1921 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1921.

Events

• January 1 – The publishing firm Jonathan Cape is founded in Bloomsbury, London, by Herbert Jonathan Cape and Wren Howard.^[1]
• February –
  Margaret Caroline Anderson and Jane Heap, publishers of The Little Review, are convicted of obscenity in a New York court for publishing the "Nausicaa" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses.^[2]
• March – Jorge Luis Borges returns to his native Buenos Aires in Argentina after a period living with his family in Europe.
• April 20 – The Hungarian Ferenc Molnár's play Liliom is first produced on Broadway in English.
• May 9 – The première of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore) at the Teatro Valle in Rome divides the audience.
• May – A production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre directed by Robert Atkins at The Old Vic, London, restores the unexpurgated text for the first time since Shakespeare's day.
• June 6 – The première of Tristan Tzara's parodic The Gas Heart (Le Cœur à gaz) takes place at a Dada Salon at the Galerie Montaigne in Paris. It provokes audience derision.
• June 10 – D. H. Lawrence's novel Women in Love is first published commercially by Martin Secker in London.
• Cervantes Theatre (Buenos Aires) opens with a production of Lope de Vega's La dama boba (The Foolish Lady, 1613).^[3]
• September 26 – The Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich, England, an old chapel, is turned into an English Renaissance theatre for period drama by an amateur repertory company directed by Walter Nugent Monck.^[4] It opens with As You Like It.
• December 9 – John William Gott becomes the last person in England imprisoned for blasphemous libel.
• Mexican poet Manuel Maples Arce distributes the first Stridentist
  manifesto, Comprimido estridentista, in the broadsheet Actual No. 1 in Mexico City.

• Elizabeth von Arnim - Vera
• Ryūnosuke Akutagawa – "Autumn Mountain" (秋山, Akiyama)
• Ruby M. Ayres
  • The Second Honeymoon
  • The Uphill Road
• E.F. Benson
  • Dodo Wonders
  • Lovers and Friends
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan the Terrible
• James Branch Cabell – Figures of Earth
• Hall Caine – The Master of Man
• Karel Čapek – Trapné povídky (Embarrassing Stories, translated as Money and other stories)
• Willa Cather – Alexander's Bridge
• Arthur Chapman – Mystery Ranch
• A. E. Coppard – Adam & Eve & Pinch Me: Tales
• Mary Cholmondeley – The Romance of His Life
• Marie Corelli – The Secret Power
• Miloš Crnjanski – The Journal of Čarnojević (Дневник о Чарнојевићу, Dnevnik o Čarnojeviću)
• Walter de la Mare – Memoirs of a Midget
• Ethel M. Dell - The Obstacle Race
• Mary Frances Dowdall – Three Loving Ladies
• Edna Ferber - The Girls
• Fran Saleški Finžgar – Pod svobodnim soncem (Under the free sun)
• Metropolitan Magazine (New York)
  )
• Mikkjel Fønhus – Troll-Elgen^[5]
• John Galsworthy – To Let (last book of The Forsyte Saga)
• H. Rider Haggard – She and Allan
• A. P. Herbert – The House by the River
• Georgette Heyer – The Black Moth
• A. S. M. Hutchinson – If Winter Comes^[6]
• Aldous Huxley – Crome Yellow^[7]
• Frigyes Karinthy – Capillaria
• Sheila Kaye-Smith – Joanna Godden
• Gaston Leroux – The Crime of Rouletabille
• Marie Belloc Lowndes – What Timmy Did
• Denis Mackail – Romance to the Rescue
• Compton Mackenzie – Rich Relatives
• René Maran – Batouala
• L. M. Montgomery – Rilla of Ingleside
• Heloise and Abelard
• Paul Morand – Tender Shoots (Tendres stocks, short stories)
• E. Phillips Oppenheim – Jacob's Ladder
• Baroness Orczy
  • Castles in the Air (short stories)
  • The First Sir Percy
• Alejandro Pérez Lugín – Currito of the Cross (Currito de la Cruz)
• Gene Stratton Porter
  – Her Father's Daughter
• Marcel Proust
  • The Guermantes Way (Le Côté de Guermantes II, second part of vol. 3 of In Search of Lost Time)
  • Sodom and Gomorrah (Sodome et Gomorrhe I, first part of vol. 4 of In Search of Lost Time)
• Sukumar Ray – HaJaBaRaLa
• Iñigo Ed. Regalado – May Pagsinta'y Walang Puso
• Dorothy Richardson - Deadlock
• Berta Ruck - Sweet Stranger
• Rafael Sabatini – Scaramouche
• Naoya Shiga – A Dark Night's Passing (暗夜行路, An'ya Kōro; serialized 1921–37)
• May Sinclair - Mr. Waddington of Wyck
• Annie M. Smithson
  - Carmen Cavanagh
• Booth Tarkington – Alice Adams
• Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy – The Road to Calvary (publication begins)
• Sigrid Undset – Husfrue (The Wife or The Mistress of Husaby, second part of Kristin Lavransdatter)
• Edgar Wallace
  • The Book of All Power
  • The Law of the Four Just Men^[8]
• Eugene Walter – The Byzantine Riddle and other stories
• Arthur Weigall – Burning Sands
• Virginia Woolf – Monday or Tuesday
• Nets to Catch the Wind
• Francis Brett Young
  • The Black Diamond
  • The Red Knight
• Yevgeny Zamyatin – We (Мы; completed)

Children and young people

• Dorita Fairlie Bruce – The Senior Prefect (later entitled Dimsie Goes to School)
• Eleanor Farjeon – Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard
• Charles Boardman Hawes – The Great Quest
• Hendrik Willem van Loon – The Story of Mankind (non-fiction)
• Else Ury – Nesthäkchen Flies From the Nest^[9]

Drama

• Hjalmar Bergman – Farmor och vår Herre (Grandmother and Our Lord, translated as Thy Rod and Thy Staff)
• Dorothy Brandon – Araminta Arrives
• Karel Čapek – R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) (performed)
• Karel and Josef Čapek – Pictures from the Insects' Life (Ze života hmyzu, published)
• Clemence Dane – A Bill of Divorcement
• Brandon Fleming – The Eleventh Commandment
• Gerald du Maurier – Bulldog Drummond (with H.C. McNeile)
• Susan Glaspell – Inheritors (written) and The Verge (performed)
• Ian Hay – A Safety Match
• A. de Herz – Mărgeluș (Tiny Bead)
• Avery Hopwood – The Demi-Virgin
• René Morax – Le Roi David
• Roland Pertwee – Out to Win
• Luigi Pirandello – Six Characters in Search of an Author
• Sophie Treadwell - Rights
• Tristan Tzara – The Gas Heart
• Edgar Wallace – M'Lady
• Raden Adipati Aria Muharam Wiranatakusumah – Lutung Kasarung
• Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz – The Water Hen (Kurka Wodna)

Poetry

• Robert Frost – Mountain Interval (second print)
• Langston Hughes – "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", in The Crisis
• Amy Lowell - Legends
• Katherine Tynan
  - The Handsome Brandons
• Sour Grapes
• William Butler Yeats – Michael Robartes and the Dancer

• Adolphe Appia – L'Œuvre d'art vivant (The Living Work of Art)
• Charles Bean (ed.) – Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, vol. 1
• Joseph Chaikov – Skulptur (first Yiddish-language work on the subject)^[10]
• Grace King– Creole Families of New Orleans
• Frank H. Knight
  – Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit
• D. H. Lawrence
  • Sea and Sardinia
  • (as Lawrence H. Davison) – Movements in European History
• Edward Sapir – Language: an introduction to the study of speech
• Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk – Further Essays on Capital and Interest
• Ludwig Wittgenstein – Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
• Zitkala-Sa – American Indian Stories

