1918 - Literature

Literature

Nonfiction: Eminent Victorians by London-born writer (Giles) Lytton Strachey, 38, introduces a new genre of biography by injecting imagined conversations and taking other liberties while debunking the Victorian eminences of Florence Nightingale and such; Reflections by an Unpolitical Man by Thomas Mann, whose term is eagerly applied to themselves by people who want to turn their thoughts to private concerns; The New Economy (Die neu Wirtschaft) by industrialist Walter Rathenau, who advocates industrial self-government combined with employee participation and effective state control rather than outright nationalization of industry; The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution by Ohio-born historian Arthur M. (Meier) Schlesinger, 30.

Historian-editor Hubert H. Bancroft dies at Walnut Creek, California, March 2 at age 85; historian-writer Henry Adams at Washington, D.C., March 27 at age 80; philosopher Hermann Cohen at Berlin April 4 at age 75; pacifist essayist and literary critic Randolph S. Bourne in the influenza epidemic at New York December 22 at age 32.

Fiction: The Defeat of Youth by English novelist-critic Aldous (Leonard) Huxley, 24; Tarr by English poet-novelist-painter (Percy) Wyndham Lewis, 33; Sylvia Scarlett by Compton Mackenzie; Man of Straw (Der Untertan) by Heinrich Mann; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; My Antonia by Willa Cather; The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington; Frenzied Fiction by Stephen Leacock includes "My Revelations as a Spy," "Lost in New York," "In Dry Toronto," "To Nature and Back," and "Merry Christmas"; "A Madman's Diary" (short story) by Chinese writer Lu Xun (Lu Hsün), 36, condemns traditional Confucian society. Lu has studied Western-style medicine in northern Japan after seeing his father die of tuberculosis while being treated with traditional Chinese medicine. Modeled on Nikolai Gogol's story of the same title, it is the first Western-style story written entirely in Chinese.

Poetry: Poems by the late Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose rich rhythmic system will inspire a new generation of poets; Counter-Attack and Other Poems by Siegfried Sassoon; Forty New Poems by William Henry Davies; Ecstasy Collection (Skrizhal sbornik) by Anna Akhmatova; "Ode to Revolution" by Vladimir Mayakovski; Cornhuskers by Carl Sandburg, whose poem "Prairie" states: "I speak of new cities and new people./ I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes." Sandburg's poem "Grass" states: "Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo./ Shovel them under and let me work—/ I am the grass; I cover all"; "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson, includes the lines: "Whenever Richard Cory went down town/ We people on the pavement looked at him:/ He was a gentleman from sole to crown,/ Clean-favored, and imperially slim./ . . . And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—/ And admirably schooled in every grace:/ In fine, we thought that he was everything/ To make us wish that we were in his place./ . . . And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,/ Went home and put a bullet through his head"; The Charnel Rose by Conrad Aiken; The Ghetto by Irish-born New York poet Lola (née Rose Emily) Ridge, 44; Minna and Myself by Mississippi-born New York poet Maxwell Bodenheim, 25; The Sweet Loss (or The Sweet Injury; El dulce daño) by Alfonsina Storni; The Black Messengers (Los Heraldos Negros) by Peruvian poet César (Abraham) Vallejo, 26.

Poet William Wilfred Campbell dies near Ottawa January 1 at age 56; surgeon-poet John McCrea of pneumonia and meningitis at his field hospital in France January 28 at age 45; English poet-playwright-painter Isaac Rosenberg is killed in action April 7 at age 27; Sgt. Joyce Kilmer is killed in action July 30 at age 31; poet Wilfred Owen is awarded the Military Cross for gallantry and is killed in action November 4 at age 25; Guillaume Apollinaire dies at Paris November 9 at age 38 of influenza and a head wound received in March 1916. His book Calligrammes has recently been published, and he leaves behind erotic poems relating battle action to sexual desire: "Two shell-bursts/ A pink explosion/ Like two bared breasts/ Snooking their tips/ HE KNEW LOVE/ What an epitaph."

Juvenile: The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse by Beatrix Potter; A Patriotic Schoolgirl by Angela Brazil.