1927 | Literature
Literature
The Free Library of Philadelphia building is completed in French Renaissance style on Vine Street between 19th and 20th Streets.
The Dictionary of American Biography is published in its initial volumes by the American Council of Learned Societies as a counterpart to the British Dictionary of National Biography edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee. An editorial committee headed by J. Franklin Jameson of the Carnegie Institution has obtained a pledge of $500,000 from New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs to defray the cost of the project, the committee opened offices in February of last year at Washington D.C., and its editors include former Carnegie Institution president Robert J. Woodward, Harvard historian Frederick J. Turner, and Columbia historian John Erskine.
Nonfiction: Main Currents in American Thought: An Interpretation of Literature From the Beginning to 1920 by Aurora, Ill.-born Emporia, Kansas-raised University of Washington professor Vernon (Louis) Parrington, 56, who sees the development of American thought as based on a concept of democratic idealism; Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) by German philosopher Martin Heidegger, 37, shows the influence of Søren Kierkegaard (see 1843) but is deliberately obscure; Why I Am Not a Christian by philosopher-mathematician Bertrand Russell; Chassidischen Bücher by Martin Buber is a study of the pietistic Hasidic movement; The President's Daughter by Marion, Ohio-born author Elizabeth Ann "Nan" Britton, 31 (approximate), who claims she was impregnated by the late president Warren Harding when she was campaign worker and had sex with the senator when she was 22 and he 51, that her daughter was born in 1919, and that she wrote the book to earn money for little Elizabeth Ann Christian's support and to champion the rights of illegitimate children (few people give her story much credence); The Story of a Wonder Man (autobiography) by Ring Lardner; Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld by Herbert Asbury.
Historian Brooks Adams dies at Boston February 13 at age 78; critic-scholar George Brandes at his native Copenhagen February 19 at age 85; historian J. B. Bury at Rome June 1 at age 65.
Fiction: Der Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse; Flight Without End (Die Flucht ohne Ende) by Austrian novelist Joseph Roth, 33, who shows the collapsed Austro-Hungarian Empire as seen through the eyes of a returned officer; Amerika by the late Franz Kafka; The Past Recaptured (Le temps retrouvé) by the late Marcel Proust; The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder; Jalna by Canadian novelist Mazo de la Roche (originally Roche), 42, is the first of more than a dozen in a series of "Whiteoak Chronicles" based on a family living on a lakefront Ontario estate. By the time she dies in 1961 the books will have sold more than 11 million copies in 193 English and 92 foreign editions; Mr. Weston's Good Wine by English novelist T. F. (Theodore Francis) Powys, 52, brother of J. C. Powys; Celibate Loves (stories) by George Moore; To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf; The Left Bank (stories) by Welsh-Creole author Jean Rhys (Gwen Williams), 33; Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather is based on French clergyman Jean Baptiste Lamy, who built the first cathedral in the Southwest at Santa Fe; Giants in the Earth (I de Dage and Riketgrundlaegges) by Norwegian-born novelist Ole Edvart Rölvaag, 52, who came to America in 1896, worked on an uncle's farm in South Dakota, received his degree at St. Olaf College, and has written his books about immigrant life in Norwegian; Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Der Schatz der Sierra Madre) by Polish-born German novelist B. Traven (Beric Traven Torsvan, or Ret Marut, originally Albert Otto Max Feige), 37; Dusty Answer by English novelist Rosamond (Nina) Lehmann, 26; The Lovely Ship by Storm Jameson (her first real success); The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers; The Secret of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton; The "Canary" Murder Case by Virginia-born critic-novelist S. S. Van Dine (Willard Huntington Wright), 39, whose detective Philo Vance will win a wide following.
Mystery writer-playwright Gaston Leroux dies of uremia at Nice the night of April 15 at age 58; humorist Jerome K. Jerome at Northampton, Northamptonshire, June 14 at age 68; Mary Webb at St. Leonards, Sussex, October 8 at age 46, having been confined to a wheelchair by paralysis since age 5.
Poetry: "American Names" by Pennsylvania-born poet Stephen Vincent Benét, 29; The Women at Point Sur by Robinson Jeffers; Tristram and "Launcelot" by Edwin Arlington Robinson is a verse novel; Fine Clothes to the Jew by Langston Hughes; Leitenant Schmidt by Boris Pasternak is a verse epic; Pomes Penyeach by James Joyce, whose work is published by Paris bookseller Sylvia Beach; Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot; The Heart's Journey by Siegfried Sassoon.
Juvenile: archy and mehitabel by Illinois-born New York Herald-Tribune humorist Donald Robert Perry "Don" Marquis, 44, whose cockroach archy is the reincarnation of a poet and whose alley cat mehitabel has rowdy misadventures; The Midnight Folk by John Masefield.