Births

• January 5 – Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Swiss writer (died 1990)
• January 19 – Patricia Highsmith, American crime writer (died 1995)
• February 4 – Betty Friedan, American feminist author (died 2006)
• February 5 – Marion Eames, Welsh novelist writing mainly in Welsh (died 2007)^[11]
• February 15 – Radha Krishna Choudhary, Indian historian and writer (died 1985)
• March 1 – Richard Wilbur, American poet and translator (died 2017)
• March 3 – Paul Guimard, French novelist (died 2004)
• March 24 – Wilson Harris, Guyanese-born poet, novelist and essayist (died 2018)
• April 21 – Angela Bianchini, Italian fiction writer and literary critic (died 2018)
• May 20 – Wolfgang Borchert, German author and playwright (died 1947)
• May 23
  • James Blish, American science fiction author (died 1975)
  • Ray Lawler, Australian dramatist
• May 29
  • Mona Van Duyn, American poet (died 2004)
  • Henry Scholberg, American bibliographer (died 2012)
• June 11 – Michael Meyer, English translator and biographer (died 2000)
• June 14 – John Bradburne, English poet and missionary (killed 1979)
• August 11 – Alex Haley, American writer (died 1992)
• August 17 – Elinor Lyon, British children's writer (died 2008)^[12]
• August 18 – Frédéric Jacques Temple, French poet and writer (died 2020)
• September 12 – Stanisław Lem, Polish science fiction novelist, philosopher, satirist and physician (died 2006)
• September 15 – Richard Gordon, English author (died 2017)
• September 16 – Mohamed Talbi, Tunisian historian (died 2017)^[13]
• September 26 – Cyprian Ekwensi, Nigerian writer (died 2007)
• October 2 – Edmund Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery), English crime writer (died 1978)
• October 9 – Tadeusz Różewicz, Polish poet, dramatist and writer (died 2014)
• October 17 – George Mackay Brown, Scottish poet (died 1996)^[14]
• November 6 – James Jones, American novelist (died 1977)
• November 22 – Brian Cleeve, Irish author (died 2003)
• December 20 – Israil Bercovici, Romanian dramatist and historian (died 1988)

Deaths

• February 6 – Abba Goold Woolson, American author and poet (born 1838)
• February 17 – Rosetta Luce Gilchrist, American physician, author (born 1850)
• February 24 – John Habberton, American critic (born 1842)^[15]
• March 22 – E. W. Hornung, English author (born 1866)
• April 6 – Maximilian Berlitz, German-born American textbook writer and language school proprietor (born 1852)
• May 5 – Alfred Hermann Fried, Austrian publicist (born 1864)
• May 12 – Emilia Pardo Bazán, Spanish novelist (born 1851)^[16]
• May 13 – Jean Aicard, French writer (born 1848)
• June – N. D. Popescu-Popnedea, Romanian novelist, folklorist, archivist and almanac compiler (born 1843)
• June 5 – Georges Feydeau, French playwright (born 1862)
• June 18 – Eduardo Acevedo Díaz, Uruguayan writer (born 1851)^[17]
• June 20 – Mary Lynde Craig, American writer, teacher, attorney, activist (born 1834)
• June 26 – Alfred Percy Sinnett, English Theosophist author (born 1840)
• July 4 – Antoni Grabowski, Polish Esperantist (born 1857)^[18]
• July 7 – Luca Caragiale, Romanian poet, novelist and translator (pneumonia, born 1893)
• August 1 – Helen Vickroy Austin, American journalist and horticulturist (born 1829)
• August 7 – Alexander Blok, Russian poet (born 1880)
• August 8 – Juhani Aho, Finnish author and journalist (born 1861)^[19]
• August 19 – Georges Darien, French anarchist writer (born 1862)
• Nikolay Gumilev, Russian poet (executed, born 1886
  )
• September 3 - Maria I. Johnston, American author, journalist, editor and lecturer (born 1835)
• September 22 - Ivan Vazov, Bulgarian poet, novelist and playwright (born 1850)^[20]
• September 26 – Matei Donici, Bessarabian Romanian poet and professional soldier (born 1847)
• October 1 – Lillian Rozell Messenger, American poet (born 1843)^[21]
• October 10 – Otto von Gierke, German historian (born 1841)^[22]
• November 1 – Sarah Dyer Hobart, American author of poetry, prose, and songs (born 1845/46)^[23]
• November 8 – Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav, Slovak poet, dramatist and translator (born 1849)
• November 14 – Christabel Rose Coleridge, English novelist and editor (born 1843)
• December 28 – Hester A. Benedict, American poet (born 1838)^[24]
• date unknown
  • Emma Churchman Hewitt, American author and journalist (born 1850)^{[citation needed]}
  • Della Campbell MacLeod, American author and journalist (born ca. 1884) ^{[citation needed]}

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria
• Nobel Prize in Literature: Anatole France
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Zona Gale, Miss Lulu Bett
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence