1920 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1920.

Events

February 2 – Beyond the Horizon, Eugene O'Neill's second full-length play, opens with a Morosco Theatre matinée in New York City, partly as a producer's experiment and partly to quiet the actor Richard Bennett, who sought to play the lead. Reviewers hail the play and O'Neill gains fame.
February 27 – An inaugural meeting of the Bloomsbury Group's Memoir Club is arranged by Mary MacCarthy in London.
Spring – The poet Anton Podbevšek and others organize the Novo Mesto Spring event, the beginning of Slovenian Modernism.
March 15 – The Blue Flame, a four-act play by George V. Hobart and John Willard after Leta Vance Nicholson, opens at the Shubert Theatre (New York City) on Broadway before a year's U.S. tour. Though described by a critic as "one of the worst plays ever written," it is a commercial success, largely due to Theda Bara as the central character of a vamp.
March 22 – Federico García Lorca's first play, The Butterfly's Evil Spell is poorly received at its première in Madrid.
March 26 – This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald sets him up as a writer and celebrity. An initial 3,000 copies sell out in three days. The book's reputation dims in later years, but Dorothy Parker will recall that it was seen as innovative when it first appeared.
April
*Hart Crane publishes his poem "My Grandmother's Love Letters" in The Dial, his first major move toward recognition as a poet.
*The pulp magazine Black Mask is launched in New York City as "An Illustrated Magazine of Detective Mystery, Adventure, Romance, and Spiritualism" by journalist H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan.
April 3 – F. Scott Fitzgerald marries Zelda Sayre in the rectory of St. Patrick's Cathedral (Manhattan).
May 1 – F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" appears in the Saturday Evening Post and on the magazine's cover, illustrated by artist Norman Rockwell.
July – Krishna Lal Adhikari's Makaiko Kheti is published in Nepal; following claims that it contains "mischievous expressions to treason", the author is sentenced on August 2 to nine years in prison and all known copies of the book are destroyed.
August 22 – The Salzburg Festival in Austria is inaugurated with a performance of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play Jedermann in front of Salzburg Cathedral, directed by Max Reinhardt.
October – Agatha Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, appears in the U.S., introducing her long-running Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in the setting of an English country house. The book is published in the U.K. on January 21, 1921.
November 1 – Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones plays at the Playwright's Theater in New York City with Charles Sidney Gilpin in the title role.
November 9 – D. H. Lawrence's novel Women in Love appears in a limited U.S. subscribers' edition.
December – The first edition of the Poems of the English war poet Wilfred Owen, killed in action in 1918, appears in London, introduced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon but with much of the editing carried out by Edith Sitwell. Only five of Owen's verses having been published in his lifetime, the collection introduces his work to many readers. It includes the 1917 poems "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce et Decorum est", one of the best-known poetic condemnations of war.
December 23 – Arthur Schnitzler's play Reigen receives a first authorized performance, in Berlin, where it is criticized on moral and anti-Semitic grounds.
Christmas – Monteiro Lobato's children's story "A Menina do Narizinho Arrebitado", the origin of the Sítio do Picapau Amarelo novel series, is published in Brazil.
unknown dates
*Erwin von Busse, using the pseudonym Granand, publishes Das erotische Komödiengärtlein, a collection of short stories about sexually charged encounters between men. It is promptly banned.
*Karel Čapek's drama R.U.R: Rossum's Universal Robots, published in Prague, introduces the word robot into English.
*Publication in Paris of the first volume of the Collection Budé initiates editions of classical texts with parallel French translation: Plato's Hippias Minor .
*Van Wyck Brooks' The Ordeal of Mark Twain controversially argues that Twain was "a victim of arrested development" with a dual personality. It begins a reassessment of an author seen hitherto mainly as a humorous writer. The 1920s will bring similar reconsideration of many 19th-century American writers, notably Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson.

New books

Poetry

Louis Aragon – "Feu de joie"
Edmund Blunden – The Waggoner and Other Poems
Robert Bridges – October and Other Poems
T. S. Eliot – Poems
Robert Frost – Miscellaneous Poems
Aaro Hellaakoski – Me Kaksi
Bolesław Leśmian – Meadow
Edna St. Vincent Millay – A Few Figs From Thistles
Hope Mirrlees – Paris: A Poem
Wilfred Owen – Poems
Ezra Pound – Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Carl Sandburg – Smoke and Steel
Siegfried Sassoon – Picture Show
Barbu Solacolu – Umbre pe drumuri
Anton Schnack – Tier rang gewaltig mit Tier
Georg Trakl – Der Herbst des Einsamen
Miguel de Unamuno – ''El Cristo de Velázquez''

Non-fiction

Sarah Bernhardt – Petite Idole
Marc Bloch – Rois et serfs. Un chapitre d'histoire capétienne
Communist International – Theses and Statutes of the Third International
Sigmund Freud – Beyond the Pleasure Principle
William Inge – The Idea of Progress
Ernst Jünger – Storm of Steel
Robert T. Kerlin – The Voice of the Negro
J. Thomas Looney – Shakespeare Identified
H. L. Mencken – Prejudices: Second Series
Harold Monro – Some Contemporary Poets
Joseph Shield Nicholson – The Revival of Marxism, final book
Charles à Court Repington – The First World War, 1914–1918
Radu Rosetti – Povești moldovenești
Frederick Jackson Turner – The Frontier in American History
H. G. Wells – The Outline of History
Leonard Woolf
*Economic Imperialism
*''Empire and Commerce in Africa''

Births

January 2 – Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American science-fiction author and biochemist
January 7 – Dorothy Maclean, Canadian writer and educator, co-founder of the Findhorn Foundation
January 14
*Jean Dutourd, French novelist
*Che Lan Vien, Vietnamese poet
January 22 – Philippa Pearce, English children's writer
January 24 – Keith Douglas, English poet
February 1 – Colin Watson, English crime fiction writer
February 11 – Daniel F. Galouye, American science-fiction author
February 12 – William Roscoe Estep, American historian and educator
February 19 – Jaan Kross, Estonian writer
February 21 – Ishigaki Rin, Japanese poet
February 28 – Zaim Topčić, Yugoslav and Bosnian writer
February 29 – Howard Nemerov, American poet
March 10 – Boris Vian, French novelist
March 11 – D. J. Enright, English writer
March 19 – Kjell Aukrust, Norwegian author, poet and artist
March 20 – Rosemary Timperley, British novelist
March 25 – Paul Scott, English novelist, playwright and poet
March 31 – Marga Minco, Dutch novelist and journalist
April 5 – Arthur Hailey, English-born Canadian novelist
April 11 – Marlen Haushofer, Austrian writer
April 17 – Bengt Anderberg, Swedish poet, novelist, children's writer
May 8 – Sloan Wilson, American author and poet
May 9 – Richard Adams, English novelist, author of Watership Down
May 12 – Satya Mohan Joshi, Nepalese writer
May 30 – Shōtarō Yasuoka, Japanese writer
June 2 – Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Polish-born German literary critic
June 8 – Gwen Harwood, Australian poet
June 9 – Isobel English, English novelist
June 13 – Ruth Guimarães, Afro-Brazilian classicist, fiction writer and poet
June 18
*Aster Berkhof, Belgian novelist
*Rosemary Dobson, Australian poet
June 20 – Amos Tutuola, Nigerian writer
July 3 – Max Wilk, American playwright, screenwriter and author of fiction and nonfiction
July 12 – Pierre Berton, Canadian author
August 3 – P. D. James, English crime novelist
August 4 – John Figueroa, Jamaican poet
August 9 – Tormod Skagestad, Norwegian poet, novelist and playwright
August 16 – Charles Bukowski, American writer
August 18 – Harbhajan Singh, Punjabi poet and critic
August 21 – Christopher Robin Milne, English writer and bookseller
August 22 – Ray Bradbury, American science-fiction writer
September 19 – Roger Angell, American fiction writer, editor, and essayist with The New Yorker
October 7 – Daniel Vidart, Uruguayan anthropologist, writer, historian, and essayist
October 8 – Frank Herbert, American science-fiction writer
October 15 – Mario Puzo, American author of The Godfather
October 17 – Miguel Delibes, Spanish novelist
November 7 – Elaine Morgan, Welsh writer on anthropology
November 16
*Colin Thiele, Australian author
*Peter Viertel, American author
November 23 – Paul Celan, Romanian poet
December 3 – Sheila K. McCullagh, English children's writer
December 10 – Clarice Lispector, Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist
December 14 – Rosemary Sutcliff, English children's historical novelist
December 15 – Albert Memmi, Tunisian writer in French
December 20 – Väinö Linna, Finnish novelist

Deaths

January 2 – Paul Adam, French Symbolist novelist
January 4 – Benito Pérez Galdós, Spanish novelist
January 9 – Ella Dietz, American actress and author
January 18 – Giovanni Capurro, Italian poet
February 8 – Richard Dehmel, German poet
February 29 – A. H. Bullen, English editor and publisher
March 9 – Haralamb Lecca, Romanian dramatist, poet and translator
March 15 – Edith Holden, English diarist and illustrator
March 24 – Mary Augusta Ward, Tasmanian-born English novelist
April 6 – Mary Evelyn Hitchcock, American author and explorer
May 7 – Hugh Thomson, British illustrator
May 8 – Annie Russell Wall, American historian, writer, teacher
May 11 – William Dean Howells, American realist novelist
May 15 – Owen Morgan Edwards, Welsh writer, educator
May 21 – Eleanor H. Porter, American novelist
June 5
*Rhoda Broughton, Welsh novelist and short-story writer
*Julia A. Moore, American poet
June 14 – Max Weber, German political economist
June 27 – Adolphe Basile Routhier, Canadian poet
September 29 – José Domingo Gómez Rojas, Chilean poet
October 17 – John Reed, American journalist
October 20 – Bithia Mary Croker, Irish-born novelist
October 25 – Terence MacSwiney, Irish playwright, poet and politician
November 1 – Walter Bradford Woodgate, English boating writer and oarsman
November 9 – Alberto Blest Gana, Chilean novelist
November 19 – Alice E. Bartlett, American author, novelist, essayist, lyricist
November 22 – Manuel Pérez y Curis, Uruguayan poet
November 24 – Alexandru Macedonski, Romanian poet, novelist and dramatist
December 16 – Helen Ekin Starrett, American educator, author, suffragist and magazine founder
December 18 – Matthías Jochumsson, Icelandic poet, playwright and translator
December 24 – Matilda Maranda Crawford, American-Canadian newspaper correspondent, writer, poet

Awards

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: D. H. Lawrence, The Lost Girl
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: G. M. Trevelyan, Lord Grey of the Reform Bill
Nobel Prize for Literature: Knut Hamsun
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: no award given
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: no award given
Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Eugene O'Neill, ''Beyond the Horizon''

1920 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards