1928 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1928.

Events

January
*The Soviet magazine Oktyabr begins publishing Mikhail Sholokhov's novel And Quiet Flows the Don in instalments.
*Ford Madox Ford publishes Last Post in the U.K., as the last in his World War I tetralogy Parade's End, which has been appearing since 1924.
January 16 – The English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy's ashes are interred in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, London. Pallbearers include Stanley Baldwin, J. M. Barrie, John Galsworthy, Edmund Gosse, A. E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, Ramsay MacDonald and George Bernard Shaw. Meanwhile, Hardy's heart is interred where he wished to be buried, in the grave of his first wife, Emma, in the churchyard of his parish of birth, Stinsford in Dorset. Later in the year, his widow Florence publishes the first part of a biography, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840–1891, in fact largely dictated by Hardy.
February – Weird Tales magazine publishes H. P. Lovecraft's story "The Call of Cthulhu" in the United States.
March 31 – Stockholm Public Library, designed by Gunnar Asplund, opens.
April 19 – Publication of the Oxford English Dictionary is completed.
Spring – George Orwell moves from London to Paris; his first articles as a professional writer appear later in the year.
June – The literary magazine Contemporáneos is first published in Mexico by Jaime Torres Bodet, giving a name to the group Los Contemporáneos.
June 27 – The English writer Evelyn Waugh marries Evelyn Gardner, daughter of Lady Winifred Burghclere, in St Paul's Church, Portman Square, London, with only Harold Acton, Alec Waugh and Pansy Pakenham present. They move into a flat in Canonbury Square, Islington. In September the author's first completed novel, Decline and Fall, is published by Chapman & Hall, of which his father, Arthur Waugh, is managing director. It is illustrated by the author. It reaches a third impression by the end of the year. The marriage lasts until the following September.
July – D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is published in Florence. It will not be published unexpurgated in Britain until 1960.
August 27 – Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe in Galway is founded as the national Irish-language theater, opening with Micheál Mac Liammóir's version of Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne.
August 31 – The Threepenny Opera , adapted by Bertolt Brecht, Elisabeth Hauptmann and composer Kurt Weill from The Beggar's Opera, is launched at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin, with Harald Paulsen and Lotte Lenya in the principal rôles.
September
*S. S. Van Dine's "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories" are published in The American Magazine.
*Leslie Charteris's Meet the Tiger, the first adventure of Simon Templar, is published in the U.K.. Charteris will write dozens of novels and stories with the character in 1928–1963; successor writers will continue until 1983.
September 21 – The Gorseth Kernow is set up at Boscawen-Un in Cornwall by Henry Jenner and others.
October
*W. H. Auden goes to Berlin and is soon joined by Christopher Isherwood.
*Luk Phu Chai, perhaps the first major original Thai novel, is published by Siburapha.
October 14 – The Gate Theatre in Dublin is founded by English actors and lovers Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio to stage works by European and American dramatists.
November–December – Erich Maria Remarque's antiwar novel All Quiet on the Western Front appears in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung. Hans Herbert Grimm's Schlump is also published by Kurt Wolff in Berlin this year.
November 1 – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, President of Turkey, introduces the Roman-based 29-letter Turkish alphabet to replace the Ottoman script as the official writing system for the Turkish language.
November 6 – Xu Zhimo writes his poem 再別康橋.
November 9–16 – Radclyffe Hall's novel The Well of Loneliness, published on July 27 by Jonathan Cape in London with an appreciation by Havelock Ellis, is tried and convicted at Bow Street Magistrates' Court on the grounds of obscenity under the Hicklin test, for its theme of lesbian love, after a campaign against it by James Douglas in the Sunday Express. The presiding magistrate, Sir Chartres Biron, holds that the book contains "not one word which suggested that anyone with the horrible tendencies described was in the least degree blameworthy. All the characters in the book were presented as attractive people and put forward with admiration." Other lesbian literature published in England this year evades prosecution: Elizabeth Bowen's novel The Hotel, Virginia Woolf's fictional Orlando: A Biography, and Compton MacKenzie's satirical Extraordinary Women. Djuna Barnes' novel Ladies Almanack, published in Paris, also alludes to the controversy.
December 9 – R. C. Sherriff's drama Journey's End, set on the Western Front (World War I), is premièred by the Incorporated Stage Society at the Apollo Theatre in London, with Laurence Olivier in a principal rôle.
December 10 – Danish-born Norwegian novelist Sigrid Undset is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages."
December 19 – Italo Svevo, returning from an Alpine resort to Trieste, suffers a car accident. He dies next day leaving his novel Il Vegliardo unfinished in mid-word.
unknown dates
*Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's novel Pather Panchali first appears as a serial in a Calcutta periodical.
*The clerihew, a comic pseudo-biographical verse form associated with Edmund Clerihew Bentley, is first mentioned in print.
*It is claimed that one in four of all secular books printed and sold in England this year are the work of Edgar Wallace.

New books

Non-fiction

Max Aitken – Politicians and the War
Clive Bell – Civilization: An Essay
Edmund Blunden – Undertones of War
Hall Caine – Recollections of Rossetti
Julius Evola – Imperialismo Pagano
Sidney Bradshaw Fay – Origins of the World War
Dion Fortune – Esoteric Orders and Their Work
Harold Lloyd – An American Comedy
Dora Marsden – The Definition of the Godhead
Margaret Mead – Coming of Age in Samoa
Paul Morand – Black Magic
Tomas O'Crohan – Allagar na h-Inise
Edgar Wallace – The Trial of Patrick Herbert Mahon
H. G. Wells – The Open Conspiracy
Stefan Zweig – ''Drei Dichter ihres Lebens. Casanova – Stendhal – Tolstoi ''

Births

January 1 – Iain Crichton Smith, Scottish writer
January 7 – William Peter Blatty, American novelist and screenwriter
January 8 – Sander Vanocur, American journalist
January 9 – Judith Krantz, American novelist
January 10 – Philip Levine, American poet
January 16 – William Kennedy, American writer and journalist
January 17 – Roman Frister, Polish writer
January 21 – János Kornai, Hungarian economist
January 24 – Desmond Morris, English anthropologist and writer
February 5 – Andrew Greeley, Irish-American priest and novelist
February 9
* Frank Frazetta, American illustrator
* Roger Mudd, American journalist
February 13 – Refik Erduran, Turkish playwright, columnist and writer
February 15 – Norman Bridwell, American author and illustrator, created Clifford the Big Red Dog
February 19 – Onuora Nzekwu, Nigerian writer
February 25 – Richard G. Stern, American novelist and educator
February 28 – Walter Tevis, American novelist
February 29 – Jean Adamson, English children's author and illustrator
March 4 – Alan Sillitoe, English novelist
March 12 – Edward Albee, American dramatist
March 13 – Jane Grigson, English cookery writer
March 22 – E. D. Hirsch, American academic literary critic and educator
March 30 – Tom Sharpe, English satirical author
April 4 – Maya Angelou, American poet
April 7 – Alan J. Pakula, American screenwriter
April 11 – Lionel Abrahams, South African novelist, poet and essayist
April 17 – Cynthia Ozick, American author
April 24 – Martin Seymour-Smith, English poet, biographer and critic
May 4 – Thomas Kinsella, Irish poet
May 24 – William Trevor, Irish fiction writer and playwright
June 10 – Maurice Sendak, American children's author and illustrator
June 28 – Stan Barstow, English novelist
July 11 – Jane Gardam, English writer of fiction and literary critic
July 16
*Anita Brookner, English novelist
*Robert Sheckley, American writer
July 18 – Simon Vinkenoog, Dutch writer, Poet Laureate of the Netherlands
July 19 – Samuel John Hazo, American author
July 24 – Griselda Gambaro, Argentine writer
July 26 – Bernice Rubens, Welsh novelist
August 7 – Anthony Lejeune, English writer, editor and broadcaster
August 12 – Beni Virtzberg, Israeli forester, Holocaust survivor and writer
September 6 – Robert M. Pirsig, American philosopher and author
September 11 – William X. Kienzle, American priest and author
September 18 – Sigrid Kahle, Swedish journalist and writer
September 20 – Donald Hall, American poet and poet laureate
September 30 – Elie Wiesel, American Jewish author and 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner
October 2 – Zora Tavčar, Slovenian writer and translator
October 3 – Alvin Toffler, American futurist writer
October 7 – Sohrab Sepehri, Persian poet and painter
October 10 – Sheila F. Walsh, English novelist
October 17 – Rosemary Tonks, English poet, prose writer and children's writer
October 21 – Yu Guangzhong, Taiwanese writer, poet, educator and critic
October 27 – Gilles Vigneault, Canadian singer and poet
November 2 – Paul Johnson, English historian and journalist
November 9 – Anne Sexton, American poet
November 11 – Carlos Fuentes, Mexican writer
November 12 – Marjorie W. Sharmat, American children's writer
November 20 – Dolf Verroen, Dutch writer of children's literature
November 28 – Bano Qudsia, Punjab-born Pakistani fiction writer
December 3
*Karin Bang, Norwegian novelist and poet
*Barbara Probst Solomon, American author, essayist and journalist
December 16 – Philip K. Dick, American science fiction author
December 31 – Veijo Meri, Finnish writer

Deaths

January 8 – Juan B. Justo, Argentine journalist
January 11 – Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet
January 19 – Hans Hinrich Wendt, German theologian
January 28 – Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Spanish novelist, journalist and politician
February 19 – Mildred Aldrich, American journalist
February 29 – Adolphe Appia, Swiss writer and scenery and lighting designer
March 4 – Paul Sabatier, French religious writer
March 18 – Paul van Ostaijen, Flemish poet
March 24
*Didrik Hegermann Grønvold, Norwegian novelist
*Charlotte Mew, English poet
April 10 – Stanley J. Weyman, English novelist
April 19 – Ladislav Klíma, Czech novelist and philosopher
May 5 – Barry Pain, English writer
May 16 – Edmund Gosse, English poet and critic
May 19 – Max Scheler, German philosopher
May 22 – Francisco López Merino, Argentine poet
May 25 – George Ranetti, Romanian humorist and playwright
July 1 – Avery Hopwood, American playwright
July 8 – Crystal Eastman, American journalist
August – Isaac Markens, American journalist
August 16 – Antonín Sova, Czech poet
August 17 – Sir George Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, British statesman and author
August 3 – Oskar Jerschke, German dramatist
October 24 – Henry Festing Jones, English biographer, editor and lawyer
December 1 – José Eustasio Rivera, Colombian writer
December 13 – Joseph Bucklin Bishop, American journalist and publisher
December 16 – Elinor Wylie, American poet and novelist
December 19 – Italo Svevo, Italian writer
December 23 – Ludwig Rosenthal, German antiquarian bookseller

Awards

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: John Buchan, Montrose
Newbery Medal for children's literature: Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Gayneck, the Story of a Pigeon
Nobel Prize for Literature: Sigrid Undset
Prix Goncourt: Maurice Constantin-Weyer, Un Homme se penche sur son passé
Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Eugene O'Neill, Strange Interlude
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Edwin Arlington Robinson, Tristram
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Thornton Wilder, ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey''

1928 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards