1913 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1913.

Events

January – Acmeist poetry, with roots back to 1909, is officially born as a reaction to Russian Futurism. Manifestos are printed in the journal Apollon by Nikolay Gumilyov and Sergey Gorodetsky, with illustrative works by both, and by Anna Akhmatova, Vladimir Narbut, and Osip Mandelstam — the last with "Hagia Sophia".
January 1 – The German National Library is founded in Leipzig.
January 8 – Harold Monro officially opens the Poetry Bookshop in London, which becomes a noted international literary meeting-place.
January 24 – Franz Kafka stops working on his novel Amerika, which he never finishes.
March 24 – The new Palace Theatre opens at 1564 Broadway in midtown Manhattan, New York City.
April 5 – Serialization of the adventures of Gaston Leroux's character Chéri-Bibi begins in Le Matin (France).
April – Bernhard Kellermann's novel Der Tunnel sells 100,000 copies in its first six months.
c. April – Humphrey S. Milford becomes publisher to the University of Oxford and head of the London operations of Oxford University Press, after the retirement of Henry Frowde.
September – F. Scott Fitzgerald enters Princeton University, where he meets Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop.
November 8 – Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck, unfinished on his death in 1837, receives its first performance, at the Residenztheater, Munich.
November 13 – Marcel Proust's Swann's Way , volume 1 of In Search of Lost Time , is published by Éditions Grasset in Paris at the author's expense.
December 21 – Arthur Wynne's "word-cross", the first crossword puzzle, appears in the New York World.
December 26 – Ambrose Bierce, an observer with Pancho Villa's army in the Mexican Revolution, sends his last known correspondence. He is never seen again.
unknown dates
*Zaynab, by Husayn Haykal, is published; it is sometimes called the first modern Arabic novel.
*Norbert von Hellingrath begins publishing his edition of Friedrich Hölderlin's complete works, restoring it to literary prominence.
*Henri Stahl publishes excerpts from his novel Un român în lună, one of the earliest works of Romanian science fiction.

New books

Poetry

Delmira Agustini – Los Cálices Vacíos
Guillaume Apollinaire – Alcools
James Elroy Flecker – The Golden Journey to Samarkand
Robert Frost – A Boy's Will
Osip Mandelstam – Hagia Sophia
Siegfried Sassoon – The Daffodil Murderer
Georg Trakl – ''Gedichte''

Non-fiction

Guillaume Apollinaire – The Cubist Painters, Aesthetic Meditations
Miguel de Unamuno – Del sentimiento trágico de la vida
Sigmund Freud – Totem und Tabu
Maxim Gorky – My Childhood
Élie Halévy – Histoire du peuple anglais au XIXe siècle
Holbrook Jackson – The Eighteen Nineties
Walter Lippmann – A Preface to Politics
Luigi Russolo – The Art of Noises
Rosa Luxemburg – Die Akkumulation des Kapitals
Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell – Principia Mathematica
Basil Williams – ''The Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham''

Births

January 23 – Joan Adeney Easdale, English poet
January 29 – Peter von Zahn, German journalist and writer
February 2 – Racey Helps, English children's writer and illustrator
February 26 – George Barker, British poet
February 27
* T. B. Ilangaratne, Sri Lankan author, dramatist, actor and politician
* Irwin Shaw, American playwright, screenwriter and novelist
March 2 – Godfried Bomans, Dutch writer
April 18 – Muttathu Varkey, Malayalam novelist, short story writer, and poet
June 22 – Sándor Weöres, Hungarian poet and author
June 26 – Aimé Césaire, Martinique writer
July 6 – Gwyn Thomas, Welsh novelist
July 21 – Catherine Storr, English children's writer
August 11 – Angus Wilson, English novelist
August 28 – Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist
October 19 – Vasco Pratolini, Italian writer
November 7 – Albert Camus, French writer
November 10 – Karl Shapiro, American poet
December 26 – Elizabeth David, English cookery writer
December 27 – Elizabeth Smart, Canadian poet and novelist

Deaths

January 21 – Aluísio Azevedo, Brazilian novelist, playwright and short story writer
February 9 – Oscar Méténier, French novelist and dramatist
February 13 – Charles Major, American novelist
March 7 – Pauline Johnson, Canadian poet
March 13
*Thomas Krag, Norwegian novelist, dramatist and short story writer
*Jane Marsh Parker, American novelist and religious writer
April 4 – Edward Dowden, Irish critic and poet
May 8 – Charlotte Louisa Hawkins Dempster, Scottish novelist and essayist
June 2 – Alfred Austin, English poet and Poet Laureate
June 13 – Camille Lemonnier, Belgian poet and journalist
July 8 – Louis Hémon, French novelist
July 16 — Esther Saville Allen, American author
October 9 – D. Iacobescu, Romanian poet
October 19 – Emily Lawless, Irish-born modernist novelist and poet
November 26 – Frances Julia Wedgwood, English feminist novelist, biographer and critic
December 1 – Juhan Liiv, Estonian poet and short story writer
December 5 – Ferdinand Dugué, French poet and playwright
December 11 – Ioan Kalinderu, Romanian classical scholar, jurist and agriculturalist

1913 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards