1907 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1907.

Events

• January 3 – The National Theatre opens in Sofia, Bulgaria.
• J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Disturbances continue for a week.^[1]
• February 4 – The poet W. B. Yeats, at a public debate at the Abbey Theatre, denies trying to suppress audience distaste during a performance of The Playboy of the Western World.
• Vsevolod Meyerkhold. On December 12 it is performed for the first time at the Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Konstantin Stanislavski and Leopold Sulerzhitsky.^[2]
• March – The
  Buddhist scripture dated AD 868, is discovered by Aurel Stein at the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang in China. It is said to be "the earliest complete survival of a dated printed book".^[3]
• March–April
  • As an aftermath of the
    Romanian Kingdom is translated into German by Mite Kremnitz and carried by Die Zeit of Vienna.^[8] The "pillars of fire" witnessed by Banu inspire him to name his 1911 magazine Flacăra – "Flame".^[9]
  • Virginia Stephen, the future Virginia Woolf, and others of her family move within London's Bloomsbury to 29 Fitzroy Square, a former home of George Bernard Shaw.
• April 17 – August Strindberg's A Dream Play (Ett drömspel, 1901) receives its first performance, at the Swedish Theatre (Stockholm), with his ex-wife Harriet Bosse in the leading rôle.
• April 23 – Jack and Charmian London sail out of San Francisco Bay to begin the voyage described in The Cruise of the Snark (1911).
• May–September – Kenneth Grahame writes letters to his son that become the basis for The Wind in the Willows (1908).
• May – British publishers Thomas Nelson and William Collins, Sons (as "Books for the million") launch cheap hardback in-copyright imprints.
• May 15 – American humorist Gelett Burgess coins the term "blurb" for promotional text on a book jacket.^[10][11]
• June 26 – Mark Twain receives an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Oxford, England.
• locked room mystery, The Mystery of the Yellow Room (Le Mystère de la chambre jaune), begins to be serialized in L'Illustration
  , Paris.
• November – While tutoring a Trieste businessman in English, James Joyce reveals that he is a writer, and his pupil, known to Joyce as Ettore Schmitz, proves to be the published novelist Italo Svevo. A literary friendship ensues.^[12]
• Uncertain dates
  • A deluxe edition of Margarete Böhme's Tagebuch einer Verlorenen published in Berlin marks 100,000 copies in print.
  • Éditions Grasset is established in Paris.
  • Thomas Mofolo's Moeti oa bochabela (much later translated into English as "The Traveler of the East") becomes the first work of literature to be published in the Sotho language.^[13]
  • Hélène van Zuylen leaves her partner Renée Vivien for another woman. Vivien's volume of love poetry Flambeaux éteints (Doused Torches) is published this year.^[14]

• James Elroy Flecker – The Bridge of Fire
• The Songs of a Sourdough

Non-fiction

• Edmund Gosse (anonymously) – Father and Son
• John Millington Synge – The Aran Islands
• Scapegoats of the Empire

Births

• February 1 – Günter Eich, German lyricist (died 1972)
• February 3 (probable date) – James A. Michener, American novelist (died 1997)^[17]
• February 18 – Traian Herseni, Romanian social scientist and journalist (died 1980)
• February 21 – W. H. Auden, English poet (died 1973)^[18]
• March 9 (February 24 O.S.) – Mircea Eliade, Romanian historian, philosopher and novelist (died 1986)
• April 7 – Violette Leduc, French novelist and memoirist (died 1972)^[19]
• April 30 – Jacob Hiegentlich, gay Dutch Jewish writer (suicide 1940)
• May 12 – Leslie Charteris, Singapore-born Chinese-British genre novelist (died 1993)^[20]
• May 13 – Daphne du Maurier, English writer (died 1989)^[21]
• May 27 – Rachel Carson, American environmentalist and author (died 1964)^[22]
• June 2 – John Lehmann, English poet, autobiographer and publisher (died 1987)
• June 14
  • Nicolas Bentley, British writer and illustrator (died 1978)
  • René Char, French poet (died 1988)
• July 7 – Robert A. Heinlein, American author (died 1988)
• July 29 – Aileen Fox (née Henderson), English archaeologist (died 2005)
• July 31 – Gerald Butler, English crime writer (died 1988)
• August 12 – Miguel Torga, Portuguese author (died 1995)
• August 17 – Roger Peyrefitte, French author (died 2000)
• August 28 – Rupert Hart-Davis, English editor and publisher (died 1999)
• September 23 – Anne Desclos (pseudonyms include Dominique Aury and Pauline Réage), French journalist and erotic novelist (died 1998)^[23]
• October 15 – Varian Fry, American journalist (died 1967)
• October 18 – Mihail Sebastian, Romanian Jewish playwright, essayist and novelist (died 1945)
• October 28 – John Hewitt, Northern Irish poet (died 1987)
• November 14 – Astrid Lindgren, Swedish author of children's books (died 2002)^[24]
• November 27 – L. Sprague de Camp, American science fiction and fantasy author (died 2000)
• November 28 – Alberto Moravia, Italian novelist (died 1990)^[25]
• November 30 – Jacques Barzun, French-born American historian (died 2012)
• December 10 – Rumer Godden, English novelist (died 1998)
• December 17 – Christianna Brand (Mary Christianna Lewis), British crime novelist (died 1988)
• December 18 – Christopher Fry, English dramatist (died 2005)
• December 19 – William Glynne-Jones, Welsh novelist and children's writer (died 1977)
• unknown dates
  • Abdullah al-Qasemi, Arab writer (died 1996)
  • Filimon Săteanu, Soviet Moldovan poet (shot 1937)
  • E. J. Scovell, English poet (died 1999)

Deaths

• January 20 – Agnes Mary Clerke, English author on astronomy (born 1842)
• January 21 – Bertram Fletcher Robinson, English journalist, editor and author (born 1870)
• February 16 – Giosuè Carducci, Italian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1835)^[26]
• March 9 – Frederic George Stephens, English critic and member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (born 1828)
• March 19 – Thomas Bailey Aldrich, American poet and novelist (born 1836)^[27]
• April 23 – André Theuriet, French poet and novelist (born 1833)
• May 9 – Melissa Elizabeth Banta, American poet, travel writer (born 1834)
• May 12 – Joris-Karl Huysmans, French author (born 1848)
• May 18 – Mary De Morgan, English children's writer and suffragist (born 1850)^[28]
• May 31 – Sarah Gibson Humphreys, American author and suffragist (born 1830)
• June 12 – Ellen Russell Emerson, American author and ethnologist (born 1837)
• July 17 – Hector Malot, French author (born 1830)
• July 19 – William Gunion Rutherford, Scottish classicist (born 1853)
• July 28 – Mildred A. Bonham, American travel writer (born 1840)
• August 1 – Lucy Mabel Hall-Brown, American physician and writer (born 1843)
• August 10 – Marko Vovchok, Ukrainian novelist and short story writer (born 1833)^[29]
• Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, English novelist and poet (appendicitis complications, born 1861
  )
• September 6 – Sully Prudhomme, French poet and essayist; 1st Nobel Prize winner (born 1839)
• September 7 – Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Romanian philologist and polygraph (born 1836)
• September 8 – Iosif Vulcan, Romanian poet, playwright and novelist (born 1841)
• October 6 – David Masson, Scottish critic and biographer (born 1822)
• October 29 – Mkrtich Khrimian, Armenian Catholicos, essayist and poet (died 1820)
• October 30 – Caroline Dana Howe, American author (born 1824)
• November 1 – Alfred Jarry, French dramatist (tuberculosis, born 1873)
• November 28 – Stanisław Wyspiański, Polish dramatist, poet and painter (born 1869)
• December 28 – Louise Granberg, Swedish playwright (born 1812)^[30]

Awards

• Chancellor's Gold Medal: Donald Welldon Corrie^[31]
• Newdigate Prize: Robert Cruttwell, Camoens^[32]
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Rudyard Kipling