1918 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1918.
Events
- January 1 – The English novelist and wartime propagandist Hall Caine is made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
- January 2 – The English novelist Marie Corelli is convicted under wartime legislation against hoarding food.
- January 18 – The first edition of Aussie: The Australian Soldiers' Magazine appears.
- January 23 – The English poet Robert Graves marries the painter Nancy Nicholson in London. The wedding guests include Wilfred Owen, whose first nationally published poem appears three days later. He will be killed by the end of the year.
- March
- *The Telemachus episode in James Joyce's Ulysses is published in serialized form in the U.S. journal The Little Review.
- *The English novelist Alec Waugh is taken prisoner of war. He will be incarcerated in Mainz Citadel with the monologist J. Milton Hayes, also taken prisoner this year, and Hugh Kingsmill.
- April
- *Hu Shih, chief advocate of the use of the vernacular in Chinese literature at the time, publishes an essay, "Constructive Literary Revolution – A Literature of National Speech" in the magazine New Youth (Xin Qingnian) proposing a four-point reform program.
- *The English writer May Sinclair introduces the term "Stream of consciousness" to describe a narrative mode, in a discussion of Dorothy Richardson's novel sequence Pilgrimage in The Egoist.
- May 3 – The New Zealand writer and poet Katherine Mansfield marries her long-time partner John Middleton Murry at Kensington register office in London.
- June
- *The 2nd annual Pulitzer Prizes are awarded in the United States, including the first award for a novel.
- *The English poet Basil Bunting is imprisoned as a conscientious objector.
- August 17 – The poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon meet for the last time, in London, and spend what Sassoon will recall as "the whole of a hot cloudless afternoon together."
- October 3 – Siegfried Sassoon visits his mentor Robbie Ross for the last time. Sassoon will write later that Ross's goodbye gave him a "presentiment of final farewell."
- November 4 – Wilfred Owen is killed in action aged 25, at the Sambre–Oise Canal, with only five of his poems published. News of his death reaches his parents in Shrewsbury a week later on Armistice Day. He is awarded a posthumous Military Cross a year later.
- December – The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins are published through Robert Bridges. Few were published in Hopkins' lifetime, so that this introduces his innovative sprung rhythm and imagery to many readers.
- December 28 – Emperor Khải Định of Vietnam declares the traditional Chữ nôm script for the Vietnamese language to be replaced by the Latin script Vietnamese alphabet.
- Winter – Parisian farceur Georges Feydeau contracts tertiary syphilis.
New books
Fiction
- Ryūnosuke Akutagawa – "Hell Screen"
- Arnold Bennett – The Roll-Call
- Victor Bridges – The Lady from Long Acre
- Willa Cather – My Ántonia
- Blaise Cendrars
- *I Have Killed
- *The Severed Hand
- J. Storer Clouston – The Man from the Clouds
- Marie Corelli – The Young Diana
- Grazia Deledda – L'incendio nell'oliveto
- Ethel M. Dell – Greatheart
- Alfred Döblin – Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine
- Sarah Lee Brown Fleming – Hope's Highway
- Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – Edgewater People
- August Gailit – Fairyland
- Owen Gregory – Meccania the Super-State
- Thea von Harbou – Das indische Grabmal
- Frederic S. Isham – Three Live Ghosts
- Herbert George Jenkins – Patricia Brent, Spinster
- Wyndham Lewis – Tarr
- Lu Xun – "Diary of a Madman"
- Compton Mackenzie – The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett
- Brinsley MacNamara – The Valley of the Squinting Windows
- Heinrich Mann – Der Untertan
- Frans Masereel – 25 Images of a Man's Passion
- André Maurois – Les Silences du Colonel Bramble
- George Moore – A Story-Teller's Holiday
- Baroness Orczy
- *Flower o' the Lily
- *The Man in Grey
- Leo Perutz – From Nine to Nine
- Henry De Vere Stacpoole – The Man Who Lost Himself
- Junichiro Tanizaki – Gold and Silver
- Booth Tarkington – The Magnificent Ambersons
- Edgar Wallace
- * The Clue of the Twisted Candle
- * Down Under Donovan
- * The Man Who Knew
- * Those Folk of Bulboro
- Mary Augusta Ward – The War and Elizabeth
- Rebecca West – The Return of the Soldier
- Edith Wharton – The Marne
- Valentine Williams – The Man with the Clubfoot
- Francis Brett Young – ''The Crescent Moon''
Musical Theatre
- Harry Carroll and Joseph McCarthy – ''Oh, Look!''
Children and young people
- Elsa Beskow – Tant Grön, tant Brun och tant Gredelin
- Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
- May Gibbs – Tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie: their adventures wonderful
- Johnny Gruelle – Raggedy Ann Stories
- Norman Lindsay – The Magic Pudding: Being The Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff
- Ferenc Móra – Kincskereső kisködmön
- Beatrix Potter – ''The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse''
Drama
- Bertolt Brecht – Baal
- John Drinkwater – Abraham Lincoln
- Marcel Gerbidon and Paul Armont – School for Coquettes
- Susan Glaspell – Tickless Time
- Walter Hackett – The Freedom of the Seas
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal – The Difficult Man
- James Joyce – Exiles
- Georg Kaiser – Gas
- Alice Dunbar Nelson – Mine Eyes Have Seen
- Gregorio Martínez Sierra – Sueño de Una Noche de Agosto
- Vladimir Mayakovsky – Mystery-Bouffe
- Emma Orczy – The Legion of Honour
- Luigi Pirandello
- *But It's Nothing Serious
- *The Rules of the Game
Poetry
- Guillaume Apollinaire – Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War, 1913-1916
- Laurence Binyon – The New World: Poems
- Vera Brittain – Verses of a VAD
- Toirdhealbhach Mac Suibhne – Battle-cries
- Walter de la Mare – The Marionettes
- Siegfried Sassoon – Counter-Attack and Other Poems
- Edward Thomas – Last Poems
- Tristan Tzara – ''Vingt-cinq poèmes''
Non-fiction
- Henry Adams - The Education of Henry Adams
- Enid Bagnold - A Diary Without Dates
- Karl Barth - The Epistle to the Romans
- Clive Bell - Pot-boilers
- Laurence Binyon - For Dauntless France
- Arthur Conan Doyle - The New Revelation
- François-Marie-Joseph Gourdon - An Account of the Entry of the Catholic Religion into Sichuan
- William Inge - The Philosophy of Plotinus
- Daniel Jones - An Outline of English Phonetics
- Federico García Lorca - Impressiones y Paisajes
- Thomas Mann - Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man
- Walther Rathenau - An Deutschlands Jugend
- Oswald Spengler - The Decline of the West
- Dr Marie Stopes
- *Married Love
- *Wise Parenthood
- Lytton Strachey - Eminent Victorians
- Mary Augusta Ward - ''A Writer's Recollections''
Births
- January 11 – Robert C. O'Brien, American novelist
- January 16
- *Philip José Farmer, American science fiction writer
- *Stirling Silliphant, American writer, producer
- January 30 – Bazilije Pandžić, Croatian historian, archivist and orientalist
- February 1 – Muriel Spark, Scottish novelist
- February 6 – Lothar-Günther Buchheim, German novelist, war correspondent and painter
- March 9 – Mickey Spillane, American mystery writer
- March 10 – Theodore Cogswell, American science fiction author
- March 15 – Richard Ellmann, American literary biographer
- April 23
- *Maurice Druon, French historical novelist
- *James Kirkup, English poet
- May 16 – Juan Rulfo, Mexican author
- June 9 – Bidhyanath Pokhrel, Nepali poet
- July 9 – John Heath-Stubbs, English poet and translator
- July 14 – Arthur Laurents, American novelist and screenwriter
- July 24 – Antonio Candido, Brazilian literary critic
- August 9 – Robert Aldrich, American writer and filmmaker
- August 20 – Jacqueline Susann, American novelist
- August 27 – Leon Levițchi, Romanian translator
- September 19 – Penelope Mortimer, Welsh-born English novelist and biographer
- October 19 – Louis Althusser, French Marxist philosopher
- October 22 – René de Obaldia, French playwright and poet
- October 29 – Ștefan Baciu, Romanian and Brazilian poet, novelist and literary promoter
- November 2 – Roger Lancelyn Green, English biographer
- November 16 – Nicholas Moore, English poet
- November 20 – Naomi Frankel, German-born Israeli novelist
- November 25 – Peter Opie, English writer on children's literature and lore
- November 29 – Madeleine L'Engle, American writer for children and teens
- December 7 – Liu Yichang, Chinese novelist, editor and publisher
- December 11 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist
- December 30 – Al Purdy, Canadian poet
Deaths
- January 1 – William Wilfred Campbell, Canadian poet
- January 6 – Dora Sigerson Shorter, Irish poet, novelist and sculptor
- January 28 – John McCrae, Canadian military surgeon and war poet
- February 8 – Lascăr Vorel, Romanian visual artist and short story writer
- February 9 – E. J. Richmond, American novelist and children's writer
- March 19 – Florence Anderson Clark, American author, newspaper editor, librarian, and university administrator
- April 1 – Isaac Rosenberg, English poet and artist
- April – William Hope Hodgson, English author and essayist
- May 8 – Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, Austrian writer and traveller
- May 27 – Francis George Fowler, English grammarian
- June 10 – Arrigo Boito, Italian poet and composer
- June 26 – Peter Rosegger, Austrian poet
- June 28 – Alexander Turnbull, New Zealand bibliophile
- July 22 – Helen Stuart Campbell, American author, novelist and economist
- July 26 – Helen Taggart Clark, American columnist, short story writer, and poet
- July 30 – Joyce Kilmer, American poet
- August 3 – Maria Fetherstonhaugh, English novelist
- September 28 – Eduard von Keyserling, Baltic German fiction writer and dramatist
- October 5 – Robbie Ross, journalist
- October 21 – Jennie O. Starkey, journalist
- November 4
- *Wilfred Owen, English poet
- *Andrew Dickson White, American diplomat and author
- November 9 – Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet, dramatist, novelist and critic
- November 14 – Seumas O'Kelly, Irish journalist and author
- November 24 – Annie Hall Cudlip, English novelist, journalist and editor
- December 1 – Margit Kaffka, Hungarian novelist, short story writer and poet
- December 2 – Edmond Rostand, French poet and dramatist
- December 15 – Salvatore Farina, Italian novelist unknown date — Eva Kinney Griffith, American journalist, temperance activist, novelist, newspaper editor, and journal publisher