1919 in literature

The year 1919 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

 * Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain return to Somerville College, Oxford, to complete their education following war service.
 * Two paintings by E. E. Cummings appear in a show of the New York Society of Independent Artists.
 * Vladimir Nabokov leaves Russia with his family.

New books

 * Sherwood Anderson &mdash; Winesburg, Ohio
 * Pio Baroja &mdash; Caesar or Nothing
 * L. Frank Baum &mdash; The Magic of Oz
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs &mdash; Jungle Tales of Tarzan
 * James Branch Cabell &mdash; Jurgen
 * Ronald Firbank &mdash; Valmouth
 * Maggie Fullilove &mdash; Who Was Responsible?
 * Joseph Hergesheimer
 * Linda Condon
 * Java Head
 * Hermann Hesse &mdash; Demian
 * Jerome K. Jerome &mdash; All Roads Lead to Calvary
 * W. Somerset Maugham &mdash; The Moon and Sixpence
 * Baroness Orczy
 * His Majesty's Well-beloved
 * The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel
 * Marcel Proust &mdash; Pastiches et mélanges
 * Romain Rolland &mdash; The Forerunners
 * Mary Augusta Ward
 * Fields of Victory
 * Helena
 * Virginia Woolf &mdash; Night and Day

New drama

 * Susan Glaspell - Bernice
 * Harley Granville-Barker - The Secret Life
 * A. A. Milne - The Camberley Triangle
 * Liviu Rebreanu - The Quadrille
 * Ernst Toller - Transformation

Poetry

 * Edwin James Brady - The House of the Winds

Non-fiction

 * Henri Bergson - Spiritual Energy: Essays and Lectures (L'Energie spirituelle: essais et conférences)
 * John Maynard Keynes - The Economic Consequences of the Peace
 * H. L. Mencken - The American Language

Short story

 * "In the Penal Colony" - Franz Kafka
 * Dragon: the Old Potter's Tale - Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Births

 * January 1 - J. D. Salinger, novelist
 * January 7 - Robert Duncan, poet
 * January 25 - Edwin Newman, journalist, writer
 * March 24 - Robert Heilbroner, author of The Worldly Philosophers
 * May 17 - Robert H. Adleman, American novelist and historian* July 15 - Iris Murdoch, novelist
 * July 23 - Davis Grubb, novelist and short story writer
 * July 31 - Primo Levi, memoirist
 * October 22 - Doris Lessing, British novelist
 * November 23 - P. F. Strawson, philosopher
 * November 26 - Frederik Pohl, science fiction author
 * November 29 - Frank Kermode, literary critic
 * date unknown
 * Helen Forrester, memoirist and novelist
 * Charlotte Jay, suspense writer

Deaths

 * May 6 - L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz author
 * June 14 - Weedon Grossmith, co-author of Diary of a Nobody
 * July 8 - John Fox, Jr., American journalist, novelist, and short story writer
 * October 22 - W. N. P. Barbellion, author of the Journal of a Disappointed Man

Awards

 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Hugh Walpole, The Secret City
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Henry Festing Jones, Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon (1835–1902) - A Memoir
 * Nobel Prize for Literature: Carl Spitteler
 * Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography: Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Margaret Widdemer, Old Road to Paradise and Carl Sandburg, Corn Huskers
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Booth Tarkington - The Magnificent Ambersons