# 1909 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1909.

## Events

* January – T. E. Hulme's poems "Autumn" and "A City Sunset" are included in the Poets' Club anthology For Christmas MDCCCCVIII, as the first examples of Imagism.
* January 15 – Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's drama La donna è mobile opens at the Teatro Alfieri, Turin.
* February 1 – The first issue appears of La Nouvelle Revue Française, a literary magazine founded in Paris by André Gide, Jacques Copeau, Jean Schlumberger, Gaston Gallimard, and others.
* February 20 – Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto first appears in the French newspaper Le Figaro.
* March 2 – Katherine Mansfield, while pregnant by another man, marries the singing teacher George Bowden, whom she barely knows. She leaves him the same evening to resume lesbian relations with Ida Baker.
* April
** The opening night of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's drama Le Roi bombance (The Feasting King, written 1905) is heckled by the audience and the writer himself.
** The German periodical Die Tat is founded by Ernst Horneffer.
* April 24 – The Metropolitan Library (京师图书馆, Jīngshī Túshūguǎn) in Beijing, predecessor of the National Library of China, is founded by the Qing government.
* September 6 – Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot opens in New York City.
* September 23 – Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) begins serialization in the Paris newspaper Le Gaulois.
* September 29 – Franz Kafka's short story "The Aeroplanes at Brescia (Die Aeroplane in Brescia)", based on a real event, is published in the Prague newspaper Bohemia, as the first description of airplanes in German literature.
* November – A production by Kaoru Osanai of Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman at the Free Theater in Tokyo inaugurates shingeki drama in Japan.
* November 2 – First English-language performance of a play by Anton Chekhov opens, The Seagull, translated and directed by George Calderon, by the Glasgow Repertory Theatre company at the Royalty Theatre, Glasgow.
* unknown date – Babelstornið (The Tower of Babel), by Rasmus Rasmussen, writing as Regin í Líð, becomes the first Faroese language novel to be published.

## New books
### Fiction

* Florence Barclay – The Rosary
* Maurice Barrès – Colette Baudoche
* André Billy – La Derive
* Algernon Blackwood
** The Education of Uncle Paul
** Jimbo: A Fantasy
* René Boylesve – La Jeune Fille bien élevée (The Well-raised Girl)
* Hall Caine – The White Prophet
* Gilbert Cannan – Peter Homunculus
* Ion Luca Caragiale – Kir Ianulea
* Robert W. Chambers – The Danger Mark
* Herbert Croly – The Promise of American Life
* Em Kol Chai (Chava Shapiro) – Kovetz Tziurim (קבץ ציורים, A Collection of Sketches)
* Concha Espina – That Luzmela Girl
* Charles Hoy Fort – The Outcast Manufacturers
* Anatole France – Balthazar
* Jacques Futrelle – Elusive Isabel
* John Galsworthy – Fraternity
* Charles Garvice – A Fair Impostor
* Robert Hichens – Bella Donna
* Olha Kobylianska – V Nediliu Rano Zillia Kopala (She Gathered Herbs on Sunday Morning)
* Maurice Leblanc – The Hollow Needle
* Gaston Leroux – Le fauteuil hanté (The Haunted Chair)
* Jack London – Martin Eden
* John Masefield – Multitude and Solitude
* Silas Weir Mitchell – The Red City
* Baroness Orczy
** The Nest of the Sparrowhawk
** The Old Man in the Corner
* Randall Parrish – My Lady of the South
* Eden Phillpotts – The Haven
* Luigi Pirandello – I vecchi e i giovani (The Old and the Young, part 1)
* Władysław Reymont – Chłopi (The Peasants; publication completed)
* Stein Riverton – Jernvognen (The Iron Carriage)
* Olivia Shakespear – Uncle Hilary
* Gertrude Stein – Three Lives
* Gene Stratton-Porter – A Girl of the Limberlost
* Hermann Sudermann – The Song of Songs
* Mark Twain – Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (book publication)
* Edgar Wallace
** Captain Tatham of Tatham Island
** The Duke in the Suburbs
* Robert Walser – Jakob von Gunten
* Mary Augusta Ward – Daphne
* H. G. Wells
** Ann Veronica
** Tono-Bungay
* Mabel Osgood Wright – Poppea of the Post Office

### Children and young people

* L. Frank Baum
** The Road to Oz
** Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work (as Edith Van Dyne)
* Angela Brazil – The Nicest Girl in the School
* Lucy Maud Montgomery – Anne of Avonlea
* Beatrix Potter
** The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies
** The Tale of Ginger and Pickles
* P. G. Wodehouse – Mike

### Drama

* Paul Armont and Nicolas Nancey – Théodore et Cie
* Sem Benelli – The Jester's Supper (La cena delle beffe)
* Clyde Fitch – The City
* John Galsworthy – Strife
* Harley Granville-Barker – The Madras House
* Cicely Hamilton – A Pageant of Great Women
* Agha Hashar Kashmiri – Khwab-e-Hasti (The Dream World of Existence)
* Oskar Kokoschka – Murderer, the Hope of Women (Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen)
* Else Lasker-Schüler – Die Wupper (published)
* André de Lorde – L'horrible expérience
* Ferenc Molnár – Liliom
* Quintero brothers – El patinillo
* George Bernard Shaw – The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet

### Poetry

* Guillaume Apollinaire – L'Enchanteur pourrissant (The Putrifying Enchanter)
* François Mauriac – Les Mains jointes (Clasped Hands)
* John Millington Synge – Poems and Translations

### Non-fiction

* Henry James – Italian Hours
* William James – A Pluralistic Universe
* Jane's All the World's Aircraft (first annual edition)
* I. M. E. Blandin - History of Higher Education of Women in the South, Prior to 1860
* Daniel Jones – The Pronunciation of English
* C. I. Scofield (ed.) – Scofield Reference Bible
* Charlotte Fell Smith – John Dee, 1527–1608
* Eraclie Sterian – În noaptea nunții (On Your Wedding Night)
* A. E. Waite – The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
* Alice Zimmern – Women's Suffrage in Many Lands

## Births

* January 20 – Mae Virginia Cowdery, African American poet (died 1953)
* January 18 – Oskar Davičo, Serbian novelist and poet (died 1989)
* January 29 – Phoebe Hesketh (Phoebe Rayner), English poet (died 2005)
* February 15 – Miep Gies (Hermine Santruschitz), Austrian-born biographer (died 2010)
* February 24 – August Derleth, American anthologist (died 1971)
* March 6 – Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Polish aphorist and poet (died 1966)
* March 17 – Margiad Evans, Anglo-Welsh poet, novelist and illustrator (died 1958)
* March 22 – Gabrielle Roy, French Canadian author (died 1983)
* March 28 – Nelson Algren, American novelist (died 1981)
* March 31 – Robert Brasillach, French author (died 1945)
* April 8 – John Fante, American novelist (died 1983)
* May 1 – Yiannis Ritsos, Greek poet (died 1990)
* May 5 – Miklós Radnóti, Hungarian poet (died 1944)
* May 9 – Robert Garioch, Scottish poet (died 1981)
* June 6 – Isaiah Berlin, German-born philosopher (died 1997)
* June 19 – Osamu Dazai (太宰 治), Japanese author (died 1948)
* June 28 – Eric Ambler, English spy novelist (died 1998)
* June 29 – C. Hamilton Ellis, English writer (died 1987)
* July 1 – Juan Carlos Onetti, Uruguayan writer (died 1994)
* July 8 – Petar Šegedin, Croatian diplomat, novelist and essayist (died 1998)
* July 17 – G. P. Wells, English zoologist, son and co-author of H. G. Wells (died 1985)
* July 28 – Malcolm Lowry, English novelist (died 1957)
* July 29 – Chester Himes, American writer (died 1984)
* July 30 – C. Northcote Parkinson, English historian and author (died 1993)
* August 3 – Walter Van Tilburg Clark, American novelist (died 1971)
* August 11 – Uku Masing, Estonian religious philosopher, linguist and writer (died 1985)
* August 19 – Jerzy Andrzejewski, Polish author (died 1983)
* September 9 – Noel Barber, British novelist (died 1988)
* October 24 – Sheila Watson (Sheila Doherty), Canadian novelist and critic (died 1998)
* November 12 – Laxmi Prasad Devkota, Nepali poet, playwright, and novelist (died 1959)
* November 26 – Eugène Ionesco (Eugen Ionescu), Romanian-born French playwright (died 1994)
* November 27 – James Agee, American writer (died 1955)
* December 7 – Alexandru Talex, Romanian journalist, critic and biographer (died 1998)
* December 14 – Ronald Welch (Ronald Oliver Felton), Welsh novelist and children's writer writing in English (died 1982)
* December 16 – Edgar Mittelholzer, Guyanese novelist (suicide 1965)

## Deaths

* January 1 – Mollie Evelyn Moore Davis, American poet, writer, and editor (born 1844)
* January 14 – William à Beckett, English journalist (born 1844)
* January 22 – Hattie Tyng Griswold, American author (born 1842)
* February 11 – Russell Sturgis, American art critic (born 1836)
* March 24 – John Millington Synge, Irish dramatist and poet (born 1871)
* March 27 (probable) – John Davidson, Scottish poet (born 1857)
* April 9
** Francis Marion Crawford, American novelist (born 1854)
** Paschal Grousset, French journalist and science fiction writer (born 1844)
* April 12 – Algernon Charles Swinburne, English poet (born 1837)
* April 21 – Denys Corbet, Guernsey poet writing in Guernsey French and English (born 1826)
* April 26 – Marcus Dods, Scottish theologian (born 1834)
* May 18 – George Meredith, English novelist and poet (born 1828)
* June 11 – Jacob Mikhailovich Gordin, American dramatist (born 1853)
* June 24 – Sarah Orne Jewett, American writer (born 1849)
* July 8 – Albert Craig (The Surrey Poet), English cricket writer (born 1850)
* July 9 – Rosa Nouchette Carey, English children's writer (born 1840)
* August 15 – Euclides da Cunha, Brazilian writer, shot (born 1866)
* August 18 – Theodore Martin, Scottish-born writer (born 1816)
* August 21 – George Cabot Lodge, American poet (born 1873)
* August 23 – Liu E (劉鶚, Liu O), Chinese scholar, entrepreneur and novelist (born 1857)
* August 26 – George Manville Fenn, English novelist and educationalist (born 1831)
* September 4 – Clyde Fitch, American playwright (born 1865)
* September 19 – József Borovnyák, Slovene writer, politician and priest (born 1826)
* October 16 – Jakub Bart-Ćišinski, Upper Sorbian poet, writer, playwright and translator (born 1856)
* October 24 – Henry Charles Lea, American historian (born 1825)
* November 5 – H. L. Fischer, Pennsylvania German-language writer and translator (born 1822)
* November 18 – Renée Vivien, English-born French-language Symbolist poet (born 1877)
* December 14 – Frederick Greenwood, English novelist and journalist (born 1830)

## Awards

* Chancellor's Gold Medal: Dennis Holme Robertson
* Nobel Prize in Literature: Selma Lagerlöf (first female recipient)
* Newdigate Prize: Frank Ashton-Gwatkin
* Knighthood: Arthur Wing Pinero
* Prix Goncourt: Marius-Ary Leblond, En France