1923 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1923.

Events

January
*A copy of James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses posted to a London bookseller by the proprietor of Davy Byrne's pub in Dublin, which features in the book, is detained as obscene by the U.K. authorities.
*T. E. Lawrence is forced to leave the British Royal Air Force, his alias as 352087 Aircraftman John Hume Ross having been exposed. He joins the Royal Tank Corps as 7875698 Private T. E. Shaw.
February 5 – Poet and super-tramp W. H. Davies marries Helen Payne, an ex-prostitute thirty years his junior, at East Grinstead in England.
February 18 – The first issue of the pulp magazine Weird Tales appears in the U.S. It becomes noted for its horror fiction and fantasy.
April 11 – Seán O'Casey's drama The Shadow of a Gunman, the first of his "Dublin Trilogy", set during the recent Irish War of Independence, opens at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.
April 21 – The first of a series of innovative modern–dress productions of Shakespeare plays, Cymbeline, directed by H. K. Ayliff, opens at Barry Jackson's Birmingham Repertory Theatre in England.
May 9 – The première of Bertolt Brecht's play In the Jungle of Cities at the Residenz Theatre in Munich is disrupted by Nazi demonstrators.
May 11 – Dorothy L. Sayers' fictional English detective and bibliophile, Lord Peter Wimsey, makes his first appearance in the novel Whose Body?, published by Boni & Liveright in the United States. The first U.K. edition follows in October from T. Fisher Unwin.
July 6 – A riot breaks out at the re-staging of Tristan Tzara's Dadaist play The Gas Heart at the Théâtre Michel, Paris, between those aligned with André Breton and those aligned with Tzara. The conflict leads to a permanent split in the Dada movement and the founding of Surrealism as an alternative.
Summer – The teenage English brothers Julian and Quentin Bell begin issuing a family newspaper, the Charleston Bulletin, at their Sussex home, Charleston Farmhouse, with occasional contributions by their maternal aunt Virginia Woolf.
September – T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land is first published in the United Kingdom in book form, complete with notes, in a limited edition by the Hogarth Press of Richmond upon Thames. The firm is run by Eliot's Bloomsbury Group friends Leonard and Virginia Woolf, and the type handset by Virginia.
October 8 – A production of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus at The Old Vic, directed by Robert Atkins, is the first in London since 1857. It is also the first to restore the full original text since the playwright's time.
December – Persian poet Nima Yooshij publishes the poem Afsaneh, the manifesto of the She'r-e Nimaa'i school of modernist poetry.
December 28 – George Bernard Shaw's drama Saint Joan is premièred at the Garrick Theatre (New York City) on Broadway by the Theatre Guild, with Winifred Lenihan in the title role.
unknown dates
*The poet Xu Zhimo founds the Crescent Moon Society at private dinner meetings in China.
*The Swedish printers Almqvist & Wiksell of Uppsala move into publishing.

New books

Births

January 2 – Rachel Waterhouse, English historian and author
January 6 – Jacobo Timerman, Argentine writer
January 9 – David Holbrook, English novelist, poet and academic
January 10 – Ingeborg Drewitz, German novelist and dramatist
January 16 – Anthony Hecht, American poet
January 29 – Paddy Chayefsky, American screenwriter
January 31 – Norman Mailer, American writer and journalist
February 2 – James Dickey, American poet and author
February 9 – Brendan Behan, Irish writer and playwright
February 12 – Alan Dugan, American poet and author
February 23 – Mary Francis Shura, American writer
February 25 – Harry Leslie Smith, English writer and political commentator
March 1 – Shantabai Kamble, Indian Marathi writer and activist
March 2 – Harriet Frank Jr., American film writer and producer
March 24 – Michael Legat, English writer and editor
March 26 – Elizabeth Jane Howard, English novelist
March 27
*Shusaku Endo, Japanese novelist
*Louis Simpson, Jamaican-born American poet
March 30 – Milton Acorn, Canadian poet, writer, and playwright
April 3
* Daniel Hoffman, American poet
* John Ormond, Welsh poet
April 19 – Stuart H. Walker, American Olympic yachtsman and writer
April 20 – Bill Spence, English novelist
April 21 – John Mortimer, English dramatist, screenwriter and barrister
April 22 – Paula Fox, American writer
April 23 – Manuel Mejía Vallejo, Colombian novelist
May 1
* Joseph Heller, American novelist
* Ralph Senensky, American television director and writer
May 21 – Dorothy Hewett, Australian poet, playwright and novelist
May 22 – Aline Griffith, Dowager Countess of Romanones, Spanish-American cipher clerk, aristocrat, socialite and writer
May 24 – Knut Ahnlund, Swedish literary historian and writer
May 29 - Stanley Green, American theatre and film historian and writer
June 7 – Martyn Goff, English author and bookseller
June 14 – Judith Kerr, German-born English children's writer
June 23 – John E. Sarno, American medical writer
June 24 – Yves Bonnefoy, French poet and essayist
July 2 – Wisława Szymborska, Polish poet and essayist
July 5
* Naomi Long Madgett, American poet
* Mitsuye Yamada, Japanese-American activist, feminist, essayist, poet, story writer, editor, and teacher
July 12 – James E. Gunn, American science fiction writer
July 17 – James Purdy, American writer
August 21 – Emma Smith, English novelist and autobiographer
September 13 – Miroslav Holub, Czech poet
September 22 – Dannie Abse, Welsh poet and writer
October 5 – Stig Dagerman, Swedish author and journalist
October 15 – Italo Calvino, Italian writer
October 21 – Mihai Gafița, Romanian editor, literary historian and children's novelist
October 24 – Denise Levertov, English-born American poet
November 20 – Nadine Gordimer, South African writer
November 23 – Gloria Whelan, American poet, short story writer, and novelist
December 14 – Gerard Reve, Dutch novelist and poet
December 21 – Richard Hugo, American poet and educator
unknown date – Qu Bo, Chinese novelist

Deaths

January 3 – Jaroslav Hašek, Czech novelist
January 9 – Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand-born fiction writer
February 1 – Ernst Troeltsch, German theologian
February 8 – Bernard Bosanquet, English philosopher and political theorist
February 15 – Minnie Willis Baines, American eauthor
February 25 – Emeline S. Burlingame, American editor and reformer
March 6 – William Boyle, Irish dramatist and short story writer
March 26 – Sarah Bernhardt, French actress
March 29 – J. Smeaton Chase, English-born American author and photographer
April 30 – Emerson Hough, American fiction author
May 10 – Ulderiko Donadini, Croatian novelist, dramatist and short story writer
May 23 – Henry Bradley, English philologist and lexicographer
June 3 – Estelle Mendell Amory, American educator and author
June 4 – Hume Nisbet, Scottish thriller writer, poet and painter
June 10
*Louis Couperus, Dutch novelist and poet
*Pierre Loti, French novelist and travel writer
June 22 – Morris Rosenfeld, Yiddish poet
June 24 – Edith Södergran, Finnish Swedish poet
July 9 – Florence Caddy, English non-fiction writer
July 16
*Louis Couperus, Dutch writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry
*Charles Boardman Hawes, American writer of fiction and non-fiction
August 19 – Vilfredo Pareto, Italian economist, political scientist and philosopher
August 24 – Kate Douglas Wiggin, American children's author
October 6
October 8 – Florence Montgomery, English novelist and children's writer
October 12 – John Cadvan Davies, Welsh poet and Wesleyan Methodist minister
October 14 – Marcellus Emants, Dutch novelist
November 18 – George Wharton James, English-born American journalist
November 23 – Urmuz, Romanian short prose writer
December 1 – Virginie Loveling, Flemish poet and novelist
December 4 – Maurice Barrès, French novelist and journalist
December 12 – Raymond Radiguet, French novelist and poet

Awards

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Arnold Bennett, Riceyman Steps
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Sir Ronald Ross, Memoirs, Etc.
Newbery Medal for children's literature: Hugh Lofting, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
Nobel Prize in Literature: William Butler Yeats
Prix Goncourt: Lucien Fabre, Rabevel ou Le mal des ardents
Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Owen Davis, Icebound
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver: A Few Figs from Thistles: Eight Sonnets in American Poetry, 1922. A Miscellany
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Willa Cather, ''One of Ours''

1923 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards