1915 in literature

This article contains information about the literary persons, events and publications of 1915.

Events

January 13 – "Reminiscences of Sergeant Michael Cassidy", the first known story by Captain H. C. McNeile, Royal Engineers, writing as "Sapper", begins in the Daily Mail.
March – Ford Madox Ford's novel The Good Soldier: A tale of passion is published by John Lane – The Bodley Head in London under this title, and under the author's original name, Ford Madox Hueffer, although he had intended it to be called The Saddest Story.
March 26 – Virginia Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out, is published in London by the firm of her half-brother, Gerald Duckworth.
March 26 – The Geração de Orpheu launch the short-lived magazine Orpheu, introducing literary modernism to Portugal.
April 6 – The American Ezra Pound's poetry collection Cathay, "translations... for the most part of the Chinese of Rihaku, from the notes of the late Ernest Fenollosa, and the decipherings of the Professors Mori and Ariga", is published in London by Elkin Mathews.
April 23 – English poet and writer Rupert Brooke, having sailed on February 28 with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force for the Gallipoli campaign, dies age 27 on a hospital ship of streptococcal sepsis from an infected mosquito bite off the Greek island of Skyros in the Aegean, where he is buried this evening with fellow poet Patrick Shaw-Stewart in charge of the firing party. Brooke came to public attention as a war poet on March 11 when The Times Literary Supplement published two sonnets ; the latter was then read from the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday. His collection of poetry, containing all five sonnets, 1914 & Other Poems, is first published posthumously in May and runs to 11 further impressions this year alone.
April 24 – Deportation of Armenian notables from Constantinople begins. Among the writers, poets, teachers and literary critics killed are Dikran Chökürian, Armen Dorian, Melkon Giurdjian, Ardashes Harutiunian, Jacques Sayabalian, Ruben Sevak, Siamanto, and Rupen Zartarian.
May 3 – The rondeau "In Flanders Fields" by the Canadian poet John McCrae is written; it is first published on December 8 in the London magazine Punch.
May 7 – The Sinking of the RMS Lusitania claims 1,198 victims. The Americans among them in this torpedo attack on a civilian passenger liner include the writer and playwright Justus Miles Forman, the theatrical producer Charles Frohman, the writer and philosopher Elbert Hubbard and his second wife Alice Moore Hubbard, and the playwright Charles Klein. The survivors include the British-born writer and educator Ian Holbourn and the bookseller Charles E. Lauriat, Jr.
May 13 – As Julian Grenfell stands talking with other officers, a shell lands some yards away and a splinter hits him in the head. He is taken to a hospital in Boulogne, where he dies 13 days later. His poem "Into Battle" is published in The Times the following day. His younger brother Gerald William Grenfell is killed in action two months later.
c. May – Publication of the first modern book illustrated with wood engravings, Frances Cornford's Spring Morning, from the Poetry Bookshop, London, has engravings by her cousin Gwen Raverat.
June 24 – The Widener Library at Harvard University is dedicated.
June 26 – August 14 – P. G. Wodehouse's novel Something Fresh is serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, introducing the character of Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle. It first appears in book form on September 3 in New York, from D. Appleton & Company, and on September 16 in London, from Methuen.
August/September – John Buchan's thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, set just before the outbreak of war and introducing as hero Richard Hannay, is serialised in Blackwood's Magazine. Book publication follows in October by William Blackwood and Sons in Edinburgh.
August–December – Ezra Pound completes the early sections of his poem The Cantos.
September 15
*P. G. Wodehouse's story "Extricating Young Gussie" is published in The Saturday Evening Post. It introduces as characters Jeeves and Bertie.
*New Culture Movement: Chen Duxiu establishes the New Youth magazine in Shanghai, China.
September 30 – Methuen, publishers of D. H. Lawrence's new novel The Rainbow, are prosecuted in London under the Obscene Publications Act 1857 and its sale is banned. The U.S. edition appears in November without any legal challenge.
October – Franz Kafka's seminal novella The Metamorphosis is first published in Die Weißen Blätter. Kafka finishes writing The Trial this year, but it will not be published until 1925, the year after his death.
October 15 – Detective Story Magazine is first published by Street & Smith of New York, a successor to Nick Carter Stories.
October 27 – Leonid Andreyev's play He Who Gets Slapped premieres at the Moscow Art Theatre
November – The German author Heinrich Mann's essay on Émile Zola in Die Weißen Blätter marks Zola's political commitment and attacks the economic causes of the war. This temporarily disrupts Mann's relations with his younger brother, the novelist Thomas Mann.
unknown dates
*James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and Vladimir Lenin all take up residence in Zurich, in a coincidence to be exploited in Tom Stoppard's 1974 play Travesties.
*Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. establishes the publishers Alfred A. Knopf in New York City.
*The Goudy Old Style serif typeface is created by Frederic Goudy for American Type Founders.

New books

Poetry

C. J. Dennis – The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke
John Drinkwater – Swords and Ploughshares
T. S. Eliot – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
H. B. Elliott, ed. – Lest We Forget: A War Anthology
Geoffrey Faber – Interflow, Poems Mainly Lyrical
Rudyard Kipling – "My Boy Jack"
Francis Ledwidge – Songs of the Fields
Vladimir Mayakovsky – A Cloud in Trousers
Alice Meynell – Poems of the War
Barbu Nemțeanu – Stropi de soare
Fernando Pessoa – Opiário and Ode Marítima
Jessie Pope – Jessie Pope's War Poems and ''More War Poems''

Non-fiction

John Hay Beith – The First Hundred Thousand
John Buchan – Nelson's History of the War
Hall Caine – The Drama of 365 Days: Scenes in the Great War
Maxim Gorky – In the World
Rudyard Kipling – The Fringes of the Fleet
Hugo Krabbe – Die moderne staatsidee
Friedrich Naumann – Mitteleuropa
May Sinclair – A Journal of Impressions in Belgium
Percy Sykes – A History of Persia
''Zhonghua Da Zidian''

Births

January 1 – Branko Ćopić, Bosnian Serb writer
January 6 – Alan Watts, British/American philosopher
January 28 – Nien Cheng, Chinese-born American writer
February 2 – Khushwant Singh, Indian novelist and journalist
February 11 – Patrick Leigh Fermor, British author
March 8 – Drue Heinz, born Doreen English, British-American patron
March 13 – Protiva Bose, Bengali singer and writer
March 18 – Richard Condon, American novelist
March 26 – Hwang Sun-won, Korean fiction writer
April 12 – Július Tomin, Czech writer known for promoting Interlingua
April 15 – Hilda Bernstein, English-born author, artist, and anti-apartheid activist
April 24 – Salvador Borrego, Mexican journalist, historical revisionist and neo-Nazi writer
May 5 – Emanuel Litvinoff, Anglo-Jewish writer
May 8 – Milton Meltzer, American historian and author
May 10 – Monica Dickens, English novelist
May 12 – Joe David Brown, American novelist and journalist
May 27 – Herman Wouk, American novelist
June 10 – Saul Bellow, American writer
June 21 – Jesús Arango Cano, Colombian economist, diplomat, anthropologist, archaeologist and writer
June 22 – Thomas Quinn Curtiss, American writer, and film and theatre critic
July 1
*Alun Lewis, Welsh poet in English
*Jean Stafford, American fiction writer
July 7 – Margaret Walker, American poet and novelist
July 14 – Jerome Lawrence, American dramatist
July 31 – Herbert Aptheker, American historian
August 13 – Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo, Pakistani teacher, writer, scholar, and Sindhi nationalist
August 19 – Ring Lardner, Jr., American journalist and screenwriter
August 28 – Claude Roy, French poet
August 30 – Jack Simmons, English historian
September 8 – Benoît Lacroix, Canadian theologian and philosopher
September 17 – Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, Spanish-born philosopher
September 21 – Gertrude Poe, American journalist
September 27 – Marjorie Chibnall, English medievalist, biographer and translator
October 17 – Arthur Miller, American dramatist
October 24 – Marghanita Laski, English biographer, novelist and broadcaster
November 8 – G. S. Fraser, Scottish poet and critic
November 12 – Roland Barthes, French literary theorist
November 16 – Jean Fritz, American children's writer
November 26 – Emilio D'Amore, Italian writer, journalist, and politician
December 6 – Nilawan Pintong, Thai writer
December 13 – Ross Macdonald, American-Canadian writer
December 22 – David Martin, Hungarian-born Australian poet
December 27 – John Cornford, English poet

Deaths

January 3 – James Elroy Flecker, English poet, novelist and dramatist
January 19 – Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, American author, lecturer, reformer
February 4 – Mary Elizabeth Braddon, English popular novelist
April 8 – Louis Pergaud, French novelist
April 19 – Julia Evelyn Ditto Young, American poet and novelist
April 23 – Rupert Brooke, English war poet
May 7
* Justus Miles Forman, American writer
* Charles Frohman, American theater producer
* Elbert Hubbard, American writer and philosopher
* Alice Moore Hubbard, American wife of Elbert Hubbard
* Charles Klein, American playwright
May 11 – Lucy Bethia Walford, Scottish-born novelist and artist
May 26 – Julian Grenfell, English war poet
June 4 – George Calderon, English dramatist and translator
July 5 – Aurelio Tolentino, Filipino dramatist
August 19 – Tevfik Fikret, Ottoman Turkish poet and journalist.
September 1 – August Stramm, German Expressionist poet and playwright
September 27 – Remy de Gourmont, French Symbolist poet, novelist, and critic
October 17 – Edmond Laforest, Haitian French-language poet
November 14 – Booker T. Washington, American writer and educator
December 23 – Roland Leighton, English war poet

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Romain Rolland

1915 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards