1907 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1907.

Events

January 3 – The National Theatre opens in Sofia, Bulgaria.
January 26 – Many of the audience boo the opening performance of J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Disturbances continue for a week.
February 4 – The poet W. B. Yeats, at a public debate at the Abbey Theatre, denies trying to suppress audience distaste during a performance of The Playboy of the Western World.
February 22 – Leonid Andreyev's symbolist drama The Life of Man is premièred at the Komissarzhevskaya Theatre in Saint Petersburg, directed by Vsevolod Meyerkhold. On December 12 it is performed for the first time at the Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Konstantin Stanislavski and Leopold Sulerzhitsky.
March – The Diamond Sūtra, a woodblock printed Buddhist scripture dated AD 868, is discovered by Aurel Stein at the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang in China. It is said to be "the earliest complete survival of a dated printed book".
March–April
*As an aftermath of the Romanian peasants' revolt comes a government clampdown on the radical authors Constantin Banu and Nicolae Iorga, whose homes are raided by police. N. D. Cocea is prosecuted for sedition and Barbu Lăzăreanu expelled from the country; I. C. Vissarion, who allegedly planned an attack on Titu, is arrested and sentenced to death, but ultimately reprieved. From Berlin, Ion Luca Caragiale watches the events with a "hopelessness stifled by disgust", as reported by his son Luca. His exposé demanding social justice in the Romanian Kingdom is translated into German by Mite Kremnitz and carried by Die Zeit of Vienna. The "pillars of fire" witnessed by Banu inspire him to name his 1911 magazine Flacăra – "Flame".
*Virginia Stephen, the future Virginia Woolf, and others of her family move within London's Bloomsbury to 29 Fitzroy Square, a former home of George Bernard Shaw.
April 17 – August Strindberg's A Dream Play receives its first performance, at the Swedish Theatre (Stockholm), with his ex-wife Harriet Bosse in the leading rôle.
April 23 – Jack and Charmian London sail out of San Francisco Bay to begin the voyage described in The Cruise of the Snark.
May–September – Kenneth Grahame writes letters to his son that become the basis for The Wind in the Willows.
May – British publishers Thomas Nelson and William Collins, Sons launch cheap hardback in-copyright imprints.
May 15 – American humorist Gelett Burgess coins the term "blurb" for promotional text on a book jacket.
June 1 – Black Slave's Cry to Heaven, adapted by Zeng Xiaogu from Uncle Tom's Cabin, is first performed by Tokyo-based Chinese student troupe Chunliu She, considered one of the first Western-style theatrical performances in Chinese.
June 26 – Mark Twain receives an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Oxford, England; Rudyard Kipling is also honoured at the ceremony.
September 7 – Gaston Leroux's pioneering locked room mystery, The Mystery of the Yellow Room , begins to be serialized in L'Illustration, Paris.
November – While tutoring a Trieste businessman in English, James Joyce reveals that he is a writer, and his pupil, known to Joyce as Ettore Schmitz, proves to be the published novelist Italo Svevo. A literary friendship ensues.
Uncertain dates
*A deluxe edition of Margarete Böhme's Tagebuch einer Verlorenen published in Berlin marks 100,000 copies in print.
*Éditions Grasset is established in Paris.
*Thomas Mofolo's becomes the first work of literature to be published in the Sotho language.
*Hélène van Zuylen leaves her partner Renée Vivien for another woman. Vivien's volume of love poetry Flambeaux éteints is published this year.
* Anino ng Kahapon, a Tagalog-language novel is published.

New books

Births

February 1 – Günter Eich, German lyricist
February 3 – James A. Michener, American novelist
February 18 – Traian Herseni, Romanian social scientist and journalist
February 21 – W. H. Auden, English poet
March 9 – Mircea Eliade, Romanian historian, philosopher and novelist
April 7 – Violette Leduc, French novelist and memoirist
April 30 – Jacob Hiegentlich, gay Dutch Jewish writer
May 5 – Iryna Vilde, Ukrainian writer
May 12 – Leslie Charteris, Singapore-born Chinese-British genre novelist
May 13 – Daphne du Maurier, English writer
May 27 – Rachel Carson, American environmentalist and author
June 2 – John Lehmann, English poet, autobiographer and publisher
June 4 – Jacques Roumain, Haitian writer and politician
June 14
*Nicolas Bentley, British writer and illustrator
*René Char, French poet
July 7 – Robert A. Heinlein, American author
July 29 – Aileen Fox, English archaeologist
July 31 – Gerald Butler, English crime writer
August 12 – Miguel Torga, Portuguese author
August 17 – Roger Peyrefitte, French author
August 28 – Rupert Hart-Davis, English editor and publisher
September 23 – Anne Desclos, French journalist and erotic novelist
October 15 – Varian Fry, American journalist
October 18 – Mihail Sebastian, Romanian Jewish playwright, essayist and novelist
October 28 – John Hewitt, Northern Irish poet
November 14 – Astrid Lindgren, Swedish author of children's books
November 27 – L. Sprague de Camp, American science fiction and fantasy author
November 28 – Alberto Moravia, Italian novelist
November 30 – Jacques Barzun, French-born American historian
December 10 – Rumer Godden, English novelist
December 17 – Christianna Brand, British crime novelist
December 18 – Christopher Fry, English dramatist
December 19 – William Glynne-Jones, Welsh novelist and children's writer
December 27 – Mary Howard, English romance novelist
unknown dates
*Abdullah al-Qasemi, Arab writer
*Filimon Săteanu, Soviet Moldovan poet
*E. J. Scovell, English poet

Deaths

January 20 – Agnes Mary Clerke, English author on astronomy
January 21 – Bertram Fletcher Robinson, English journalist, editor and author
February 16 – Giosuè Carducci, Italian writer, Nobel Prize laureate
March 9 – Frederic George Stephens, English critic and member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
March 19 – Thomas Bailey Aldrich, American poet and novelist
April 23 – André Theuriet, French poet and novelist
May 9 – Melissa Elizabeth Banta, American poet, travel writer
May 12 – Joris-Karl Huysmans, French author
May 18 – Mary De Morgan, English children's writer and suffragist
May 31 – Sarah Gibson Humphreys, American author and suffragist
June 12 – Ellen Russell Emerson, American author and ethnologist
July 17 – Hector Malot, French author
July 19 – William Gunion Rutherford, Scottish classicist
July 28 – Mildred A. Bonham, American travel writer
August 1 – Lucy Mabel Hall-Brown, American physician and writer
August 10 – Marko Vovchok, Ukrainian novelist and short story writer
August 25 – Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, English novelist and poet
September 6 – Sully Prudhomme, French poet and essayist; 1st Nobel Prize winner
September 7 – Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Romanian philologist and polygraph
September 8 – Iosif Vulcan, Romanian poet, playwright and novelist
October 6 – David Masson, Scottish critic and biographer
October 29 – Mkrtich Khrimian, Armenian Catholicos, essayist and poet
October 30 – Caroline Dana Howe, American author
November 1 – Alfred Jarry, French dramatist
November 28 – Stanisław Wyspiański, Polish dramatist, poet and painter
December 28 – Louise Granberg, Swedish playwright

Awards

Chancellor's Gold Medal: Donald Welldon Corrie
Newdigate Prize: Robert Cruttwell, Camoens
Nobel Prize for Literature: Rudyard Kipling

1907 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards