1916 in literature

The year 1916 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

 * The Journal of Negro History is founded by Carter Godwin Woodson, the father of "Black History" and "Negro History Week."
 * During the summer, 15-year-old Margaret Mitchell writes the manuscript to a novella called Lost Laysen in two notebooks. She would later give the manuscript to a boyfriend and the book would remain lost until it was rediscovered in the mid-1990s and finally published in 1996. Meanwhile, Mitchell would go on to write Gone with the Wind.

New books

 * Sherwood Anderson - Windy McPherson's Son
 * Henri Barbusse - Under Fire
 * L. Frank Baum - Rinkitink in Oz
 * - Mary Louise (as "Edith Van Dyne")
 * Adrien Bertrand - L'Appel du sol
 * John Edward Bruce - The Awakening of Hezekiah Jones
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Beasts of Tarzan
 * Charlotte Perkins Gilman - With Her in Ourland
 * Sarah Grand - The Winged Victory
 * Louis Hemon ; Maria Chapdelaine
 * William Dean Howells - The Leatherwood God
 * James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
 * Grace King - The Pleasant Ways of St. Medard
 * Ring Lardner - You Know Me
 * George Moore - The Brook Kerith: A Syrian Story
 * Baroness Orczy - Leatherface
 * Rabindranath Tagore - The Home and the World
 * Booth Tarkington - Seventeen: A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family Especially William
 * Mark Twain - The Mysterious Stranger
 * Mary Augusta Ward - England's Effort
 * Lady Connie

New drama

 * Harley Granville-Barker - Farewell to the Theatre
 * Franz Kafka - The Warden of the Tomb (written)
 * Susan Glaspell - Trifles
 * Sophie Treadwell - Claws

Short stories

 * Akutagawa Ryūnosuke - The Nose

Poetry

 * Robert Frost - Mountain Interval
 * Antonio Machado - Campos de Castilla (revised edition)
 * Carl Sandburg - Chicago Poems
 * Gilbert Waterhouse - Rail-Head and other poems (published posthumously)

Non-fiction

 * Hall Caine - Our Girls: Their Work for the War
 * Albert Einstein - Relativity

Births

 * March 4
 * Giorgio Bassani, Italian author (d. 2000)
 * Hans Eysenck, psychologist (d. 1997)
 * April 12 - Beverly Cleary, children's author
 * April 15 - Helene Hanff, author (d. 1997)
 * May 21 - Harold Robbins (d. 1997)
 * May 28 - Walker Percy (d. 1990)
 * July 14 - Natalia Ginzburg, author (d. 1991)
 * September 13 - Roald Dahl, author (d. 1990)
 * September 17 - Mary Stewart, novelist
 * September 19 - Giles Romilly, journalist (d. 1967)
 * October 3 - James Herriot, popular author of "vet" stories (d. 1995)
 * October 16 - David Gascoyne, author and poet (d. 2001)
 * November 18 - Peter Weiss, German writer (d. 1982)
 * December 14 - Shirley Jackson, author (d. 1965)
 * December 17 - Penelope Fitzgerald, novelist (d. 2000)

Deaths

 * February 6 - Rubén Darío, writer
 * February 28 - Henry James, writer
 * April 26 - Mário de Sá-Carneiro, novelist and poet
 * May 3 - Patrick Pearse, poet and Irish nationalist leader
 * May 13 - Sholom Aleichem, Yiddish humorist
 * May 31 - Gorch Fock, poet and novelist
 * July 1 - Gilbert Waterhouse, war poet
 * August 8 - Lily Braun, feminist writer
 * September 22 - Edward Wyndham Tennant, war poet
 * October 7 - James Whitcomb Riley, poet
 * October 25 - John Todhunter, poet and dramatist
 * November 14 - Saki, author
 * November 15 - Molly Elliot Seawell, novelist
 * November 22 - Jack London, novelist
 * November 27 - Emile Verhaeren, Symbolist poet
 * date unknown - Olindo Guerrini, poet
 * date unknown - Émile Faguet, critic
 * date unknown - Petar Kočić, poet

Awards

 * Nobel Prize for Literature: Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam (Swedish)