The year 1919 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• November 17 - American expatriate Sylvia Beach opens the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris.
• Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain return to Somerville College, Oxford, to complete their education following war service.
• Two paintings by E. E. Cummings appear in a show of the New York Society of Independent Artists.
• Vladimir Nabokov leaves Russia with his family.

New books

• Sherwood Anderson — Winesburg, Ohio
• Pio Baroja — Caesar or Nothing
• L. Frank Baum — The Magic of Oz
• Edgar Rice Burroughs — Jungle Tales of Tarzan
• James Branch Cabell — Jurgen
• Ronald Firbank — Valmouth
• Maggie Fullilove — Who Was Responsible?
• Joseph Hergesheimer
  • Linda Condon
  • Java Head
• Hermann Hesse — Demian
• Jerome K. Jerome — All Roads Lead to Calvary
• W. Somerset Maugham — The Moon and Sixpence
• Baroness Orczy
  • His Majesty's Well-beloved
  • The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel
• Marcel Proust — Pastiches et m langes
• Romain Rolland — The Forerunners
• Mary Augusta Ward
  • Fields of Victory
  • Helena
• Virginia Woolf — Night and Day

New drama

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• Susan Glaspell - Bernice
• Harley Granville-Barker - The Secret Life
• A. A. Milne - The Camberley Triangle
• Liviu Rebreanu - The Quadrille
• Ernst Toller - Transformation</onlyinclude>

Poetry

• Edwin James Brady - The House of the Winds

Non-fiction

• Henri Bergson - Spiritual Energy: Essays and Lectures (L'Energie spirituelle: essais et conf rences)
• John Maynard Keynes - The Economic Consequences of the Peace
• H. L. Mencken - The American Language

Short story

• "In the Penal Colony" - Franz Kafka
• Dragon: the Old Potter's Tale - Ry nosuke Akutagawa

Births

• January 1 - J. D. Salinger, novelist
• January 7 - Robert Duncan, poet
• January 25 - Edwin Newman, journalist, writer
• March 24 - Robert Heilbroner, author of The Worldly Philosophers
• May 17 - Robert H. Adleman, American novelist and historian* July 15 - Iris Murdoch, novelist
• July 23 - Davis Grubb, novelist and short story writer
• July 31 - Primo Levi, memoirist
• September 26 - Matilde Camus, Spanish poet.
• October 22 - Doris Lessing, British novelist
• November 23 - P. F. Strawson, philosopher
• November 26 - Frederik Pohl, science fiction author
• November 29 - Frank Kermode, literary critic
• date unknown
  • Helen Forrester, memoirist and novelist
  • Charlotte Jay, suspense writer

Deaths

• May 6 - L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz author
• June 14 - Weedon Grossmith, co-author of Diary of a Nobody
• July 8 - John Fox, Jr., American journalist, novelist, and short story writer
• October 22 - W. N. P. Barbellion, author of the Journal of a Disappointed Man
• October 30 - Ella Wheeler Wilcox, author and poet

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Hugh Walpole, The Secret City
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Henry Festing Jones, Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon (1835 1902) - A Memoir
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Carl Spitteler
• Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography: Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Margaret Widdemer, Old Road to Paradise and Carl Sandburg, Corn Huskers
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Booth Tarkington - The Magnificent Ambersons

fr:1919 en litt rature mk:1919 pl:1919 w literaturze pt:1919 na literatura ro:1919 n literatur ru:1919 sq:1919 n literatur sv:Litteratur ret 1919 uk:1919