1908 in literature

The year 1908 in literature involved some significant new books.

Events

 * June 18 - Mark Twain purchases a house in Redding, Connecticut.

New books

 * Afawarq Gabra Iyasus - Libb Wolled Tārīk ("A Heart-Born Story"), the first novel in Amharic
 * Leonid Andreyev - The Seven Who Were Hanged
 * Francis Aveling - Arnoul the Englishman
 * José Toribio Medina - Los Restos Indígenas de Pichilemu
 * L. Frank Baum - Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
 * - Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville (as "Edith Van Dyne")
 * Arnold Bennett - Buried Alive
 * The Old Wives' Tale
 * Algernon Blackwood - John Silence, Physician Extraordinary
 * Alexander Bogdanov - Red Star
 * Mary Elizabeth Braddon - During Her Majesty's Pleasure
 * Rhoda Broughton - Mamma
 * G. K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday
 * Louisa Cooke Don Carlos - A Battle in the Smoke
 * Marie Corelli - Holy Orders
 * James Oliver Curwood - The Courage of Captain Plum and The Gold Hunters
 * Anatole France - Penguin Island
 * E. M. Forster - A Room with a View
 * John Fox, Jr. - The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
 * Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Shoulders of Atlas
 * Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows
 * Jeannie Gunn - We of the Never Never
 * William Hope Hodgson - The House on the Borderland
 * Jack London - The Iron Heel
 * W. Somerset Maugham - The Magician
 * Lucy Maud Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables
 * Baroness Orczy - ''The Elusive Pimpernel
 * Beatrix Potter - The Tale of Jemina Puddle-Duck
 * Mary Roberts Rinehart - The Circular Staircase
 * Arthur Schnitzler - Der Weg ins Freie
 * Georges Sorel - Reflections on Violence
 * Mary Augusta Ward - The Testing of Diana Mallory
 * H. G. Wells - A Modern Utopia
 * The War in the Air

New drama

 * Maurice Maeterlinck - The Blue Bird
 * Octave Mirbeau - Home
 * Emma Orczy -Beau Brocade
 * Edward Sheldon - Salvation Nell
 * J.M. Synge - The Tinker's Wedding

Poetry

 * Edward Carpenter - Iolaus: Anthology of Friendship
 * W. H. Davies - Nature Poems

Non-fiction

 * Sarah Bernhardt - My Double Life
 * G. K. Chesterton - All Things Considered
 * Jack London - War of the Classes

Births

 * January 9 - Simone de Beauvoir, feminist philosopher (d. 1986)
 * January 18 - Jacob Bronowski, scientist and poet (d. 1974)
 * February 8 - Emil Staiger, scientist of literature (d. 1987)
 * February 11 - Sutan Takdir Alishahbana, Indonesian linguist and author
 * February 29 - Dee Brown, novelist and historian (d. 2002)
 * March 6 - Dame Felicitas Corrigan, Benedictine author (d. 2003)
 * March 22 - Louis L'Amour, author (d. 1988)
 * May 17 - Frederic Prokosch, novelist and poet (d. 1989)
 * May 25 - Theodore Roethke, American poet (d. 1963)
 * May 28 - Ian Fleming, author (d. 1964)
 * June 27 - João Guimarães Rosa, Brazilian novelist (d. 1967)
 * July 23 - Elio Vittorini, Italian author (d. 1966)
 * August 21 - M. M. Kaye, Far Pavilions author (d. 2004)
 * August 23 - Arthur Adamov, playwright (d. 1970)
 * September 4 - Richard Wright, author (d. 1960)
 * September 9 - Cesare Pavese, Italian poet and novelist (d. 1950)
 * September 17 - John Creasey, author (d. 1973)
 * October 5 - Joshua Logan, stage and film writer and director (d. 1988)
 * November 28 - Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropologist

Deaths

 * January 18 - Edmund Clarence Stedman, poet and critic (b. 1833)
 * January 25 - Ouida, writer (b. 1839)
 * March 19 - Eduard Zeller, philosopher (b. 1814)
 * April 20 - Henry Chadwick, baseball writer and historian (b. 1824)
 * July 3 - Joel Chandler Harris, journalist and author (b. 1848)
 * July 28 - Otto Pfleiderer, theologian (b. 1839)
 * November 8 - Victorien Sardou, dramatist (b. 1831)

Awards

 * Nobel Prize for Literature: Rudolf Christoph Eucken
 * Newdigate prize: Julian Huxley