1899 in literature

Events

January 21 – French actress Sarah Bernhardt, having taken over management of the Paris theatre which she renames the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, opens in the title rôle of Victorien Sardou's La Tosca. On May 20 she premières an adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet with herself in the title rôle (sic.)

March 20 – W. H. Davies, "tramp-poet", loses his foot trying to jump a freight train at Renfrew, Ontario.

April – Karl Kraus establishes the radical periodical Die Fackel ("The Torch") in Vienna.

April–June – Rainer Maria Rilke (an art student at this time) travels to Moscow to meet Leo Tolstoy.

May–December – Winston Churchill's only work of fiction, Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania, is serialized in Macmillan's Magazine.

May 8 – The Irish Literary Theatre, founded by W. B. Yeats, Augusta, Lady Gregory, George Moore and Edward Martyn, stages its first performance in Dublin, a version of Yeats' verse drama The Countess Cathleen.

June 20 – English writer Edward Thomas marries Helen Noble at Fulham register office.

September 1 – The National Theatre in Norway opens with performances of pieces by Holberg.

September – The British Mutoscope and Biograph Company's King John (a very short silent film starring Herbert Beerbohm Tree) becomes the first known film based on a Shakespeare play.

November – The oldest surviving Japanese film, Momijigari, is shot by Tsunekichi Shibata in Tokyo as a record of kabuki actors Onoe Kikugorō V and Ichikawa Danjūrō IX performing a scene from the play Momijigari.

November 6 – William Gillette's play Sherlock Holmes, based on the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, opens in New York City with himself in the title rôle.

November 7 (October 26 Old Style) – Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya receives its metropolitan première at the Moscow Art Theatre with Konstantin Stanislavski directing and playing the rôle of Astrov and Olga Knipper as Yeléna.

December 12 – Herbert Putnam is appointed Librarian of Congress in the United States, where he will introduce into practice the Library of Congress Classification scheme.

December – The imprisoned William Sydney Porter's pseudonym O. Henry first appears over the short story "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking" in this month's McClure's Magazine.

Curtis Brown (literary agents) established in London by American Albert Curtis Brown.

Edgar Rice Burroughs begins working in his father's business.

Simon Pokagon's O-gi-maw-kwe Mit-I-gwa-ki (Queen of the Woods) is published, the first novel both by and about Native Americans in the United States.

Arthur Machen's wife Amy dies after a long illness, an event that has a devastating effect on him.

Lin Shu's first translation into Chinese from a Western text, The Lady of the Camellias as 巴黎茶花女遺事, is published.

Leo Tolstoy's last novel, Resurrection («Воскресение», Voskreseniye), is published serially in Niva.

First series of the Arden Shakespeare under the general editorship of W. J. Craig begins publication by Methuen in London with an edition of Hamlet edited by Edward Dowden.

Fiction

Anna Adolph – Arqtiq

Victor Anestin – În anul 4000 sau O călătorie la Venus ("In the year 4000, or A trip to Venus")

Machado de Assis – Dom Casmurro

René Bazin – La terre qui meurt

René Boylesve – Demoiselle Cloque

Mary Elizabeth Braddon – His Darling Sin

Rhoda Broughton – The Game and the Candle

Charles Waddell Chesnutt – The Conjure Woman

Mary Cholmondeley – Red Pottage

Kate Chopin – The Awakening

Ralph Connor – The Sky Pilot

Joseph Conrad – serializations in Blackwood's Magazine

Heart of Darkness (February–April)

Lord Jim (October 1899–November 1900)

Stephen Crane – The Monster and Other Stories

Margaret Deland – Old Chester Tales

Maxim Gorky – Foma Gordyeeff

G. A. Henty – The Golden Canon

E. W. Hornung – The Amateur Cracksman

Henry James – The Awkward Age

Selma Lagerlöf – The Tale of a Manor (En herrgårdssägen)

Octave Mirbeau – The Torture Garden

A. E. W. Mason – Man and His Kingdom

Arthur Morrison – To London Town

Frank Norris

Blix

McTeague

George Paston – A Writer of Books

Władysław Reymont – The Promised Land (Ziemia Obiecana; book publication)

Somerville and Ross – Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. (collected stories)

Leo Tolstoy – Resurrection

Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano – Morsamor

Émile Zola – Fécondité

Children and young people

Helen Bannerman – Little Black Sambo

L. Frank Baum – Father Goose: His Book

Tom Bevan – The Thane of the Dean: A Tale of the Time of the Conqueror

Géza Gárdonyi – Eclipse of the Crescent Moon (Egri csillagok, Stars of Eger)

E. Nesbit – The Story of the Treasure Seekers (first in the Bastable series)

Ethel Pedley – Dot and the Kangaroo

Josephine Pollard

Bible Stories for Children

History of The Old Testament in Words of One Syllable

History of The New Testament in Words of One Syllable

Edward Stratemeyer as Arthur M. Winfield

The Rover Boys at School

The Rover Boys on the Ocean

The Rover Boys in the Jungle (first three in the Rover Boys series of 30 books)

Drama

Georges Feydeau – La Dame de chez Maxim

Clyde Fitch – Barbara Frietchie

Leon Kobrin – Minna or, The Ruined Family from Downtown

Arthur Wing Pinero – The Gay Lord Quex

William Young (adaptation) – Ben-Hur

Poetry

Stéphane Mallarmé – Poésies (posthumously published)

W. B. Yeats – The Wind Amongst the Reeds

Non-fiction

Qasim Amin – The Liberation of Women

Edward Bernstein – Evolutionary Socialism

Houston Stewart Chamberlain – The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts)

Percy Dearmer – The Parson's Handbook

John Dewey – The School and Society

Elbert Hubbard – A Message to Garcia

Gertrude Jekyll – Wood and Garden

Thorstein Veblen – The Theory of the Leisure Class

Births

January 17 – Nevil Shute (Nevil Shute Norway), English novelist (died 1960)

February 3 – Lao She, Chinese author (died 1966)

February 23 – Erich Kästner, German children's author (died 1974)

March 8 – Eric Linklater, Welsh-born Scottish novelist and travel writer (died 1974)

March 19 – Aksel Sandemose, Danish novelist (died 1965)

March 25 – Jacques Audiberti, French playwright (died 1965)

April 22 – Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born novelist (died 1977)

May 8 – Friedrich Hayek, Austrian-born social scientist (died 1992)

May 18 – D. Gwenallt Jones, Welsh poet died 1968)

May 24

Kazi Nazrul Islam, Bengali poet (died 1976)

Henri Michaux, Belgian-born poet, writer and painter (died 1984)

June 18 – Eugène Vinaver, Russian-born English literary scholar (died 1979)

July 1 – James Lennox Kerr (Peter Dawlish, Gavin Douglas), Scottish novelist and children's writer (died 1963)

July 8 – G. B. Edwards, Guernsey-born writer (died 1976)

July 11 – E. B. White, American children's writer and writer on style (died 1985)

July 21

Hart Crane, American poet (died 1932)

Ernest Hemingway, American novelist (died 1961)

August 9 – P. L. Travers (Helen Lyndon Goff), Australian children's writer (died 1996)

August 24 – Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian writer (died 1986)

August 27 – C. S. Forester, Egyptian-born English adventure novelist (died 1966)

October 19 - Miguel Ángel Asturias, (died 1974)

November 10 – Kate Seredy, Hungarian-born American children's writer and illustrator (died 1975)

November 17 – Roger Vitrac, French surrealist playwright and poet (died 1952)

December 9 – Jean de Brunhoff, French children's author and illustrator (died 1937)

December 16 – Noël Coward, English playwright (died 1973)

December 18 – Peter Wessel Zapffe, Norwegian philosopher (died 1990)

Unknown date

Laurence Meynell (Valerie Baxter, A. Stephen Tring), English novelist and children's writer (died 1989)

Deaths

February 10 – Archibald Lampman, Canadian poet (born 1861)

March 16 – Alexander Balloch Grosart, Scottish literary editor (born 1827)

May 1 – Ludwig Büchner, German philosopher (born 1824)

May 16 – Francisque Sarcey, French journalist and theater critic (born 1827)

June 7 – Augustin Daly, American dramatist and theater manager (born 1838)

June 30 – E. D. E. N. Southworth, American novelist (born 1819)

July 18 – Horatio Alger, Jr., American novelist and children's author (born 1832)

August 27 – Vendela Hebbe, Swedish journalist and novelist (born 1808)

August 29 – Catharine Parr Traill, English-born Canadian author (born 1802)

October 25 – Grant Allen, Canadian science writer and novelist (born 1848)

October 27 – Florence Marryat, English novelist and entertainer (born 1833)

November 2 – Anna Swanwick, English feminist writer (born 1813)

November 13 – Arthur Giry, French historian (born 1848)

December 17 – Bernard Quaritch, German-born English bibliographer and bookseller (born 1819)

December 18 – Bonifaciu Florescu, Romanian polygraph (ventricular hypertrophy, born 1848)

December 22 – Dwight L. Moody, American preacher and publisher (born 1837)

Awards

Chancellor's Gold Medal – Arthur Cecil Pigou

Newdigate Prize – Harold Edgeworth Butler