1908 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1908.

Events

February 15 – The weekly boys' story paper The Magnet is first published in London, containing "The Making of Harry Wharton", the first serial story of the fictional Greyfriars School written by Charles Hamilton as Frank Richards and introducing the character of Billy Bunter.
March – Ezra Pound leaves America for Europe. In April, he moves to Venice, where in July he publishes himself his first collection of poems, A Lume Spento. In August he settles in London, where he will remain until 1920 and in December publish A Quinzaine for this Yule.
June 18 – Mark Twain buys a house in Redding, Connecticut.
Summer – The Marlowe Society stages a production at the New Theatre, Cambridge, of Milton's masque Comus, directed by Rupert Brooke.
July – Katherine Mansfield moves to London; she will never return to her native New Zealand.
September 30 – Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird is premièred, at Konstantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre.
October 3 – The Avenida Theatre opens on Buenos Aires' Avenida de Mayo with a production of Lope de Vega's El castigo sin venganza directed by María Guerrero.
November 10 – Opening of a production of Euripides' The Bacchae directed by William Poel in Gilbert Murray's verse translation at the Royal Court Theatre in London under the management of Harley Granville-Barker with his wife Lillah McCarthy in the role of Dionysus.
November 18 – The release in France of La Mort du duc de Guise marks the first film with a screenplay by an eminent man of letters, the playwright Henri Lavedan; it is also directed by two men of the theatre, Charles Le Bargy and André Calmettes, and features actors of the Comédie-Française.
December – Ford Madox Hueffer begins publication of the literary magazine The English Review in London. The first issue contains original work by Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy and W. H. Hudson, and begins serialization of H. G. Wells's realist semi-autobiographical satirical novel Tono-Bungay.
December 1 – Cuala Press, set up at Churchtown, Dublin, as a private press independent of the former Dun Emer Press in connection with the Irish Literary Revival and Arts and Crafts movement by Elizabeth "Lolly" Yeats with editorial support from her brother W. B. Yeats, produces its first publication, Poetry and Ireland: Essays by W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson.
unknown dates
*Ethiopian linguist Afevork Ghevre Jesus's ልብ ፡ ወለድ ፡ ታሪክ ።, the first novel in Amharic, is published in Rome.
*The Malay tale Hikayat Hang Tuah is first published, edited by Sulaiman bin Muhammed Nur and William Shellabear.
*The Romanian writer Urmuz is known to be working on his manuscript stories, the Bizarre Pages, printed only after 1922.

New books

Poetry

Edward Carpenter – Iolaus: Anthology of Friendship
W. H. Davies – Nature Poems
Maria Konopnicka – ''Rota''

Non-fiction

Robert Baden-Powell – Scouting for Boys
Sarah Bernhardt – My Double Life
Annie Besant, C. W. Leadbeater – Occult Chemistry
Edward Carpenter – The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women
G. K. Chesterton – All Things Considered
W. H. Davies – The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp
Levi H. Dowling – The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
Gertrude Jekyll – Colour in the Flower Garden
Jack London – War of the Classes
Francisco I. Madero – La sucesión presidencial en 1910
Titu Maiorescu – Critice
Friedrich Nietzsche – Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist
M. Ostrogorski – Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties
George Panu – Amintiri de la Junimea din Iași
Charlotte Carmichael Stopes – The Sphere of 'Man' in Relation to that of 'Woman' in the Constitution
Thomas Traherne – Centuries of Meditations, now first printed from the author's manuscript
Alfred R. Tucker – ''Eighteen Years in Uganda and East Africa''

Births

January 9 – Simone de Beauvoir, French feminist philosopher
January 16 – Pavel Nilin, Soviet novelist and playwright
January 18 – Jacob Bronowski, Polish-born scientist and poet
January 20
*Fleur Cowles, American journalist, editor and illustrator
*Jean S. MacLeod, Scottish-English romantic novelist
February 1 – Leonard Gribble, English novelist
February 4 – Julian Bell, English poet
February 11 – Philip Dunne, American screenwriter, director, and producer
February 29 – Dee Brown, American novelist and historian
March 2 – Olivia Manning, English playwright and novelist
March 5 – Irving Fiske, American playwright, WPA writer, and speaker; co-founder of Quarry Hill Creative Center,
March 6 – Dame Felicitas Corrigan, English writer and Benedictine nun
March 8 – Ebrahim Al-Arrayedh, Indian-born Bahraini poet
March 22 – Louis L'Amour, American author
April 12 – Ida Pollock, British romantic novelist
May 17 – Frederic Prokosch, American novelist and poet
May 20 – Aleksei Arbuzov, Soviet playwright
May 25 – Theodore Roethke, American poet
May 27 – Peggy Ramsay, born Margaret Venniker, Australian-born British theatrical agent
May 28 – Ian Fleming, English espionage novelist
June 1 – Julie Campbell Tatham, American children's writer
June 14 – Kathleen Raine, English poet, scholar, and translator
June 25 – John Sommerfield, English communist writer
June 27 – João Guimarães Rosa, Brazilian novelist
June 30
* Winston Graham, English novelist
* Rob Nieuwenhuys, Dutch writer
July 7 – Laurie Fitzhardinge, Australian historian and librarian
July 10 – Carl Richard Jacobi, American journalist and author
July 23 – Elio Vittorini, Italian author
August 21 – M. M. Kaye, Indian-born English novelist and autobiographer
August 23 – Arthur Adamov, French Absurdist playwright
August 28
*Robert Merle, French novelist
*Marguerite Young, American novelist, poet and biographer
August 31 – William Saroyan, American writer
September 4 – Richard Wright, African-American novelist and poet
September 9 – Cesare Pavese, Italian poet and novelist
September 15 – Miško Kranjec, Slovenian writer
September 17 – John Creasey, English crime writer
October 5 – Joshua Logan, American stage and film writer and director
October 13 – Robert Liddell, English biographer, novelist and poet
October 17 – Leon Kalustian, Romanian journalist, essayist and memoirist
October 23 – Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov, Chechen historian
October 24 – Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Dominican writer
October 25 – Edmond Pidoux, Swiss writer
November 8 – Zhou Yang, Chinese literary theorist
November 8 – Martha Gellhorn, American journalist
November 9 – Lucian Boz, Romanian and Australian literary critic
November 20 – Alistair Cooke, English-born American journalist
November 21 – Elizabeth George Speare, American children's writer
November 23 – Nelson S. Bond, American author, playwright and scriptwriter
November 28
*Claude Lévi-Strauss, Belgian-born French anthropologist
*Mary Oppen, American poet, activist and photographer
November 30 – Buddhadeb Bosu, Bengali poet and writer
December 14 – Mária Szepes, Hungarian novelist and screenwriter
December 22 – Giovanni Luigi Bonelli, Italian comic book author and writer
December 25 – Quentin Crisp, English gay icon, author and raconteur

Deaths

January 9 – Wilhelm Busch, German humorist and poet
January 14 – Holger Drachmann, Danish poet and dramatist
January 18 – Edmund Clarence Stedman, American poet and critic
January 25 – Ouida, English novelist
February 7
*Alexander Ertel, Russian novelist and short story writer
*Manuel Curros Enríquez, Spanish Galician writer
February 17 – Annie Ryder Gracey, American author and missionary
March 4 – Mrs. Henry Clarke, English historical novelist and children's writer
March 11 – Edmondo De Amicis, Italian novelist
March 12 – Susan Marr Spalding, American poet
March 19 – Eduard Zeller, German philosopher
March 25 – Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov, Russian poet, dramatist and critic
March 29
*Eliza Trask Hill, American journalist and activist
*Esther Pugh, American editor and publisher
April 20 – Henry Chadwick, English-born American baseball writer and historian
May 7 – Ludovic Halévy, French playwright and author
May 23 – François Coppée, French author, le poète des humbles
June 5 – Jonas Lie, Norwegian writer
June 16 – Mary Elizabeth Hawker, Scottish-born English fiction writer
June 20 – Eleanor Kirk, American author, publisher
July 3 – Joel Chandler Harris, American journalist and author
July 28 – Otto Pfleiderer, German theologian
July 29 – Estelle M. H. Merrill, American journalist and editor
August 4 – Bronson Howard, American dramatist
August 10 – Louise Chandler Moulton, American author and critic
August 14 – Anton Giulio Barrili, Italian novelist
September 29 – Machado de Assis, Brazilian writer
November 1 – Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney, American educator, poet, author, and editor
November 8
December 5 – Mary H. Graves, American minister, literary editor, writer

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Rudolf Christoph Eucken
Newdigate Prize: Julian Huxley, "Holyrood"

1908 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards