1926 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1926.

• February 8 – Seán O'Casey's play The Plough and the Stars opens at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. At the February 11 performance there is a near-riot: one audience member strikes an actress.^[1]
• February 12 – The Irish Free State Minister for Justice, Kevin O'Higgins, appoints a Committee on Evil Literature.
• February 26 – The future English novelist Graham Greene is received into the Catholic Church.
• April 1 – Hugo Gernsback launches his pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories in the United States.
• May 11 – C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien first meet in Oxford.^[2]
• October 10 – Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The White Guard (Белая гвардия), partly serialized in Rossiya before the magazine's suppression earlier in the year, opens as a dramatic adaptation, The Days of the Turbins, at the Moscow Art Theatre. It is enjoyed by Stalin.
• October 14 – The children's book Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne first appears, published by Methuen in London.
• November – George Bernard Shaw initially declines the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature (which was awarded a year later) stating "I can forgive Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel prize". He later changed his mind and accepted the honour, but refused to receive the prize money.^[3] Shaw recommended that the prize money instead used to fund the translation of works by Swedish playwright August Strindberg to English.^[3]
• December 3 – The English detective story writer Agatha Christie disappears from her home in Surrey. On December 14 she is found at a Harrogate hotel by the journalist Ritchie Calder, staying under her husband's mistress's surname.
• December – Thomas Mann begins writing Die Geschichten Jaakobs in Munich, first of the tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers (Joseph und seine Brüder), on which he will work until January 1943.
• unknown dates
  • Antonin Artaud and Roger Vitrac establish the Théatre Alfred-Jarry in Paris to produce surrealist drama.
  • The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is founded in Middlebury, Vermont.
  • Vsevolod Meyerhold stages an expressionistic production of Gogol's satirical comedy The Government Inspector (Ревизор, 1836) in Moscow.^[4]
  • Margaret Mitchell begins the novel Gone with the Wind, which will appear 1936.
  • The remains of the English poet Isaac Rosenberg (killed in battle in 1918) are re-interred at Bailleul Road East Cemetery, Plot V, St. Laurent-Blangy, Pas de Calais, France.
  • Peter Llewelyn Davies establishes the London publishing house Peter Davies Ltd.

• Ion Agârbiceanu – Legea trupului
• Marcel Arland – Monique
• Roberto Arlt – Mad Toy (El juguete rabioso)
• Isaac Babel – Red Cavalry («Конармия», short stories)
• Henry Bellamann – Petenera's Daughter
• Anthony Berkeley – The Wychford Poisoning Case
• Louis Bromfield – Early Autumn
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – The Moon Maid
• Willa Cather – My Mortal Enemy
• Marjorie Bowen – Mistress Nell Gwynne
• G. K. Chesterton – The Incredulity of Father Brown
• Agatha Christie – The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
• J.J. Connington
  • The Dangerfield Talisman
  • Death at Swaythling Court
• Freeman Wills Crofts – The Cheyne Mystery
• James R. Crowell and Samuel C. Hildreth – The Spell of the Turf
• Ramón del Valle-Inclán – Tirano Banderas: novela de tierra caliente (Tyrant Banderas)
• Arthur Conan Doyle – The Land of Mist
• Joseph Jefferson Farjeon – Number 17
• William Faulkner – Soldiers' Pay
• Ronald Firbank – Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli
• F. Scott Fitzgerald – All the Sad Young Men
• Ford Madox Ford – A Man Could Stand Up (third book of the four-volume Parade's End)
• C. S. Forester – Payment Deferred
• Dion Fortune – The Secrets of Dr. Taverner
• Zona Gale – Preface to Life
• Hugo Gernsback – Ralph 124C 41+ (in book form)
• Ellen Glasgow – The Romantic Comedians
• Ricardo Güiraldes – Don Segundo Sombra
• H. Rider Haggard – The Treasure of the Lake
• Ernest Hemingway
  • The Sun Also Rises
  • The Torrents of Spring
• Harold Heslop – Pod vlastu uglya (Under the Sway of Coal, translation of Goaf)
• Georgette Heyer – These Old Shades
• Sydney Horler – The House of Secrets
• Mikheil Javakhishvili – The White Collar (თეთრი საყელო, Tetri sakelo)
• Franz Kafka – The Castle
• Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成) – "The Dancing Girl of Izu" (伊豆の踊子, "Izu no odoriko", short story)
• D. H. Lawrence – The Plumed Serpent
• Marie Belloc Lowndes – What Really Happened
• Agnes Mure Mackenzie – The Quiet Lady
• Compton Mackenzie – Fairy Gold
• Hope Mirrlees – Lud-in-the-Mist
• George Moore – Ulich and Soracha
• Vladimir Nabokov (as V. Sirin) – Mary («Машенька», Mashen'ka)
• Carola Oman – King Heart
• E. Phillips Oppenheim
  • The Golden Beast
  • Prodigals of Monte Carlo
• Baroness Orczy – The Celestial City
• Cassiano Ricardo – Vamos caçar papagaios
• Grigol Robakidze – The Snake's Skin (გველის პერანგი)
• Sagitta (John Henry Mackay) – Der Puppenjunge (The Pansy; in English as The Hustler)
• Marquis de Sade – Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man
• Dorothy L. Sayers – Clouds of Witness
• Arthur Schnitzler – Dream Story (Traumnovelle)
• Thorne Smith – Topper (aka The Jovial Ghosts)
• Cecil Street – Dr. Priestley's Quest
• A. H. Tammsaare – Tõde ja Õigus (Truth and Justice, begins publication)
• Sylvia Thompson – The Hounds of Spring
• B. Traven – The Death Ship (Das Totenschiff)
• S. S. Van Dine – The Benson Murder Case (the first Philo Vance mystery)
• Henry Wade – The Verdict of You All
• Edgar Wallace
  • The Avenger
  • Barbara on Her Own
  • The Northing Tramp
  • The Terrible People
  • The Yellow Snake
• Sylvia Townsend Warner – Lolly Willowes
• H. G. Wells – The World of William Clissold
• Walter F. White – Flight
• Monteiro Lobato — O Presidente Negro

• Angela Brazil – Joan's Best Chum
• Will James – Smoky the Cowhorse
• A. A. Milne – Winnie-the-Pooh
• Ruth Plumly Thompson – The Hungry Tiger of Oz (20th in the Oz series overall and the sixth written by her)

• Dorothy Brandon – Blind Alley
• Bertolt Brecht – Man Equals Man (Mann ist Mann)
• Mikhail Bulgakov – The Days of the Turbins («Дни Турбиных»)
• G. D. H. Cole – The Striker Stricken
• St. John Greer Ervine – Anthony and Anna
• J. B. Fagan – And So To Bed
• Joseph Jefferson Farjeon – After Dark
• John Galsworthy – Escape
• Patrick Hastings – Scotch Mist
• Zora Neale Hurston – Color Struck (published)
• Seán O'Casey – The Plough and the Stars
• Eden Phillpotts – Blue Comet
• Ben Travers – Rookery Nook
• Sergei Tretyakov – I Want a Baby («Хочу ребёнка»)

• Mário de Andrade – Losango cáqui
• Langston Hughes – The Weary Blues
• Robert McAlmon – The Portrait of a Generation
• Hugh MacDiarmid – A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle
• Dorothy Parker – Enough Rope
• Vita Sackville-West – The Land

• Germán List Arzubide – El movimiento estridentista
• Benedictine Vulgate (begins publication)
• Angela Brazil – My Own Schooldays
• Arthur Conan Doyle – The History of Spiritualism
• H. Rider Haggard – The Days of My Life
• T. E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars of Wisdom
• Otto Schmidt (chief editor) – Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Большая советская энциклопедия, Bolshaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya; begins publication)
• Dan Simonescu – Încercări istorico-literare (Literary and Historical Essays)
• R. H. Tawney – Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
• Helen Thomas – As It Was
• W. B. Yeats – Autobiographies
• Paul Zarifopol – Din registrul ideilor gingașe (A Register of Tender Ideas)
• Alfred Eckhard Zimmern – The Third British Empire

