1906 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1906.

Events

Russian writer Zinaida Gippius in exile in France during 1906, portrayed by Léon Bakst

• February 8 – Writer Hilaire Belloc becomes a Liberal Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom.
• February 15 – J. M. Dent and Company commence publication in the United Kingdom of the Everyman's Library series (under the editorship of Ernest Rhys) with Boswell's Life of Johnson.
• March 13 – Romanian nationalist historian Nicolae Iorga instigates a boycott of the National Theater Bucharest over its staging of French-language plays; a major riot ensues.
• April 10–October 13 – Maxim Gorky visits the United States with his mistress, the actress Maria Andreyeva, to raise funds for the Bolsheviks. In the Adirondack Mountains he writes his novel of revolutionary conversion and struggle, The Mother (Мать, Mat’). The couple then retreat to Capri.
• April 18 – The 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroys the unfinished new building for Stanford University Library before it can be completed. Many of the city's leading poets and writers retreat to join the arts colony at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California as "The Barness".
• May–October – Jack London's novel White Fang is serialized in the American magazine Outing.
• June – Virginia Stephen, the future Virginia Woolf, writes her first work of fiction, the short story which becomes known as "Phyllis and Rosamond" when first, posthumously, published.
• July 11 – Murder of Grace Brown in the Herkimer County, New York, which would inspire Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy (1925) and Jennifer Donnelly's young-adult novel A Northern Light (2003).
• Pre-September – Last full-scale court performance of gambuh dance-drama in Bali.
• September 1 – Annie Carroll Moore begins work as Superintendent of the Department of Work with Children at the New York Public Library.
• September 18 – August Strindberg's naturalistic drama Miss Julie (Fröken Julie; written 1888) receives its first performance on the Swedish professional stage, on tour in Lund, under the direction of August Falck with Manda Bjorling in the title rôle and August Palme as Jean. It is first staged in Stockholm on December 13 at the Folkan ("People's Theatre").
• November 8 – Max Reinhardt inaugurates the Kammerspiele (a new stage for modern drama) at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin with a production of Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen (d. May 23) designed by Edvard Munch.
• November 20 – Frank Wedekind's play Spring Awakening: A Children's Tragedy (Frühlings Erwachen, completed 1901) receives its first staging, as the second work to be presented at the Deutsches Theater's Kammerspiele in Berlin under the direction of Max Reinhardt.
• December 24 – Reginald Fessenden transmits the first radio program, a poetry reading, a violin solo, and a speech, from Brant Rock, Massachusetts.
• Livraria Lello & Irmão opens a new bookstore in Porto (Portugal).
• The magazine Eesti Kirjandus ("Estonian Literature") is founded in the Governorate of Estonia as part of the Estonian national awakening.

New books

Fiction

• Henry Adams – The Education of Henry Adams
• Pio Baroja – Paradox, rey (King Paradox)
• Rex Beach – The Spoilers
• Hall Caine – Drink: A Love Story on a Great Question
• Paul Carus – Amitabha
• Mary Cholmondeley – Prisoners
• William de Morgan – Joseph Vance
• Arthur Conan Doyle – Sir Nigel
• Ford Madox Ford – The Fifth Queen
• Zona Gale – Romance Island
• John Galsworthy – The Man of Property
• Ellen Glasgow – The Wheel of Life
• Elinor Glyn – Beyond the Rocks
• Remy de Gourmont – Une Nuit au Luxembourg (A Night in the Luxembourg)
• O. Henry – The Four Million
• Hermann Hesse – Beneath the Wheel (Unterm Rad)
• W. J. Locke – The Beloved Vagabond
• Arthur Machen – The House of Souls
• George Moore – My Dead Life
• Robert Musil – The Confusions of Young Törless (Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless)
• Natsume Sōseki (夏目 漱石)
  • Botchan (坊っちゃん)
  • Kusamakura (草枕, Grass Pillow)
  • Shumi no Iden (趣味の遺伝, The Heredity of Taste)
• Baroness Orczy
  • I Will Repay
  • A Son of the People
• David M. Parry – The Scarlet Empire
• Felix Salten (attributed) – Josephine Mutzenbacher
• Upton Sinclair – The Jungle
• Rabindranath Tagore – Naukadubi (The Wreck)
• Mary Augusta Ward – Fenwick's Career
• H. G. Wells – In the Days of the Comet
• Owen Wister – Lady Baltimore
• P. G. Wodehouse – Love Among the Chickens

Children and young people

• L. Frank Baum
  • John Dough and the Cherub
  • Annabel (as Suzanne Metcalf)
  • Aunt Jane's Nieces (as Edith Van Dyne)
  • Daughters of Destiny (as Schuyler Staunton)
  • Sam Steele's Adventures on Land and Sea (as Capt. Hugh Fitzgerald)
  • The Twinkle Tales (as Laura Bancroft)
• Angela Brazil – The Fortunes of Philippa
• Rudyard Kipling – Puck of Pook's Hill
• Selma Lagerlöf – The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige)
• Jack London – White Fang
• Ferenc Molnár – A Pál utcai fiúk (The Paul Street Boys)
• Ferenc Móra – Öreg diófák alatt (Beneath Old Walnut Trees)
• Edith Nesbit
  • The Railway Children
  • The Story of the Amulet

Drama

• Paul Claudel – Partage de midi (The Break of Midnight, published)
• Owen Davis – Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model
• John Galsworthy – The Silver Box
• Harley Granville-Barker – Waste (refused public performance licence in UK)
• Sacha Guitry – Chez les Zoaques
• George Barr McCutcheon – Brewster's Millions (adaptation)
• Emma Orczy (Baroness Orczy) – The Sin of William Jackson

Non-fiction

• Hall Caine – My Story
• Joseph Conrad – The Mirror of the Sea: Memories and Impressions
• Percy Dearmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams (eds) – The English Hymnal
• Okakura Kakuzō – The Book of Tea (in English)
• Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler – The King's English
• Mark Twain – What Is Man?
• Lord Acton (posthumously) – Lectures on Modern History

Births

• January 6 – Eberhard Wolfgang Möller, German playwright and poet (died 1972)
• January 19 – Robin Hyde (Iris Guiver Wilkinson), New Zealand poet and novelist (died 1939)
• January 22 – Robert E. Howard, American fantasy author (died 1936)
• January 23 – Anya Seton, American romantic author (died 1990)
• February 8 – Henry Roth, American novelist and short story writer (died 1995)
• February 15 – Musa Cälil, Soviet Tatar poet (died 1944)
• March 25 – A. J. P. Taylor, English historian (died 1990)
• April 13 – Samuel Beckett, Irish writer Nobel laureate (died 1989)
• May 8 – Esther Hoffe, Israeli mistress of Max Brod (died 2007)
• May 9 – Eleanor Estes, American librarian, author, and illustrator (died 1988)
• May 22 – Lesbia Soravilla, Cuban writer (died 1989)
• June 20 – Catherine Cookson, English popular novelist (died 1998)
• June 23 – Wolfgang Koeppen, German novelist (died 1996)
• July 4 – Margaret Douglas-Home, English writer and musician (died 1996)
• July 18 – Clifford Odets, American dramatist (died 1963)
• August 28 – John Betjeman, English poet laureate (died 1984)
• August 30 – Elizabeth Longford, English biographer (died 2002)
• September 1 – Eleanor Hibbert, English romantic novelist under several pseudonyms (died 1993)
• September 25 – Franklin Garrett, American local historian (died 2000)
• October 10 – R. K. Narayan, Indian novelist writing in English (died 2001)
• October 16 – Dino Buzzati, Italian author (died 1972)
• October 14 – Hannah Arendt, German-American intellectual (died 1975)
• November 12 – George Dillon, American editor and poet (died 1968)
• November 13 – John Sparrow, English literary scholar (died 1992)
• November 30 – John Dickson Carr, American detective fiction writer (died 1977)
• Unknown date – Barbara Sleigh, English children's writer (died 1982)

Deaths

• February 9 – Paul Laurence Dunbar, American poet, novelist and playwright (born 1872)
• March 2 – Ellen Mary Clerke, English novelist, poet and writer on astronomy (born 1840)
• March 20 – Vasile Pogor, Moldavian, later Romanian poet, scholar and politician (born 1833)
• April 6 – Alexander Kielland, Norwegian novelist (born 1849)
• April 11 – Francis Pharcellus Church, American editor and publisher, (born 1839)
• April 14 – Nora Chesson, English poet (born 1871)
• May 23 – Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian playwright (born 1828)
• June 29 – Albert Sorel, French historian (born 1842)
• June 30 – Jean Lorrain, French Symbolist poet, (born 1855)
• August 19 – Agnes Catherine Maitland, English academic, novelist and cookery writer (born 1850)
• October 9 – Wilhelmina FitzClarence, Countess of Munster, British novelist (born 1830)
• December 6 – Anne Ross Cousin, English poet, (born 1824)

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Giosuè Carducci