1899 In Literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1899.

Events

*January 21 – The French actress Sarah Bernhardt, having taken over management of the Paris theatre she renames the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, opens it in the title rôle of Victorien Sardou's ''La Tosca''. On May 20 she premières an adaptation of Shakespeare's ''Hamlet'', with herself in the title rôle.
*March 20 – W. H. Davies, "tramp-poet", loses his foot trying to jump on a freight train at Renfrew, Ontario.
*April – Karl Kraus establishes the radical periodical ''Die Fackel'' (The Torch) in Vienna.
*April–June – Rainer Maria Rilke, still an art student at the time, travels to Moscow to meet Leo Tolstoy.
*May–December – The only work of fiction by the British politician Winston Churchill, '' Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania'', is serialised in ''Macmillan's Magazine''.
* May 8 – The Irish Literary Theatre, founded by W. B. Yeats, Augusta, Lady Gregory, George Moore and Edward Martyn, puts on its first production in Dublin, a version of Yeats' verse drama '' The Countess Cathleen''.
* June 20 – The English writer Edward Thomas marries Helen Noble at Fulham register office.
* July 31 – Arthur Machen's wife Amy dies after a long illness, an event that has a devastating effect on him.
*September 1 – The National Theatre in Norway opens with pieces by Holberg and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's 1862 trilogy ''Sigurd Slembe''.
*September – The British Mutoscope and Biograph Company's '' King John'' (a very short silent film starring Herbert Beerbohm Tree) becomes the first known film based on a Shakespeare play.
*November – The oldest surviving Japanese film, '' Momijigari'', is shot by Tsunekichi Shibata in Tokyo. It records the kabuki actors Onoe Kikugorō V and Ichikawa Danjūrō IX performing a scene from the play '' Momijigari''.

*November 6 – William Gillette's play '' Sherlock Holmes'', based on the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, opens in New York City with himself in the title rôle.
*November 7 (October 26 Old Style) – Anton Chekhov's ''Uncle Vanya'' receives its Russian metropolitan première at the Moscow Art Theatre, with Konstantin Stanislavski directing and playing the rôle of Astrov, and Olga Knipper as Yeléna.
*November 18 – Leo Tolstoy completes his last novel, ''Resurrection'' («Воскресение», ''Voskreseniye''), published serially in '' Niva''.
*December 12 – Herbert Putnam is appointed Librarian of Congress in the United States, where he will introduce in practice the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) scheme.
*December – The imprisoned William Sydney Porter's pseudonym O. Henry first appears over the short story "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking" in this month's ''McClure's Magazine''.
*''unknown dates''
** Curtis Brown (literary agents) is established in London by the American Albert Curtis Brown.
** Edgar Rice Burroughs begins working in his father's business.
**Simon Pokagon's ''O-gi-maw-kwe Mit-I-gwa-ki (Queen of the Woods)'' is published, the first novel both by and about Native Americans in the United States.
** Lin Shu's first translation into Chinese from a Western text, ''The Lady of the Camellias'', is published as 巴黎茶花女遺事.
**The first series of the Arden Shakespeare under the general editorship of W. J. Craig begins publication by Methuen in London with an edition of ''Hamlet'' edited by Edward Dowden.
**The Bulgarian language is officially codified.

New books

Fiction

*Anna Adolph – '' Arqtiq''
* Victor Anestin – ''În anul 4000 sau O călătorie la Venus'' (In the year 4000, or A trip to Venus)
*Machado de Assis – '' Dom Casmurro''
*René Bazin – '' La terre qui meurt''
* René Boylesve – ''Demoiselle Cloque''
* Mary Elizabeth Braddon – ''His Darling Sin''
* Rhoda Broughton – ''The Game and the Candle''
* Charles Waddell Chesnutt – '' The Conjure Woman''
* Mary Cholmondeley – '' Red Pottage''
*Kate Chopin – '' The Awakening''
* J. Storer Clouston – ''The Lunatic at Large''
* Ralph Connor – ''The Sky Pilot''
* Joseph Conrad – serializations in ''Blackwood's Magazine''
**'' Heart of Darkness'' (February–April)
**''Lord Jim'' (October 1899–November 1900)
*Stephen Crane – '' The Monster and Other Stories''
* Cora Linn Daniels – '' The Bronze Buddha: A Mystery''
* Margaret Deland – ''Old Chester Tales''
*Maxim Gorky – '' Foma Gordyeeff''
*G. A. Henty – ''The Golden Canon''
* Robert Hichens – '' The Slave''
* E. W. Hornung – '' The Amateur Cracksman''
*Henry James – ''The Awkward Age''
*Selma Lagerlöf – '' The Tale of a Manor (En herrgårdssägen)''
*Octave Mirbeau – ''The Torture Garden''
* A. E. W. Mason – '' Man and His Kingdom''
*Arthur Morrison – ''To London Town''
*Frank Norris
**''Blix''
**''McTeague''
* George Paston – ''A Writer of Books''
*Władysław Reymont – '' The Promised Land'' (''Ziemia Obiecana''; book publication)
* Somerville and Ross – ''Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.'' (stories, first volume in the series '' The Irish R.M.'')
*Leo Tolstoy – ''Resurrection''
* Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano – ''Morsamor''
*Émile Zola – ''Fécondité'' (Fruitfulness)

Children and young people

*Helen Bannerman – ''Little Black Sambo''
*L. Frank Baum – '' Father Goose: His Book''
* Tom Bevan – ''The Thane of the Dean: A Tale of the Time of the Conqueror''
* Géza Gárdonyi – '' Eclipse of the Crescent Moon'' (''Egri csillagok'' i. e. Stars of Eger)
*E. Nesbit – ''The Story of the Treasure Seekers'' (first in the Bastable series)
* Ethel Pedley – ''Dot and the Kangaroo''
* Josephine Pollard
**''Bible Stories for Children''
**''History of The Old Testament in Words of One Syllable''
**''History of The New Testament in Words of One Syllable''
*Edward Stratemeyer as Arthur M. Winfield
**''The Rover Boys at School''
**''The Rover Boys on the Ocean''
**''The Rover Boys in the Jungle'' (first three in the Rover Boys series of 30 books)

Drama

*Arnold Denham (probably with others) – '' The Kelly Gang''
*Georges Feydeau – '' La Dame de chez Maxim''
*Clyde Fitch – '' Barbara Frietchie''
*Leon Kobrin – ''Minna or, The Ruined Family from Downtown''
**Mulshankar Mulani – ''Ajabkumari''
* Arthur Wing Pinero – '' The Gay Lord Quex''
*Stanisław Wyspiański
**''Klątwa'' (The Curse)
**''Meleager''
**''Protesilas i Leodamia''
* William Young (adaptation) – '' Ben-Hur''

Poetry

*W. B. Yeats – ''The Wind Amongst the Reeds''

Non-fiction

* Qasim Amin – ''The Liberation of Women (Tahrir al- mar'a)''
* Edward Bernstein – ''Evolutionary Socialism''
* Eliza Brightwen – ''Rambles with Nature Students''
*Houston Stewart Chamberlain – ''The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts)''
* Auguste Choisy – ''Histoire de l'architecture''
* Percy Dearmer – ''The Parson's Handbook''
* John Dewey – ''The School and Society''
* Emilia, Lady Dilke – ''French Painters of the Eighteenth Century'' (first of four volumes)
*Sigmund Freud – ''The Interpretation of Dreams (Die Traumdeutung)'' (dated 1900)
* Edward Bruce Hamley (died 1893) – ''National Defence''
*Elbert Hubbard – ''A Message to Garcia''
* Gertrude Jekyll – ''Wood and Garden''
* Arthur Symons – '' The Symbolist Movement in Literature'' (first collected edition)
*Thorstein Veblen – ''The Theory of the Leisure Class''

Births

*January 17 – Nevil Shute (Nevil Shute Norway), English novelist (died 1960)
* February 3 – Lao She, Chinese author (died 1966)
* February 23 – Erich Kästner, German children's author (died 1974)
*March 8 – Eric Linklater, Welsh-born Scottish novelist and travel writer (died 1974)
*March 19 – Aksel Sandemose, Danish novelist (died 1965)
* March 25 – Jacques Audiberti, French playwright (died 1965)
*April 22 – Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born novelist (died 1977)
* May 8 – Friedrich Hayek, Austrian-born social scientist (died 1992)
*May 18 – D. Gwenallt Jones, Welsh poet (died 1968)
* May 24
**Kazi Nazrul Islam, Bengali poet (died 1976)
**Henri Michaux, Belgian-born poet, writer and painter (died 1984)
*June 7 – Elizabeth Bowen, Irish-born English novelist and short-story writer (died 1973)
*June 11 – Yasunari Kawabata, Japanese novelist, short-story writer and Nobel laureate in Literature (died 1972)
*June 18 – Eugène Vinaver, Russian-born English literary scholar (died 1979)
* July 1 – James Lennox Kerr (Peter Dawlish, Gavin Douglas), Scottish novelist and children's writer (died 1963)
* July 8 – G. B. Edwards, Guernsey-born writer (died 1976)
*July 11 – E. B. White, American children's writer and writer on style (died 1985)
*July 21
** Hart Crane, American poet (suicide 1932)
**Ernest Hemingway, American novelist (suicide 1961)
*August 9
** Laurence Meynell (Valerie Baxter, A. Stephen Tring), English novelist and children's writer (died 1989)
** P. L. Travers (Helen Lyndon Goff), Australian children's writer (died 1996)
*August 24
** Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian writer (died 1986)
** Gaylord DuBois, American author and poet (died 1993)
*August 27 – C. S. Forester, Egyptian-born English adventure novelist (died 1966)
*September 30 – Hendrik Marsman, Dutch poet (died 1940)
*October 19 - Miguel Ángel Asturias, (died 1974)
*November 10 – Kate Seredy, Hungarian-born American children's writer and illustrator (died 1975)
*November 17 – Roger Vitrac, French surrealist playwright and poet (died 1952)
*December 9 – Jean de Brunhoff, French children's author and illustrator (died 1937)
*December 16
**Harold Walter Bailey, English linguistics scholar (died 1996)
** Noël Coward, English playwright (died 1973)
*December 18 – Peter Wessel Zapffe, Norwegian philosopher (died 1990)

Deaths

*February 10 – Archibald Lampman, Canadian poet (born 1861)
*March 16 – Alexander Balloch Grosart, Scottish literary editor (born 1827)
*May 1 – Ludwig Büchner, German philosopher (born 1824)
* May 16 – Francisque Sarcey, French journalist and theater critic (born 1827)
*June 7 – Augustin Daly, American dramatist and theater manager (born 1838)
*June 30 – E. D. E. N. Southworth, American novelist (born 1819)
*July 18 – Horatio Alger, Jr., American novelist and children's author (born 1832)
*August 27 – Vendela Hebbe, Swedish journalist and novelist (born 1808)
*August 29 – Catharine Parr Traill, English-born Canadian author (born 1802)
*October 22 – Ella H. Brockway Avann, American educator and writer (born 1853)
*October 25 – Grant Allen, Canadian science writer and novelist (born 1848)
*October 27 – Florence Marryat, English novelist and entertainer (born 1833)
*November 2 – Anna Swanwick, English feminist writer (born 1813)
*November 13 – Arthur Giry, French historian (born 1848)
*December 17 – Bernard Quaritch, German-born English bibliographer and bookseller (born 1819)
*December 18 – Bonifaciu Florescu, Romanian polygraph (ventricular hypertrophy, born 1848)
*December 22 – Dwight L. Moody, American preacher and publisher (born 1837)

Awards

*Chancellor's Gold Medal – Arthur Cecil Pigou
* Newdigate Prize – Harold Edgeworth ButlerHarold Edgeworth Butler, ''Arcadia, the Newdigate Prize Poem, 1899''. B. H. Blackwell, 1899
/ref>

References

{{Year in literature article categories

Years of the 19th century in literature