1926 - Literature

Literature

The Los Angeles Central Library is completed to designs by the late New York architect Bertram Goodhue in a mixture of Spanish colonial and Beaux Arts styles.

Nonfiction: Disarmament and The League of Nations by Canadian-born London University professor Philip John Noel-Baker, 36, who served with an ambulance unit during the Great War (his Quaker faith prevented him from enlisting in the military) and was a member of the British delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference 7 years ago; History of England by Cambridge University historian G. M. (George Macaulay) Trevelyan, 50; The Acquisitive Society and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by Calcutta-born English economic historian R. H. (Richard Henry) Tawney, 44, of the Workers' Educational Association, who was badly wounded 10 years ago in the Battle of the Somme; Dictionary of Modern English Usage by English lexicographer H. W. (Henry Watson) Fowler, 68; Religion in the Making by Alfred North Whitehead; Man and the State by philosopher William Ernest Hocking; The Story of Philosophy by New York educator-author Will (William James) Durant, 40; The Copeland Reader is an anthology of works selected by Maine-born Harvard teacher Charles Townsend Copeland, 66, who last year was appointed Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory; Microbe Hunters by Zeeland, Mich.-born bacteriologist-turned-author Paul (Henry) de Kruif, 36, who helped Sinclair Lewis with his 1925 novel Arrowsmith, receives 25 percent of the royalties, and now gives a popular account of the discoveries by Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, Paul Ehrlich, and others. The book will have sales of more than 1 million copies and be translated into 18 languages; Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence (see Lowell Thomas, 1924). His 280,000-word account of desert fighting appears in a costly limited edition (a 130,000-word version will appear next year under the more appropriate title Revolt in the Desert, and the full book will be issued for general circulation after Lawrence's death in a motorcycle accident in 1935); "Hatrack" by New York Herald Tribune rewrite man Herbert Asbury, 34, appears in the April issue of H. L. Mencken's American Mercury, Boston's puritanical, 48-year-old Watch and Ward Society finds the article about a prostitute who works at a cemetery in Asbury's native Farmington, Mo., objectionable and has the magazine banned, Mencken gets himself arrested on the Boston Common for selling allegedly obscene and sacriligious material, the post office bans his magazine from the mails, and the resulting publicity not only boosts sales but makes Asbury a celebrity; Short Circuits by humorist Stephen Leacock includes "An Elegy Near a City Freight Yard."

Writer-traveler Charles M. Doughty dies at Sissinghurst, Kent, January 20 at age 82; Swedish feminist writer Ellen Key at Strand April 25 at age 76.

Fiction: The Sun Also Rises by Illinois-born novelist Ernest (Miller) Hemingway, 27, who quotes Gertrude Stein in an epigraph that says, "You are all a lost generation," a line that Stein heard her garageman use in scolding a young mechanic who did not make proper repairs on her Model T Ford (Hemingway mixes fictional characters with the real-life exploits of Spanish matador Cayetano Ordóñez); The Cabala by Wisconsin-born novelist Thornton (Niven) Wilder, 29; Soldier's Pay by Mississippi novelist William (Cuthbert) Faulkner, 28, who spelled his name Falkner until 2 years ago, when a printer added the "u" on a volume of poetry that he published; The Counterfeiters (Les Faux Monnayeurs) by André Gide; A Man Could Stand Up by Ford Madox Ford, whose title refers to the end of trench warfare in 1918; Debits and Credits (stories) by Rudyard Kipling includes "The Garden" and "The Wish House" (Kipling's son was killed in 1915. His preoccupation with imperialism and anti-German sentiment have put him out of touch with his contemporaries, but he remains a master story teller); The Plumed Serpent by D. H. Lawrence; Jesting Pilate by Aldous Huxley; The Castle (Das Schloss) by the late Franz Kafka; The Izu Dancer (Izu no odoriko) by Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata, 27, whose work is published in the journal Artistic Age (Bungei jidai) that he has founded; The Bullfighters (Les Bestiares) by Henri de Montherlant; Blindness by English novelist Henry Green (Henry Vincent Yorke), 21; The Return of Don Quixote by G. K. Chesterton; Under the Sun of Satan (Sous le soleil de Satan) by French novelist Georges Bernanos, 38; Night Walker by Louis Aragon; The Kidnapper (Le Voleur d'enfants) by Jules Supervielle; Avarice House (Mont-Cinere) by Paris-born novelist Julian (Hartridge) Green, 26, who served in the French Army during the Great War, entered the University of Virginia at age 19, taught there for a year, but returned to France 4 years ago; Before the Bombardment by English novelist-poet Osbert Sitwell, 34; Craven House by English actor-turned-novelist Patrick Hamilton, 22; Payment Deferred by Cairo-born English novelist C. S. (Cecil Scott) Forester, 27; Adam's Breed by English poet-novelist (Marguerite) Radclyffe Hall, 40; Lolly Willowes; or, The Loving Huntsman by English novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, 32; The Last of Cheri by Colette; Show Boat by Edna Ferber; My Mortal Enemy (stories) by Willa Cather; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie; Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers; Stamboul Train by English novelist Graham Greene, 21.

Misogynist novelist Ronald Firbank dies at Rome May 21 at age 40.

Poetry: White Buildings by Ohio-born poet Hart Crane, 27 (son of Life Savers creator Clarence Crane); A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle by Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve), 34; Chorus of the Newly Dead by Edwin Muir; The Land by English poet-novelist V. (Vita Victoria Mary) Sackville-West, 34; Capital of Sorrow (Capitale de la douleur) by French poet Paul Eluard (Eugène Grindel), 30; The Close Couplet by New York-born poet Laura Riding (originally Reichenthal), 25; The Weary Blues by Missouri-born poet Langston Hughes, 24, whose work has been published through the efforts of Vachel Lindsay; Streets in the Moon by Archibald MacLeish; Two Gentlemen in Bonds by John Crowe Ransom; Enough Rope by New York poet-author Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild), 33, who has gained a certain renown for her 1920 advertising line "Brevity is the soul of lingerie" and will be better known for "Men seldom make passes/ At girls who wear glasses," for putting down an actress with the line, "She ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B," and for the verse, "Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give;/ Gas smells awful;/ You might as well live."

Rainer Maria Rilke dies of blood poisoning at Sierre, Switzerland, December 29 at age 51 after being pricked by a thorn.

Juvenile: Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne, who delights readers with Pooh-bear, Tigger, Piglet, Ee-ore, Kanga and baby Roo, Owl, and other companions of Christopher Robin; Fairy Gold by Compton Mackenzie; The Little Engine that Could by "Watty Piper" (pen name used by New York publisher Platt & Munk; based on a 1910 story by Mabel C. Bragg, 60; Frances M. Ford, 68, claims prior authorship), illustrations by George and Doris Haumon; Smoky the Cowhorse by Montana-born cowboy novelist William Roderick "Will" James, 34.

The New York Herald-Tribune appoints Irita Bradford (Mrs. Carl) Van Doren, 35, head of its Book Review section following the death of Book Review editor Stuart Sherman. Her stewardship over the next 37 years will have a powerful influence on what Americans read.