1910 in literature

Events

January 8 – Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) concludes serialization in the Paris newspaper Le Gaulois.

April – Halley's comet reappears (after 76 years), and Mark Twain dies on April 21, the day following the comet's perihelion. In his autobiography, Twain wrote, "I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It's coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. The Almighty has said no doubt, 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'"

March 18 – The first cinematic version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is released in the United States by Edison Studios. One of the first horror films, it features (unbilled) actor Charles Ogle as the monster.

August 11 – Buenos Aires Convention signed, providing for the international recognition of copyright.

September – First appearance of G. K. Chesterton's fictional detective Father Brown in the short story "The Blue Cross" in the Story-Teller magazine (London); previously published on June 23 as "Valentin Follows a Curious Trail" in The Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia).

September 1 – Opening of Herbert Beerbohm Tree's elaborate revival of Shakespeare's Henry VIII in London which will run for 254 consecutive performances.

October – Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's first novel Mafarka il futurista is cleared of obscenity charges.

Fall – Damon Runyon begins working as a journalist on The New York American.

Thomas Mofolo writes Pitseng and Chaka, the latter not published at this time.

Boris Pasternak drops out of the Moscow Conservatory and begins to study law, moving on to study philosophy at the University of Marburg.

Fiction

Jane Addams – Twenty Years at Hull House

Arnold Bennett – Clayhanger (first volume of trilogy)

Oskar Braaten – Kring fabrikken

Rhoda Broughton – The Devil and the Deep Sea

John Buchan – Prester John

Ivan Bunin – The Village (Деревня, Derévnya, originally published as Novelet (Повесть))

Gilbert Cannan – Devious Ways

Dikran Chökürian – Hayreni dzayner (Հայրենի Ձայներ)

Colette – La Vagabonde

William T. Cox Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods

Walter de la Mare – The Return

Jeffery Farnol – The Broad Highway

E. M. Forster – Howards End

Zane Grey – The Heritage of the Desert

Hermann Hesse – Gertrud

Gaston Leroux – Un Homme dans la nuit

Hermann Löns – Der Wehrwolf

John MacCormick Dùn Aluinn (serialization)

Natsume Sōseki (夏目 漱石) – The Gate (Mon 門)

Martin Andersen Nexø – Pelle the Conqueror (final volume)

Baroness Orczy

Lady Molly of Scotland Yard

Petticoat Government

John Oxenham – A Maid of the Silver Sea

Aleksey Remizov The Indefatigable Cymbal

Rainer Maria Rilke – The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge)

J.-H. Rosny aîné – La Mort de la Terre

Fráňa Šrámek – Stříbrný vítr

Katherine Thurston – Max

Mary Augusta Ward – Canadian Born

H.G. Wells

The History of Mr Polly

The New Machiavelli (serialization)

Jerzy Żuławski – Zwycięzca (The Conqueror), second of the Trylogia Księżycowa (Lunar Trilogy)

Children and young people

Victor Appleton - Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle

L. Frank Baum

The Emerald City of Oz

Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society (as Edith Van Dyne)

Thornton Burgess – Old Mother West Wind

Frances Hodgson Burnett – The Secret Garden

Grace James – Japanese Fairy Tales

Rudyard Kipling – Rewards and Fairies

Walter de la Mare – The Three Mulla Mulgars (also The Three Royal Monkeys)

John Masefield – A Book of Discoveries

Lucy Maud Montgomery – Kilmeny of the Orchard

E. Nesbit – The Magic City

Drama

George Diamandy

Bestia (The Beast)

Tot înainte (Carry On)

Terence MacSwiney – The Last Warriors of Coole

Maurice Maeterlinck – Mary Magdalene

John Masefield – The Tragedy of Pompey the Great

Edmond Rostand – Chantecler

George Bernard Shaw – Misalliance

J. M. Synge – Deirdre of the Sorrows

Rabindranath Tagore – Raja (রাজা, The King of the Dark Chamber)

Poetry

Paul Claudel – Cinq Grandes Odes

Rabindranath Tagore – Gitanjali (Bengali language version)

Non-fiction

Norman Angell – The Great Illusion (revision of Europe's Optical Illusion published 1909)

Hall Caine – King Edward: A Prince and a Great Man

G. K. Chesterton – What's Wrong With The World

Emma Goldman – Anarchism and Other Essays

Dumitru C. Moruzi – Înstrăinații

Ezra Pound – The Spirit of Romance

Gerhard Ritter – Ein historisches Urbild zu Goethes Faust (Agrippa von Nettesheym)

Percy Sykes – The Glory of the Shia World

Henri Stahl – Bucureștii ce se duc

Wallace D. Wattles – The Science of Getting Rich

Andrew Dickson White – Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason

Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell – Principia Mathematica, vol. 1

Births

February 6 – Irmgard Keun, German author (died 1982)

February 10 – Joan G. Robinson, English children's writer and illustrator (died 1988)

May 8 – Andrew E. Svenson, American author and publisher (died 1975)

May 23 – Margaret Wise Brown, American children's writer (died 1952)

June 15 – Marie de Garis (Marie Le Messurier), Guernsey ethnographer and lexicographer (died 2010)

June 21 – Clive Sansom, English-born Tasmanian poet and playwright (died 1981)

June 23 – Jean Anouilh, French dramatist (died 1987)

July 14 – Vincent Brome, English biographer and novelist (died 2004)

September 8 – Julián Padrón, Venezuelan novelist, journalist and lawyer (died 1954)

September 11 – Manuel Mujica Láinez, Argentine novelist (died 1984)

October 15 – Haddis Alemayehu, Ethiopian politician and novelist (died 2003)

November 17 – Rachel de Queiroz, Brazilian author (died 2003)

December 19

Jean Genet, French novelist, playwright and poet (died 1986)

José Lezama Lima, Cuban writer and poet (died 1976)

December 24

Jean-Paul Crespelle, French writer (died 1994)

Fritz Leiber, American writer of fantasy and science fiction (died 1992)

Unknown date – Betty Miller, Irish-born Jewish writer (died 1965)

Deaths

January 29 – Edouard Rod, French-Swiss novelist (born 1857)

April 9 – Vittoria Aganoor, Italian poet (born 1855)

April 21 – Mark Twain, American writer (born 1835)

May 7 – Emil Friedrich Kautzsch, German Bible scholar (born 1841)

May 22 – Jules Renard, French novelist (born 1864)

July 2 – Frederick James Furnivall, English lexicographer (born 1825)

August 4 – Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, German New Testament commentator (born 1832)

August 26 – William James, American philosopher (born 1842)

October 17

William Vaughn Moody, American dramatist and poet (born 1869)

Julia Ward Howe, American poet and abolitionist (born 1819)

November 6 – George Panu, Romanian memoirist, literary critic, journalist and politician (born 1848)

November 15 – Wilhelm Raabe, German novelist (born 1831)

November 20 – Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist (born 1828)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Paul Johann Ludwig Heyse

Newdigate prize: Charles Bewley