1923 in literature

The year 1923 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

 * Fictional detective Lord Peter Wimsey makes his first appearance in print.
 * Barry Vincent Jackson's production of Cymbeline is the first modern-dress production of a Shakespearan work.
 * A riot breaks out at the re-staging of Tristan Tzara's Dadaist play The Gas Heart on 6 July at the Théâtre Michel, Paris, between those artists aligned with André Breton and those aligned with Tzara; the conflict leads to a permanent split in the Dada movement and the founding of Surrealism as an alternative.

New fiction

 * Sherwood Anderson - Many Marriages
 * Arnold Bennett - Riceyman Steps
 * Max Brand - Seven Trails
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the Golden Lion
 * Hall Caine - The Woman of Knockaloe
 * Willa Cather - A Lost Lady
 * Agatha Christie - The Murder on the Links
 * Colette - Le Blé en herbe
 * Joseph Conrad - The Rover
 * Marie Corelli - Love and the Philosopher
 * Zona Gale - Faint Perfume
 * Jaroslav Hašek - The Good Soldier Švejk
 * Ernest Hemingway - Three Stories and Ten Poems
 * Georgette Heyer - The Great Roxhythe
 * Aldous Huxley - Antic Hay
 * D.H. Lawrence - Kangaroo
 * Hugh Lofting - The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
 * Felix Salten - Bambi, A Life in the Woods
 * Dorothy L. Sayers - Whose Body?
 * James Stephens - Deirdre
 * Wallace Stevens - Harmonium
 * Italo Svevo - La Coscienza di Zeno
 * Alexei Tolstoy - Aelita
 * Jean Toomer - Cane
 * H.G. Wells - Men Like Gods
 * Margaret Wilson -The Able McLaughlins
 * P.G. Wodehouse
 * The Inimitable Jeeves
 * Leave It to Psmith

New drama

 * Bertolt Brecht - In The Jungle of Cities
 * Georg Kaiser - Side by Side
 * Elmer Rice - The Adding Machine
 * Jules Romains - Knock
 * George Bernard Shaw - Saint Joan
 * Ernst Toller - Hinkemann
 * Sergei Tretyakov - Do You Hear, Moscow? and Earth in Turmoil
 * Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz - The Madman and the Nun and The Crazy Locomotive

Poetry

 * E.E. Cummings - Tulips and Chimneys
 * Robert Frost - New Hampshire
 * Sukumar Ray - Abol Tabol
 * William Carlos Williams
 * Go Go
 * Spring and All

Non-fiction

 * Vladimir Arsenyev - Dersu Uzala
 * Le Corbusier - Vers une architecture (Toward an Architecture)
 * Khalil Gibran - The Prophet
 * Robert Henri - The Art Spirit
 * Max Weber - Wirtschaftsgeschichte

Births

 * January 6 - Jacobo Timerman, Argentine writer (d. 1999)
 * January 10 - Ingeborg Drewitz, writer (d. 1986)
 * January 16 - Anthony Hecht, American poet (d. 2004)
 * January 29 - Paddy Chayefsky, American writer (d. 1981)
 * January 31 - Norman Mailer, American writer & journalist (d. 2007)
 * February 2 - James Dickey, American poet & author (d. 1997)
 * February 9 - Brendan Behan, Irish author (d. 1964)
 * March 27 - Louis Simpson, Jamaican-born American poet
 * March 30 - Milton Acorn, Canadian poet, writer, & playwright (d. 1986)
 * May 1 - Joseph Heller, American novelist (d. 1999)
 * May 21 - Dorothy Hewett, Australian poet, playwright & novelist (d. 2002)
 * June 24 - Yves Bonnefoy, French poet & essayist
 * July 2 - Wisława Szymborska, Polish poet & essayist
 * July 17 - James Purdy, American writer
 * September 13 - Miroslav Holub, Czech poet (d. 1998)
 * October 5 - Stig Dagerman, Swedish author & journalist (d. 1954)
 * October 15 - Italo Calvino, Italian writer (d. 1985)
 * October 24 - Denise Levertov, British-born American poet (d. 1997)
 * November 20 - Nadine Gordimer, South African writer

Deaths

 * January 3 - Jaroslav Hašek, Czech novelist (b. 1883)
 * January 9 - Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand writer (b. 1888)
 * February 1 - Ernst Troeltsch, German theologian (b. 1865)
 * February 8 - Bernard Bosanquet, English philosopher & political theorist (b. 1848)
 * June 10 -
 * Louis Couperus, Dutch novelist & poet (b. 1863)
 * Pierre Loti, French novelist & travel writer (b. 1850)
 * June 22 - Morris Rosenfeld, Yiddish poet (b. 1862)
 * June 24 - Edith Södergran, Finnish-Swedish poet (b. 1892)
 * August 24 - Kate Douglas Wiggin, American children's author (b. 1856)
 * October 6 - Oscar Browning, English historian (b. 1837)
 * December 1 - Virginie Loveling, Flemish poet & novelist (b. 1836)
 * December 4 - Maurice Barrès, French novelist & journalist (b. 1862)
 * date unknown
 * Henry Bradley, philologist and lexicographer (b. 1845)
 * George Wharton James, journalist (b. 1858)

Awards

 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Arnold Bennett, Riceyman Steps
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Sir Ronald Ross, Memoirs, Etc.
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Hugh Lofting, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
 * Nobel Prize for Literature: William Butler Yeats
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Owen Davis, Icebound
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Edna St. Vincent Millay: The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver: A Few Figs from Thistles: Eight Sonnets in American Poetry, 1922. A Miscellany
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Willa Cather - One of Ours