• January 5 – W. D. Snodgrass, American poet (died 2009)
• January 12 – Shumon Miura, Japanese novelist (died 2017)
• January 13 – Michael Bond, English fiction writer and creator of Paddington Bear (died 2017)^[5]
• January 14 – Tom Tryon, American actor and novelist (died 1991)
• January 27 – Fritz Spiegl, Austrian-born musician and writer (died 2003)^[6]
• February 3 – Richard Yates, American novelist (died 1992)
• February 8 – Neal Cassady, American writer and poet (died 1968)
• February 20 – Richard Matheson, American science fiction writer (died 2013)
• March 3 – James Merrill, American poet (died 1995)
• March 7 – Chemmanam Chacko, Indian poet (died 2018)
• March 24 – Dario Fo, Italian dramatist and actor (died 2016)^[7]
• March 27 – Frank O'Hara, American poet (died 1966)
• March 31 – John Fowles, English novelist (died 2005)^[8]
• April 3 – Luís de Sttau Monteiro, Portuguese novelist and dramatist (died 1993)
• April 12 – Khozh-Akhmed Bersanov, Chechen ethnographer (died 2018)
• April 13 – Egon Wolff, Chilean dramatist (died 2016)
• April 23
  • J. P. Donleavy, Irish American novelist (died 2017)
  • Éva Janikovszky, Hungarian novelist and children's writer (died 2003)
• April 28 – Harper Lee, American novelist (died 2016)^[9]
• April 30 – Edmund Cooper, British poet and author (died 1982)^[10]
• May 15 – English twins
  • Anthony Shaffer, dramatist and screenwriter (died 2001)
  • Peter Shaffer, dramatist (died 2016)
• May 21 – Robert Creeley, American author (died 2005)
• June 3 – Allen Ginsberg, American Beat Generation poet (died 1997)^[11]
• June 4 – Ain Kaalep, Estonian poet, playwright and critic (died 2020)
• June 13
  • Kanam EJ, Malayalam novelist and lyricist (died 1982)
  • Dalmiro Sáenz, Argentinian writer (died 2016)
• June 19 – Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Italian publisher (died 1972)
• July 7 – Spencer Holst, American writer and storyteller (died 2001)
• July 11 – Frederick Buechner, American author and minister (died 2022)
• July 18 – Elizabeth Jennings, English poet (died 2001)
• August 6 – Elisabeth Beresford, English children's author (died 2010)^[12]
• August 12 – Wallace Markfield, American comic novelist (died 2002)
• August 13 – Roy Heath, Guyanese novelist (died 2008)^[13]
• August 14
  • Alice Adams, American short story writer (died 1999)
  • René Goscinny, French writer and co-creator of Astérix (died 1977)
• September 3 – Alison Lurie, American novelist and academic (died 2020)
• September 6 – Clancy Sigal, American writer (died 2017)
• September 14 – Michel Butor, French writer (died 2016)
• September 16 – John Knowles, American novelist (died 2001)^[14]
• October 2 – Jan Morris, born James Morris, Anglo-Welsh historian and travel writer (died 2020)
• October 15 – Evan Hunter, American author and screenwriter (died 2005)
• November 5 – John Berger, English art critic and novelist (died 2017)^[15]
• November 11
  • José Manuel Caballero, Spanish novelist and poet (died 2021)
  • Harold Perkin, English social historian (died 2004)
• November 19 – Barry Reckord, Jamaican playwright (died 2011)
• November 20 – John Gardner, English thriller writer (died 2007)
• November 25 – Poul Anderson, American science fiction writer (died 2001)
• December 23 – Robert Bly, American writer (died 2021)

• January 14
  • René Boylesve, French author (born 1867)
  • August Sedláček, Czech historian (born 1843)
• January 26 – Bucura Dumbravă, Romanian novelist and spiritualist (malaria, born 1868)
• February 1 – Ishibashi Ningetsu (石橋 忍月), Japanese author and critic (born 1865)
• February 6 – Wolf Wilhelm Friedrich von Baudissin, German theologian (born 1847)
• February 12 – Radu Rosetti, Romanian politician, historical novelist and memoirist (born 1853)
• March 3 – Sir Sidney Lee, English biographer (born 1859)
• May 9 – J. M. Dent, English publisher (born 1849)
• May 21 – Ronald Firbank, English novelist (born 1886)
• May 23 – Sigrid Elmblad, Swedish author and translator (born 1860)^[16]
• May 26 – Srečko Kosovel, Slovenian Expressionist poet (meningitis, born 1904)
• June 27 – Addie C. Strong Engle, American author and publisher (born 1845)
• July 8 – Karel Václav Rais, Czech realist novelist (born 1859)
• July 11 – Fran Detela, Slovenian academic and writer (born 1850)
• July 14 – Elisabeth Cavazza, American author, journalist, and music critic (born 1849)
• July 19 – Ada Cambridge, English/Australian writer and poet (born 1844)
• July 22 – John Burland Harris-Burland, British writer (born 1870)
• August 1 – Israel Zangwill, English poet (born 1864)
• October 5 – Javier de Viana, Uruguayan writer (born 1868)
• October 9 – Helena Nyblom, Danish-born poet and writer of fairy tales (born 1843)
• October 11 – Albert Robida, French illustrator and novelist (born 1848)
• November 10 – Lyubov Dostoyevskaya, Russian memoirist (born 1869)
• December 8 – Sarah Doudney, English novelist, children's writer and hymnist (born 1841)
• December 12 – Jean Richepin, French poet, dramatist and novelist (born 1849)
• December 29 – Rainer Maria Rilke, German poet (born 1875)^[17]
• unknown date
  • Emma Whitcomb Babcock, American litterateur and author (born 1849)
  • Susanne Vandegrift Moore, American editor and publisher (born 1848)

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Radclyffe Hall, Adam's Breed
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Herbert Brook Workman, John Wyclif: A Study of the English Medieval Church
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Arthur Bowie Chrisman, Shen of the Sea
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Grazia Deledda
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: George Kelly, Craig's Wife
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Amy Lowell, What's O'Clock
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith
• Blindman International Poetry Prize: Ruth Manning-Sanders, The City