freckles
- Władysław Reymont – Chłopi
- Frederick Rolfe – Hadrian the Seventh
- Romain Rolland – Jean-Christophe
- Rafael Sabatini – The Tavern Knight
- Saki – Reginald
- May Sinclair – The Divine Fire
- Katherine Thurston – John Chilcote, M.P.
- Mark Twain – A Dog's Tale
- Jules Verne
- *A Drama in Livonia
- *Master of the World
- H. G. Wells – The Food of the Gods
- Owen Wister
- *A Journey In Search of Christmas
- *Philosophy 4
- Stefan Żeromski – ''Ashes ''
Children and young people
- L. Frank Baum – The Marvelous Land of Oz
- Laura Lee Hope – The Bobbsey Twins
- Selma Lagerlöf – The Treasure
- E. Nesbit – The Phoenix and the Carpet
- Beatrix Potter
- *The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
- *The Tale of Two Bad Mice
- Leo Tolstoy – Classic Tales and Fables for Children
- P. G. Wodehouse, John W. Houghton and Philip Dadd – ''William Tell Told Again''
Drama
- J. M. Barrie – Peter Pan
- Hall Caine – The Prodigal Son
- Anton Chekhov – The Cherry Orchard
- Gabriele D'Annunzio – The Daughter of Iorio
- Octave Mirbeau – Farces and Moralities
- Erich Mühsam – The Con Men
- George Bernard Shaw – John Bull's Other Island
- Tsubouchi Shōyō
- *Kiri Hitoha
- *Shinkyoku Urashima
- J. M. Synge – Riders to the Sea
- Edgar Wallace – An African Millionaire
- Frank Wedekind – Pandora's Box
- Nik Welter – Die Söhne des Öslings
- Stanisław Wyspiański – November Night
Poetry
- Marie Dauguet
- *Les Paroles du vent
- *Par l'Amour
- Zinaida Gippius – «Собрание стихов. 1889–1903»
- Giovanni Pascoli
- *Primi poemetti
- *''Primi conviviali''
Non-fiction
- A. C. Bradley – Shakespearean Tragedy
- Ernst Haeckel – Kunstformen der Natur
- Philip Henslowe, edited by Walter W. Greg – Henslowe's Diary
- Thomas Nashe, edited by R. B. McKerrow – The Works of Thomas Nashe
- Okakura Kakuzo – The Awakening of Japan
- Thorstein Veblen – The Theory of Business Enterprise
- John Henry Wigmore – ''A Treatise on the System of Evidence in Trials at Common Law''
Births
- January 14 – Robert Speaight, English actor, biographer and essayist
- January 22 – Arkady Gaidar, Russian children's writer
- January 23 – Louis Zukofsky, American modernist poet
- February 1 – S. J. Perelman, American humorist and author
- February 4 – MacKinlay Kantor, American historian
- February 19 – Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, Irish memoirist
- March 2 – Dr. Seuss, American children's writer
- March 26 – Joseph Campbell, American author and expert on mythology
- April 4 – Soeman Hs, Indonesian novelist and short story writer
- April 27 – Cecil Day-Lewis, Anglo-Irish poet
- May 6 – Harry Martinson, Swedish author and Nobel laureate
- May 20
- *Margery Allingham, English writer of detective fiction
- *Alexander Skutch, American scientific writer and naturalist
- May 22 – Anne de Vries, Dutch novelist
- June 16 – Eileen Colwell, English children's librarian
- July 13 – Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet and Nobel laureate
- July 21 – Ion Biberi, Romanian social scientist, novelist, and essayist
- August 4 – Witold Gombrowicz, Polish playwright and novelist
- August 10 – Dorothy B. Hughes, American crime writer and critic
- August 24 – Gwyn Williams, Welsh writer and poet
- August 26 – Christopher Isherwood, Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer
- September – Abdulla Goran, Kurdish poet
- September 27 – John Gwilym Jones, Welsh dramatist and writer
- October 2 – Graham Greene, English novelist and journalist
- October 12 – Ding Ling, born Jiang Bingzhi, Chinese fiction writer
- November 25 – Ba Jin, born Li Yaotang, Chinese novelist
- November 28 – Nancy Mitford, English novelist and biographer
- December 13 – Glen Byam Shaw, English theatrical director
- December 21 – Johannes Edfelt, Swedish poet, translator and critic
- December 26 – Alejo Carpentier, Swiss-born Cuban novelist
Deaths
- January 3 – Larin Paraske, Finnish folk poet
- January 20 – Hermann Eduard von Holst, German historian of the United States
- February 3 – Olive E. Dana, American author
- February 8 – Alfred Ainger, English biographer and critic
- February 22 – Sir Leslie Stephen, English essayist and critic
- March 2 – Mary C. Billings, American writer, evangelist, missionary
- April 16 – Samuel Smiles, British reformer and writer, advocate of self-help
- May 5 – Mór Jókai, Hungarian dramatist and novelist
- June 5 – Olivia Langdon Clemens, American editor
- July 3 – Theodor Herzl, Austro-Hungarian journalist
- July 6 – Abai Qunanbaiuly, Kazakh poet, philosopher and cultural reformer
- July 15 – Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and short story writer
- August 22 – Kate Chopin, American novelist and short story writer
- September 26 – Lafcadio Hearn, Greek-born writer in English on Japan
- October 11:
- *Mary Tenney Gray, American editorial writer
- *Trumbull Stickney, American classicist and poet
- October 17
- *Dumitru Theodor Neculuță, Romanian poet
- *Ștefan Petică, Romanian Symbolist poet and writer
- October 21 – Euphemia Vale Blake, British-born American author and critic
- October 23 – Emilia, Lady Dilke, English art historian
- November 19 – Hans von Hopfen, German poet and novelist
Awards
- Newdigate Prize: George Bell, "Delphi"
- Nobel Prize for Literature: Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray y Eizaguirre
- First Prix Femina: Myriam Harry for ''La Conquête de Jérusalem''