1927 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1927.

Events

• January - The Books Kinokuniya bookstore business is established in Tokyo.
• May 5 — Virginia Woolf's stream of consciousness novel To the Lighthouse is published by the Hogarth Press in London; considered a landmark of high modernism, a second impression follows in June.
• June 29 — T. S. Eliot is baptised into the Church of England at Finstock; in November he takes British citizenship.
• July 7 — James Joyce's collection Pomes Penyeach is published by Shakespeare and Company in Paris.
• July 9 — P. G. Wodehouse's short story "Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey" is published in the United States magazine Liberty introducing Lord Emsworth's prize pig, Empress of Blandings (first U.K. publication in August issue of The Strand Magazine).
• August — T. S. Eliot's poem Journey of the Magi is published in Faber and Gwyer's Ariel poems series (London) illustrated by E. McKnight Kauffer.
• September — Eric Blair ("George Orwell") decides while on leave to remain in the UK, resigns from his post with the Imperial Police in Burma, and moves to London to become a writer.
• December — Agatha Christie's fictional amateur detective Miss Marple makes her first appearance in print in a short story, "The Tuesday Night Club", published in The Royal Magazine.
• Expatriate American writer Natalie Clifford Barney starts an informal Académie des femmes to honor woman writers at her Paris salon. Honorees include Colette, Gertrude Stein, Anna Wickham, Rachilde, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes and (posthumously) Renée Vivien.
• Translation of Franz Roh's work of artistic criticism Nach Expressionismus – Magischer Realismus: Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei ("After Expressionism – Magical Realism: Problems of the newest European painting", 1925) into Spanish by Revista de Occidente leads to the concept of magic realism becoming popular in Latin American literature.
• Victor Gollancz establishes the London publishing house Victor Gollancz Ltd.
• The Strand Bookstore business is established in Manhattan by Benjamin Bass.

New prose fiction

• Djamaluddin Adinegoro - Darah Muda ("Young Blood")
• Arthur Bernède - Belphégor
• Tjoe Hong Bok - Setangan Berloemoer Darah ("A Glove Covered in Blood")
• James Boyd - Marching On
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Outlaw of Torn
• James Branch Cabell - Something About Eve
• Willa Cather - Death Comes for the Archbishop
• Blaise Cendrars - La Confession de Dan Yack
• Agatha Christie - The Big Four
• Jaime de Angulo - The Lariat
• Mazo de la Roche - Jalna
• Franklin W. Dixon - The Tower Treasure
• Arthur Conan Doyle - The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
• William Faulkner - Mosquitoes
• David Garnett - Go She Must!
• Julien Green - The Closed Garden
• Ernest Hemingway - Men Without Women
• Hermann Hesse - Steppenwolf
• Will James - Smoky the Cowhorse
• James Weldon Johnson - God's Trombones
• Franz Kafka - Amerika
• Kwee Tek Hoay - Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang
• D. H. Lawrence - John Thomas and Lady Jane
• Halldór Laxness - Vefarinn mikli frá Kasmír ("The Great Weaver from Kashmir")
• Rosamond Lehmann - Dusty Answer
• Sinclair Lewis - Elmer Gantry
• Waverley Lewis Root - King of the Jews
• Philip MacDonald - Patrol
• François Mauriac - Thérèse Desqueyroux
• Vilhelm Moberg - Raskens
• Paul Morand - The Living Buddha
• Mourning Dove - Cogewea, the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range
• Yury Olesha - Envy
• Baroness Orczy - Sir Percy Hits Back
• Marcel Proust (posthumous) - Le Temps retrouvé ("Time Regained" or "The Past Recaptured"; final instalment of In Search of Lost Time)
• Joseph Roth - Flight without End
• Dorothy L. Sayers - Unnatural Death
• Upton Sinclair - Oil!
• B. Traven - Der Schatz der Sierra Madre ("The Treasure of the Sierra Madre")
• Sigrid Undset
  • The Snake Pit
  • The Son Avenger
• S. S. Van Dine - The Canary Murder Case
• Thornton Wilder - The Bridge of San Luis Rey
• Henry Williamson - Tarka the Otter
• P. G. Wodehouse
  • Meet Mr Mulliner
  • The Small Bachelor
• Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse
• Eiji Yoshikawa - Naruto Hitcho (鳴門秘帖, "A Secret Record of Naruto"; serialization concludes)
• Arnold Zweig - Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa ("The Case of Sergeant Grischa")

New drama

• Isaac Babel - Sunset
• Philip Barry - Paris Bound
• Bertolt Brecht - In The Jungle of Cities (Im Dickicht der Städte; in its final version)
• Mikhail Bulgakov - Flight (written)
• Federico García Lorca - Mariana Pineda
• Joseph Goebbels - Der Wanderer (only performances; written 1923)
• DuBose Heyward and Dorothy Heyward - Porgy
• Vsevolod Ivanov - Armoured Train 14-69 (Бронепоезд 14-69, Bronepoezd 14-69)
• George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber - The Royal Family
• John Howard Lawson - Loud Speaker
• W. Somerset Maugham - The Letter
• Ernst Toller - Hoppla, We're Alive! (Hoppla, wir leben!)
• Ben Travers - Thark
• Jim Tully - Twenty Below
• Bayard Veiller - The Trial of Mary Dugan
• Roger Vitrac - The Mysteries of Love (Les Mystères de l'amour)
• Emlyn Williams - Full Moon
• Carl Zuckmayer - Schinderhannes

Poetry

Main article: 1927 in poetry

• Robert Desnos - La liberté ou l'amour! (Liberty or Love!)
• Allama Iqbal - Zabur-i-Ajam (Persian Psalms)
• James Joyce - Pomes Penyeach
• Don Marquis - archy and mehitabel
• A. A. Milne - Now We Are Six

Non-fiction

• Nan Britton - The President's Daughter
• John Dewey - Philosophy and Civilization
• J. W. Dunne - An Experiment with Time
• E. M. Forster - Aspects of the Novel
• Sigmund Freud - The Future of an Illusion (Die Zukunft einer Illusion)
• Martin Heidegger - Being and Time (Sein und Zeit)
• John Livingston Lowes - The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination
• Bertrand Russell - An Outline of Philosophy
• Helen Waddell - The Wandering Scholars

Births

• January 8 – Charles Tomlinson, English poet (died 2015)
• January 16 – Oldřich Daněk, Czech dramatist (died 2000)
• January 28 – Vera Williams, American author and illustrator
• February 1 – Galway Kinnell, American poet
• February 6 – William Gardner Smith, expatriate American novelist & journalist
• February 16 – Shahidullah Kaiser, Bangladeshi novelist (died 1971)
• February 21 – Erma Bombeck, American humorist (died 1996)
• March 6 – Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian novelist (died 2014)
• March 18 – George Plimpton, American writer and actor (died 2003)
• May 19 – Yusuf Idris, Egyptian writer (died 1991)
• May 25 – Robert Ludlum, American novelist (died 2001)
• May 27 – Malayattoor Ramakrishnan, Indian Malayali novelist (died 1997)
• June 20 – Simin Behbahani, Persian poet (died 2014)
• July 4 – Neil Simon, American playwright
• August 15 – Patrick Galvin, Irish poet and dramatist (died 2011)
• August 23 – Dick Bruna, Dutch author and illustrator
• August 24 – David Ireland, Australian novelist
• August 27 – Fouad al-Tikerly, Iraqi novelist and writer (died 2008)
• September 4 – Bernardino Zapponi, Italian novelist (died 2000)
• September 30 – W. S. Merwin, American poet
• October 16 – Günter Grass, German novelist (died 2015)
• December 13 – James Wright, American poet (died 1980)
• December 24 – Mary Higgins Clark, American novelist

Deaths

• March 18 – Philip Wicksteed, English theologian and critic (born 1844)
• March 31 – Mabel Collins, British theosophist and author (born 1851)
• April 16 – Gaston Leroux, French novelist (born 1868)
• May 25 – Henri Hubert, French sociologist (born 1872)
• May 29 – Georges Eekhoud, Belgian novelist (born 1854)
• June 1 – J. B. Bury, Irish historian (born 1861)
• June 9 – Adolfo León Gómez, Colombian poet (born 1857)
• June 14 – Jerome K. Jerome, English humorous writer (born 1859)
• July 5 – Lesbia Harford, Australian poet (born 1891)
• July 24 – Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (芥川 龍之介), Japanese short story writer and poet (suicide, born 1892)
• August 13 – James Oliver Curwood, American novelist and conservationist (born 1878)
• August 24 – Manuel Díaz Rodríguez, Venezuelan writer (born 1871)
• September 14 – Hugo Ball, German poet (born 1886)
• October 8
  • Ricardo Güiraldes, Argentine novelist and poet (Hodgkin's disease, born 1886)
  • Mary Webb, English novelist (born 1881)
• October 22 – Borisav Stanković, Serbian writer (born 1876)
• November 23 – Stanisław Przybyszewski, Polish novelist, dramatist, and poet (born 1868)
• December 5 – Fyodor Sologub, Russian dramatist and essayist (born 1863)
• December 17 – Hubert Harrison, African-American writer, critic, and activist (born 1883)
• Unknown date – Alfred Remy, German-born American philologist and music writer (born 1870)

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Francis Brett Young, The Portrait of Clare
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce, Viscount Bryce of Dechmont, O.M.
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Will James, Smoky the Cow Horse
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Henri Bergson
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Paul Green, In Abraham's Bosom
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Leonora Speyer, Fiddler's Farewell
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Louis Bromfield, Early Autumn