20th Century in Literature - 1901-1918

1901-1918

The Fin de siècle movement of the Belle Époque persisted into the 20th century, but was brutally cut short with the outbreak of World War I (an effect depicted e.g. in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, published 1924). The Dada movement of 1916-1920 was at least in part a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war; the movement heralded the Surrealism movement of the 1920s.

1900

  • Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (Poland, England)

Genre fiction

  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (USA)

1901

  • Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (Germany)
  • The Inheritors by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford (Germany, England)
  • Kim by Rudyard Kipling (India, England)

Genre fiction

  • The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel (Montserrat, England)
  • The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells (England)

1902

  • Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  • The Immoralist by André Gide (France)
  • The Wings of the Dove by Henry James (USA, England)
  • The Grand Babylon Hotel by Arnold Bennett (England)

Genre fiction

  • The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (Scotland)
  • Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

Plays

  • Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw (Ireland)

1903

  • Romance by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford
  • The Ambassadors by Henry James
  • The Pit by Frank Norris (USA)
  • In Wonderland by Knut Hamsun (Norway)

Genre fiction

  • The Call of the Wild by Jack London (USA)
  • The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers (England, Ireland)

1904

  • The Golden Bowl by Henry James
  • Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
  • The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton (England)

Genre fiction

  • The Food of the Gods by H. G. Wells
  • The Sea Wolf by Jack London
  • Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson (Argentina, England)

Plays

  • John Bull's Other Island by George Bernard Shaw

1905

  • Hadrian VII by Frederick Rolfe aka Baron Corvo (England, Italy)
  • Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster (England)
  • Kipps by H. G. Wells
  • The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (USA)
  • The Club of Queer Trades by G. K. Chesterton

1906

  • The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (USA)
  • The Confusions of Young Torless by Robert Musil (Austria)

Genre fiction

  • Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling
  • Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie (Scotland)
  • Time and the Gods by Lord Dunsany (Ireland, England)
  • White Fang by Jack London

Plays

  • The Aran Islands by John Millington Synge (Ireland)

1907

  • The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
  • The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster

Genre fiction

  • The Listener and Other Stories by Algernon Blackwood (England) - contains The Willows, one of the first 'cosmic horror' stories
  • The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen (England)

Plays

  • Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge

Poetry

  • Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc (France, England)

1908

  • The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
  • A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
  • The Iron Heel by Jack London
  • Hell by Henri Barbusse (France, Russia)
  • The Magician by Somerset Maugham (England, France) - based on the author's meeting with Aleister Crowley

Genre fiction

  • The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (England)

Poetry

  • Personae by Ezra Pound (USA, England, Italy) - one of the first examples of 'modernist' poetry

1909

  • Martin Eden by Jack London
  • Tono-Bungay by H. G. Wells
  • Three Lives by Gertrude Stein (USA, France)

Poetry

  • Exultations by Ezra Pound
  • Poems by William Carlos Williams (USA)

Plays

  • The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgium)

1910

  • Howard's End by E. M. Forster
  • The Card by Arnold Bennett
  • The History of Mr. Polly by H. G. Wells

1911

  • Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (England)
  • In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield (England) - short stories
  • Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
  • The White Peacock by D. H. Lawrence (England)
  • Jennie Gerhardt by Theodore Dreiser (USA)

1912

  • Petersburg by Andrei Bely (Russia)
  • The Trespasser by D. H. Lawrence
  • Death In Venice by Thomas Mann (Germany)

Genre fiction

  • Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey (USA)
  • The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
  • Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (USA)

Plays

  • Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

1913

  • Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (France)
  • Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier (France)
  • Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
  • Chance by Joseph Conrad

Genre fiction

  • A Prisoner in Fairyland by Algernon Blackwood - adapted into a play, it later became the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Starlight Express
  • The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu by 'Sax Rohmer' (England)

Poetry

  • Alcools by Guillaume Apollinaire (Poland, France) - dada poems
  • Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore

1914

  • Dubliners by James Joyce (Ireland, France, Italy) - short stories
  • The Prussian Officer by D. H. Lawrence - short stories
  • The Vatican Cellars by André Gide
  • Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein
  • The Golem by Gustav Meyrink (Czechoslovakia)
  • Maurice by E. M. Forster - unpublished
  • Sinister Street by Compton MacKenzie (Scotland, Greece)
  • The Flying Inn by G. K. Chesterton

Poetry

  • North of Boston by Robert Frost (USA)

1915

  • The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
  • The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence
  • The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
  • Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
  • Victory by Joseph Conrad
  • Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson
  • The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf (England)
  • Vainglory by Ronald Firbank (England)
  • Rashōmon by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Genre fiction

  • The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (Scotland, Canada)

1916

  • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
  • Women In Love by D. H. Lawrence - initially banned, published in 1920

Genre fiction

  • Greenmantle by John Buchan

Poetry

  • Salt-Water Poems and Ballads by John Masefield (England)
  • Mountain Interval by Robert Frost

1917

  • Under Fire by Henri Barbusse (France, Russia)
  • Walpurgis Night by Gustav Meyrink
  • Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun
  • The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad
  • Caprice by Ronald Firbank

Poetry

  • Dulce et Decorum Est and Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen (England) - published posthumously
  • Prufrock and Other Observations by T. S. Eliot (USA, England)

1918

  • Tarr by Wyndham Lewis (Canada, England)
  • Man of Straw by Heinrich Mann (Germany)

Poetry

  • Calligrammes by Guillaume Apollinaire - dada poetry

Non-fiction

  • Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey (England)

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