1912 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1912.

Events

Moscow Art Theatre production of Hamlet

• January 5 (December 23, 1911 O.S.) – Stanislavski and Craig's seminal symbolist Moscow Art Theatre production of Hamlet opens.
• January 21 – Joseph Conrad achieves his first popular success as the New York Herald begins serializing his novel Chance, having bought the rights to the unfinished work, halted in 1906, in June 1911. Conrad continues to work on finishing the book while the first chapters are appearing weekly in the Herald, completing it on March 26.^[1]
• March 3 – Frieda Weekley meets D. H. Lawrence in Nottingham.^[2]
• April 14–15 – Sinking of the RMS Titanic: The ocean liner RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg and sinks on her maiden voyage from the United Kingdom to the United States.^[3] American mystery writer Jacques Futrelle, English journalist and publisher William Thomas Stead and American bibliophile Harry Elkins Widener are among the more than 1500 dead. A copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in a jewelled binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe (1911) is also lost. The event leads to a flood of poems, including Thomas Hardy's "The Convergence of the Twain".
• May 6 – Lie Kim Hok dies of typhus in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, aged 58. Lauw Giok Lan completes his translations of Hugo Hartmann's Dolores, de Verkochte Vrouw as Prampoean jang Terdjoewal and of Geneviève de Vadans as De Juffrouw van Gezelschap.
• June – As I. G. Ofir, Romanian poet Benjamin Fondane has his publishing debut in the magazine Floare Albastră, put out at Iași by A. L. Zissu.^[4]
• August 10 – Virginia Stephen marries Leonard Woolf at St. Pancras Town Hall in London.^[5] They honeymoon in Provence, Spain and Italy before returning to live in London.
• September 21^[6] – Harley Granville-Barker's production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale opens at the Savoy Theatre, London, with simplified scenery, ensemble acting and naturalistic verse speaking.^[7] It is replaced in November by his production of Twelfth Night.
• October
  • Edgar Rice Burroughs' character Tarzan (Viscount Greystoke, raised as a feral child by the fictional Mangani great apes) first appears in Tarzan of the Apes in American pulp magazine The All-Story.
  • Sax Rohmer's character Fu Manchu (a "Yellow Peril" master criminal) first appears in "The Zayat Kiss" in English pulp magazine Story-Teller, the first instalment of The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
• October 12 – Arthur Schnitzler's play La Ronde (Reigen, 1900) is first performed (without the author's consent), in Budapest; it is also first translated into French this year.
• October 25 – First issue of Simbolul, put out in Bucharest by Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, and Ion Vinea.^[8]
• A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (Пощёчина общественному вкусу), the seminal text of Russian Futurism, is published as both a manifesto and a poetry almanac, possibly in December 1912, or, at latest, January 1913.^[9] Edited and authored by David Burliuk, Viktor Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchenykh, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Attacks the tradition of Russian Symbolism, in particular works by Leonid Andreyev, Konstantin Balmont, Alexander Blok, and Ivan Bunin; but also ridicules independents such as Maxim Gorky.^[10]
• Texts of 13 Sanskrit dramas, perhaps from the first centuries BCE and probably by Bhāsa (including the Svapnavasavadattam), are discovered by the scholar T. Ganapati Sastri in a palm-leaf codex in Kerala.^[11]
• Publication of the Loeb Classical Library, parallel text editions of the classics, begins by London publisher Heinemann.

New books

Fiction

• Mary Antin – The Promised Land
• Arnold Bennett – The Matador of the Five Towns
• E. F. Benson – Mrs. Ames
• Rhoda Broughton – Between Two Stools
• Mary Grant Bruce – Mates at Billabong
• Ivan Bunin – Dry Valley (Суходол, Sukhodo′l)
• Willa Cather – Alexander's Bridge
• Joseph Conrad – The Secret Sharer
• Ethel M. Dell
  • Greatheart
  • The Way of an Eagle^[12]
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Lost World
• Theodore Dreiser – The Financier
• Lord Dunsany – The Book of Wonder (short stories)
• Edna Ferber – Buttered Side Down
• Anatole France – Les Dieux ont soif
• R. Austin Freeman
  • The Mystery of 31 New Inn
  • The Singing Bone
• Elinor Glyn
  • Halcyone
  • Love Itself
  • The Reasons Why
• Sarah Grand – Adam's Orchard
• Zane Grey – Riders of the Purple Sage
• Knut Hamsun – The Last Joy (Den sidste Glæde)
• Annie Fellows Johnston – Mary Ware's Promised Land
• James Weldon Johnson – The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
• Franz Kafka
  • Contemplation (Betrachtung, short story collection, dated 1913)
  • The Judgement (Das Urteil)
• Ada Leverson – Tenterhooks
• D. H. Lawrence – The Trespasser
• Stephen Leacock – Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
• Sinclair Lewis (as Tom Graham) – Hike and the Aeroplane
• Julijonas Lindė-Dobilas – Blūdas; arba Lietuva buvusios Rusijos revoliucijos mete (Rampage)
• Oskar Luts – Kevade (Spring; part I)
• John MacCormick – Dùn Aluinn (in book form)
• Thomas Mann – Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig)
• E. Phillips Oppenheim
  • The Lighted Way
  • The Tempting of Tavernake
• Baroness Orczy
  • The Traitor
  • The Good Patriots
  • Fire in Stubble
  • Meadowsweet
• Eleanor H. Porter – Miss Billy's Decision
• Forrest Reid – Following Darkness
• Saki – The Unbearable Bassington
• Henryk Sienkiewicz – In Desert and Wilderness (W pustyni i w puszczy)
• Hjalmar Söderberg – The Serious Game (Den allvarsamma leken)
• James Stephens – The Crock of Gold
• Sui Sin Far – Mrs. Spring Fragrance
• Leo Tolstoy (died 1910) – Hadji Murat (Хаджи-Мурат)
• Hugh Walpole – The Prelude to Adventure
• H. G. Wells – Marriage
• Percy F. Westerman
  • Captured at Tripoli
  • The Flying Submarine
  • The Quest of the "Golden Hope
  • The Sea Monarch
• Edith Wharton – The Reef
• P. G. Wodehouse – The Prince and Betty
• Stefan Żeromski – The Faithful River (Wierna rzeka)

Children and young people

• L. Frank Baum
  • Sky Island
  • Phoebe Daring
  • Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation (as Edith Van Dyne)
  • The Flying Girl and Her Chum (as Edith Van Dyne)
• Edgar Rice Burroughs
  • Tarzan of the Apes
  • A Princess of Mars
• Jack London
  • A Son of the Sun
  • The Scarlet Plague
• Lucy Maud Montgomery – Chronicles of Avonlea
• E. Nesbit – The Magic World
• Beatrix Potter – The Tale of Mr. Tod
• Jean Webster – Daddy-Long-Legs

Drama

• Paul Claudel – L'Annonce faite à Marie (The Tidings Brought to Mary, first performed)
• George Diamandy – Rațiunea de stat (The Reason of State)
• Hugo von Hofmannsthal – Everyman, adapted as Jedermann
• Heinrich Mann – Die grosse Liebe (The Great Love, published)
• Louis N. Parker – Drake of England
• Arthur Schnitzler – Professor Bernhardi
• George Bernard Shaw – Pygmalion (published)
• G. K. Sowerby – Rutherford and Son^{[13][14][15][16]}
• Bayard Veiller – Within the Law

Poetry

• Anna Akhmatova – Vecher (Evening)
• Edwin James Brady
  • Bells and Hobbles
  • The King's Caravan
• Georgian Poetry 1911-12
• David Burliuk, Aleksei Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov – A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (Пощёчина общественному вкусу)
• Pauline Johnson – Flint and Feather
• Amy Lowell – A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass
• Rabindranath Tagore (writer & translator) – Gitanjali (Song Offerings)

Non-fiction

• Hilaire Belloc – The Servile State
• Arnold Bennett – Those United States
• Alexander Berkman – Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist
• David Burliuk, Viktor Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky – A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (Пощёчина общественному вкусу)
• Aleister Crowley – Magick (Book 4)
• Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger – Du "Cubisme"
• Henry H. Goddard – The Kallikak Family
• Carl Jung – Psychology of the Unconscious (Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido)
• Frigyes Karinthy – Így írtok ti (That's How You Write, literary parodies)
• Pierre Loti – Un Pèlerin d'Angkor (A Pilgrimage to Angkor)
• Donald Lowrie – My Life in Prison
• Dumitru C. Moruzi – Pribegi în țară răpită
• John Muir – The Yosemite
• P. D. Ouspensky – Tertium Organum
• Bertrand Russell – The Problems of Philosophy
• Ernst Troeltsch – Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (The Sociology of the Christian Churches and Groups)

Births

• January 7 – Charles Addams, American cartoonist (died 1988)
• January 30 – Barbara Tuchman, American historian (died 1989)
• February 10 – Ena Lamont Stewart, Scottish playwright (died 2006)
• February 11 – Roy Fuller, English poet and novelist (died 1991)
• February 12 – R. F. Delderfield, English novelist and playwright (died 1972)
• February 15 – George Mikes, Hungarian-born English humorist (died 1987)
• February 17 – Andre Norton, American sci-fi and fantasy author (died 2005)
• February 20 – Pierre Boulle, French novelist (died 1994)
• February 27 – Lawrence Durrell, English poet and novelist (died 1990)
• March 7 – Dora Oake Russell, Newfoundland writer, diarist and journalist (died 1986)
• March 12 – Kylie Tennant, Australian novelist, dramatist and historian (died 1988)
• April 16 – Garth Williams, American children's writer and illustrator (died 1996)
• May 3 – May Sarton, American writer (died 1995)
• May 16 – Studs Terkel, American writer and broadcaster (died 2008)
• May 20 – J. L. Carr, English novelist and publisher (died 1994)
• May 27 – John Cheever, American writer (died 1982)
• May 29 – Pamela Hansford Johnson, English poet, novelist and critic (died 1981)
• June 20 – Anthony Buckeridge, English children's author (died 2004)
• June 24 – Mary Wesley, English novelist (died 2002)
• June 29 – John Toland, American Pulitzer Prize winning historian and biographer (died 2004)
• July 3 – Elizabeth Taylor, English novelist (died 1975)
• July 6 – Heinrich Harrer, Austrian explorer and author (died 2006)
• July 14 – Northrop Frye, Canadian critic (died 1991)
• July 17 – Michael Gilbert, English mystery and thriller novelist (died 2006)
• August 4 – Virgilio Piñera, Cuban poet and short-story writer (died 1979)
• August 10 – Jorge Amado, Brazilian writer (died 2001)
• August 14 – Erwin Strittmatter, German writer (died 1994)
• August 18 – Elsa Morante, Italian author (died 1985)
• August 23 – Nelson Rodrigues, Brazilian author (died 1980)
• September 5? – Sesto Pals, Romanian Israeli poet and philosopher (died 2002)
• September 12 – J. F. Hendry, Scottish-born poet (died 1986)
• September 24 – Ian Serraillier, English novelist and poet (died 1994)
• October 31 – Oscar Dystel, American paperback publisher (died 2014)
• November 8 – Monica Edwards, English children's author (died 1998)
• November 12 – Donagh MacDonagh, Irish poet, playwright and judge (died 1968)
• November 24 – Garson Kanin, American dramatist and screenwriter (died 1999)
• November 25 – Francis Durbridge, English dramatist (died 1998)
• November 26 – Eugène Ionesco, Romanian Absurdist playwright (died 1994)
• December 4 – Ian Wallace, English science fiction writer (died 1998)

Deaths

• January 24 – James Allen, English author of "As a Man Thinketh" (born 1864)
• January 27 – Alexandre Bisson, French playwright, vaudeville creator, and novelist (born 1848)
• January 28 – Gustave de Molinari, Belgian economist (born 1819)
• February 8 – Girish Chandra Ghosh, Bengali poet, playwright and novelist (born 1844)
• March 1 – George Grossmith, English comic singer and writer (born 1847)
• April 6 – Giovanni Pascoli, Italian poet (born 1855)
• April 10 – Gabriel Monod, French historian (born 1844)
• April 15 – In the wreck of the RMS Titanic
  • Jacques Futrelle, American author (born 1875)
  • William Thomas Stead, English journalist (born 1849)
• April 20 – Bram Stoker, Irish novelist and theater manager (born 1847)
• May 5 – Rafael Pombo, Colombian mathematician and poet (born 1833)
• May 14 – August Strindberg, Swedish dramatist (born 1849)
• May 19 – Bolesław Prus, Polish novelist (born 1847)
• June 13 – Alice Diehl, English novelist and concert pianist (born 1844)
• July 20 – Andrew Lang, Scottish poet, novelist and critic (born 1844)
• July 24 – Addison Peale Russell, American essayist (born 1826)
• August 13 – Horace Howard Furness, American Shakespeare scholar (born 1833)
• August 29 – Theodor Gomperz, Austrian philosopher (born 1832)
• September 9 – Berta Behrens, German novelist (born 1850)
• October 21 – Robert Barr, Scottish Canadian short story writer and novelist (born 1849)
• December 9 – Louis de Gramont, French journalist, dramatist and librettist (born 1855)
• December 19 – Mir Mosharraf Hossain, Bengali novelist, playwright and essayist (born 1847)
• Unknown date – Dharmavaram Ramakrishnamacharyulu, Telugu dramatist (born 1853)

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Gerhart Hauptmann

In literature

• Eugene O'Neill's drama The Iceman Cometh and J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls (both 1945) are set in this year.

References