1915 in literature

Events

January 13 – "Reminiscences of Sergeant Michael Cassidy", the first known story by Captain H. C. McNeile, Royal Engineers, writing as "Sapper", begins publication in the Daily Mail (London).

February 28 – Rupert Brooke sails with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force; during the campaign he develops sepsis from an infected mosquito bite, which ends with his death in a hospital ship off Skyros. His collection 1914 & Other Poems, including the sonnet "The Soldier", is published posthumously in May.

March – Ford Madox Ford's novel The Good Soldier: A tale of passion is published by John Lane – The Bodley Head in London under this title, and under the author's original name of Ford Madox Hueffer, although he had intended it to be called The Saddest Story.

March 26 – Publication in London of Virginia Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out, by her half-brother Gerald Duckworth.

April 6 – Publication in London of the American Ezra Pound's poetry collection Cathay, "translations... for the most part of the Chinese of Rihaku, from the notes of the late Ernest Fenollosa, and the decipherings of the Professors Mori and Ariga", by Elkin Mathews.

April 24 – Deportation of Armenian notables from Istanbul begins. Among literary deportees killed as part of the Armenian Genocide are Dikran Chökürian, Armen Dorian, Melkon Giurdjian, Ardashes Harutiunian, Jacques Sayabalian, Ruben Sevak, Siamanto, Rupen Zartarian and actor Yenovk Shahen; survivors include Yervant Odian and Alexander Panossian.

May 3 – The rondeau "In Flanders Fields" is written by Canadian poet John McCrae; it is first published on December 8 in the London magazine Punch.

May 7 – Sinking of the RMS Lusitania: Americans among the 1,198 killed in this torpedo attack on a civilian passenger liner include: writer and playwright Justus Miles Forman (b. 1875); theatrical producer Charles Frohman (b. 1856); writer and philosopher Elbert Hubbard (b. 1856) and his second wife Alice Moore Hubbard (b. 1861); and playwright Charles Klein (b. 1867). Survivors include British-born writer and educator Ian Holbourn and bookseller Charles E. Lauriat, Jr.

May 13 – While Julian Grenfell stands talking with other officers, a shell lands a few yards away, and a splinter hits him in the head. He is taken to a hospital in Boulogne, where he dies 13 days later. His poem "Into Battle" is published in The Times the day after his death. His younger brother Gerald William (Billy) Grenfell is killed in action 2 months later.

c. May – Publication of the first modern book illustrated with wood engravings, Frances Cornford's Spring Morning (published by The Poetry Bookshop, London) with engravings by the poet's cousin Gwen Raverat.

June 24 – Dedication of Widener Library at Harvard University.

June 26–August 14 – P. G. Wodehouse's novel Something Fresh is serialized in The Saturday Evening Post (U.S.) introducing the character Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle; it is first published as a book on September 3 in New York by D. Appleton & Company and on September 16 in London by Methuen & Company.

August–September – John Buchan's thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, set immediately before the outbreak of war and introducing his hero Richard Hannay, is serialised in Blackwood's Magazine before being published in book form in October by William Blackwood and Sons in Edinburgh.

August–December – Ezra Pound is completing the first sections of his poem The Cantos.

September 15 – P. G. Wodehouse's short story "Extricating Young Gussie" is published in The Saturday Evening Post (U.S.) introducing the characters Jeeves and Bertie.

September 30 – D. H. Lawrence's novel The Rainbow is published in London, immediately prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act 1857 and suppressed by his publisher, Methuen. The U.S. edition is published in November without legal challenge.

October – Franz Kafka's seminal novella The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) is first published in Die Weißen Blätter (Leipzig). Kafka finishes writing The Trial (Der Process) this year, but it will not be published until 1925, the year after his death.

October 15 – Detective Story Magazine is first published by Street & Smith of New York, a successor to Nick Carter Stories.

November – German author Heinrich Mann publishes an essay on Émile Zola (in Die Weißen Blätter) celebrating Zola's political commitment and attacking the economic causes of the War, temporarily rupturing Mann's relationship with his younger brother, the novelist Thomas Mann.

James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and Vladimir Lenin all take up residence in Zürich.

Alfred A. Knopf, Sr., establishes the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house in New York City.

The Goudy Old Style serif typeface is created by Frederic Goudy for American Type Founders.

Fiction

Victor Appleton – Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship

Ruby M. Ayres – Richard Chatterton, V.C.

Mariano Azuela – The Underdogs (Los de abajo)

E.F. Benson – The Oakleyites

Stella Benson – I Pose

John Buchan – The Thirty-nine Steps

Willa Cather – The Song of the Lark

Joseph Conrad – Victory

Arthur Conan Doyle – The Valley of Fear

Theodore Dreiser – The Genius

Caradoc Evans – My People: Stories of the Peasantry of West Wales

Edna Ferber – Emma Mc Chesney and Co.

Ronald Firbank – Vainglory

Ford Madox Hueffer – The Good Soldier

Charlotte Perkins Gilman – Herland

Anna Katharine Green – The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange

Herman Hesse – Knulp

D. H. Lawrence – The Rainbow

Jack London – The Little Lady of the Big House

Arthur Machen

The Bowmen; and Other Legends of the War

The Great Return

W. Somerset Maugham – Of Human Bondage

Oscar Micheaux – The Forged Note: A Romance Of The Darker Races

Mori Ōgai (森 鷗外) – Sansho the Steward (山椒大夫, Sanshō Dayū)

John Muir

Travels to Alaska

Letters to A Friend

Natsume Sōseki (夏目 漱石) – Grass on the Wayside (道草, Michikusa)

E. Phillips Oppenheim – The Game of Liberty

Baroness Orczy

A Bride of the Plains

The Bronze Eagle

P. D. Ouspensky – Strange Life of Ivan Osokin (Странная жизнь Ивана Осокина)

Eleanor H. Porter – Pollyanna Grows Up

Dorothy Richardson – Pointed Roofs

Sax Rohmer – The Yellow Claw

Rafael Sabatini – The Sea Hawk

Ruth Sawyer – The Primrose Ring

Jean Webster – Dear Enemy

H. G. Wells – Boon

Luang Wilatpariwat – Khwam mai phayabat (No Vendetta; first full-length Thai novel, adapted from English)

Harry Leon Wilson – Ruggles of Red Gap

P. G. Wodehouse

Something Fresh

Psmith, Journalist

Virginia Woolf – The Voyage Out

Children and young people

Gerdt von Bassewitz – Peter and Anneli's Journey to the Moon (Peterchens Mondfahrt)

L. Frank Baum

The Scarecrow of Oz

Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross (as Edith Van Dyne)

Frances Hodgson Burnett – The Lost Prince

Edgar Rice Burroughs – The Return of Tarzan

Russell Thorndike – Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh

Drama

Susan Glaspell – Suppressed Desires

Avery Hopwood – Fair and Warmer

Agha Hashar Kashmiri – Bilwamangal

Cleves Kinkead – Common Clay

Caton Theodorian – Bujoreștii

Horace Annesley Vachell – The Case of Lady Camber

Non-fiction

John Hay Beith – The First Hundred Thousand

John Buchan – Nelson's History of the War (begun)

Hall Caine – The Drama of 365 Days: Scenes in the Great War

Rudyard Kipling – The Fringes of the Fleet (essays and poems)

Friedrich Naumann – Mitteleuropa

Mary Sinclair – A Journal of Impressions in Belgium

Percy Sykes – A History of Persia

Zhonghua Da Zidian (中華大字典) (Great Chinese Dictionary)

Poetry

C. J. Dennis – The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (verse novel)

T. S. Eliot – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

H. B. Elliott, ed. – Lest We Forget: A War Anthology

Geoffrey Faber – Interflow, Poems Mainly Lyrical

Rudyard Kipling – "My Boy Jack (poem)My Boy Jack"

Francis Ledwidge – Songs of the Fields

Vladimir Mayakovsky – A Cloud in Trousers

Alice Meynell – Poems of the War

Barbu Nemțeanu – Stropi de soare

Fernando Pessoa – Opiário and Ode Marítima

Jessie Pope – Jessie Pope's War Poems and More War Poems

Births

January 1 – Branko Ćopić, Bosnian Serb writer (suicide 1984)

February 2 – Khushwant Singh, Indian novelist and journalist (died 2014)

March 13 – Protiva Bose (Ranu Shome), Bengali singer and writer (died 2006)

March 18 – Richard Condon, American novelist (died 1996)

March 26 – Hwang Sun-won, Korean fiction writer (died 2000)

May 8 – Milton Meltzer, American historian and author (died 2009)

May 10 – Monica Dickens, English novelist (died 1992)

May 12 – Joe David Brown, American novelist and journalist (died 1976)

June 10 – Saul Bellow, American writer (died 2005)

July 1

Alun Lewis, Welsh poet in English (died 1944)

Jean Stafford, American fiction writer (died 1979)

July 7 – Margaret Walker, American poet and novelist (died 1998)

July 14 – Jerome Lawrence, American dramatist (died 2004)

July 31 – Herbert Aptheker, American historian (died 2003)

August 19 – Ring Lardner, Jr., American journalist and screenwriter (died 2000)

August 28 – Claude Roy, French poet (died 1997)

August 30 – Jack Simmons, English historian (died 2000)

October 17 – Arthur Miller, American dramatist (died 2005)

October 24 – Marghanita Laski, English biographer, novelist and broadcaster (died 1988)

November 8 – G. S. Fraser, Scottish poet and critic (died 1980)

November 12 – Roland Barthes, French literary theorist (died 1980)

December 22 – David Martin, Hungarian-born Australian poet (died 1997)

December 27 – John Cornford, English poet (died 1936)

Deaths

January 3 – James Elroy Flecker, English poet, novelist and dramatist (tuberculosis, born 1884)

February 4 – Mary Elizabeth Braddon, English popular novelist (born 1837)

April 8 – Louis Pergaud, French novelist (killed in action, born 1882)

April 23 – Rupert Brooke, English war poet (blood poisoning, born 1887)

May 11 – Lucy Bethia Walford, Scottish novelist and artist (born 1845)

May 26 – Julian Grenfell, English war poet (killed in action, born 1888)

July 5 – Aurelio Tolentino, Filipino dramatist (born 1867)

September 1 – August Stramm, German Expressionist poet and playwright (killed in action, born 1874)

September 27 – Remy de Gourmont, French Symbolist poet, novelist, and critic (stroke, born 1858)

November 14 – Booker T. Washington, American writer and educator (born 1856)

December 23 – Roland Leighton, English war poet (died of wounds, born 1895)

Edmond Laforest, Haitian French-language poet (suicide, born 1876)

In literature

James Agee's autobiographical novel A Death in the Family (published posthumously in 1957) is based on events of this year.

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Romain Rolland (French)