1908 in literature
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1908.
Events
- February 15 – The weekly boys' story paper The Magnet is first published in London, containing "The Making of Harry Wharton", the first serial story of the fictional Greyfriars School written by Charles Hamilton as Frank Richards and introducing the character of Billy Bunter.
- March – Ezra Pound leaves America for Europe. In April, he moves to Venice, where in July he publishes himself his first collection of poems, A Lume Spento. In August he settles in London, where he will remain until 1920 and in December publish A Quinzaine for this Yule.
- June 18 – Mark Twain buys a house in Redding, Connecticut.
- Summer – The Marlowe Society stages a production at the New Theatre, Cambridge, of Milton's masque Comus, directed by Rupert Brooke.
- July – Katherine Mansfield moves to London; she will never return to her native New Zealand.
- September 30 – Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird is premièred, at Konstantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre.
- October 3 – The Avenida Theatre opens on Buenos Aires' Avenida de Mayo with a production of Lope de Vega's El castigo sin venganza directed by María Guerrero.
- November 18 – The release in France of La Mort du duc de Guise marks the first film with a screenplay by an eminent man of letters, the playwright Henri Lavedan; it is also directed by two men of the theatre, Charles Le Bargy and André Calmettes, and features actors of the Comédie-Française.
- December – Ford Madox Hueffer begins publication of the literary magazine The English Review in London. The first issue contains original work by Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy and W. H. Hudson, and begins serialization of H. G. Wells's realist semi-autobiographical satirical novel Tono-Bungay.
- December 1 – Cuala Press, set up at Churchtown, Dublin, as a private press independent of the former Dun Emer Press in connection with the Irish Literary Revival and Arts and Crafts movement by Elizabeth "Lolly" Yeats with editorial support from her brother W. B. Yeats, produces its first publication, Poetry and Ireland: Essays by W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson.
- Ethiopian linguist Afevork Ghevre Jesus's ልብ ፡ ወለድ ፡ ታሪክ ።, the first novel in Amharic, is published in Rome.
- The Malay tale Hikayat Hang Tuah is first published, edited by Sulaiman bin Muhammed Nur and William Shellabear.
- The Romanian writer Urmuz is known to be working on his manuscript stories, the Bizarre Pages, printed only after 1922.
New books
Fiction
- Afevork Ghevre Jesus – Libb Wolled Tārīk
- Leonid Andreyev – The Seven Who Were Hanged
- Francis Aveling – Arnoul the Englishman
- Arnold Bennett
- *Buried Alive
- *The Old Wives' Tale
- Bigehuan zhuren – New Era
- Algernon Blackwood – John Silence, Physician Extraordinary
- Alexander Bogdanov – Red Star
- Mary Elizabeth Braddon – During Her Majesty's Pleasure
- Rhoda Broughton – Mamma
- G. K. Chesterton – The Man Who Was Thursday
- Marie Corelli – Holy Orders
- James Oliver Curwood – The Courage of Captain Plum and The Gold Hunters
- Machado de Assis – Memorial de Aires
- Grazia Deledda – L'edera
- Mary and Jane Findlater – Crossriggs
- Anatole France – Penguin Island
- E. M. Forster – A Room with a View
- John Fox, Jr. – The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
- Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – The Shoulders of Atlas
- Maxim Gorky – A Confession
- Jeannie Gunn – We of the Never Never
- Robert Hichens – A Spirit in Prison
- William Hope Hodgson – The House on the Borderland
- Alfred Kubin – Die andere Seite
- Gaston Leroux – The Perfume of the Lady in Black
- Jack London – The Iron Heel
- W. Somerset Maugham – The Magician
- José Toribio Medina – Los Restos Indígenas de Pichilemu
- Natsume Sōseki
- *The Miner
- *Sanshirō
- *Ten Nights of Dreams
- Baroness Orczy – The Elusive Pimpernel
- Mary Roberts Rinehart – The Circular Staircase
- Arthur Schnitzler – Der Weg ins Freie
- Georges Sorel – Reflections on Violence
- H. De Vere Stacpoole – The Blue Lagoon
- Hermann Sudermann – The Song of Songs
- Caton Theodorian – Sângele Solovenilor
- Edgar Wallace
- * Angel Esquire
- * The Council of Justice
- Robert Walser – Der Gehülfe
- Mary Augusta Ward – The Testing of Diana Mallory
- Jakob Wassermann – Caspar Hauser oder Die Trägheit des Herzens
- H. G. Wells – The War in the Air
Children and young people
- L. Frank Baum
- *Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
- *Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville
- The Children's Encyclopædia
- Kenneth Grahame – The Wind in the Willows
- Selma Lagerlöf – The Girl from the Marsh Croft
- Lucy Maud Montgomery – Anne of Green Gables
- Ferenc Móra – Rab ember fiai
- E. Nesbit – The House of Arden
- Beatrix Potter
- *The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck
- *The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Roly-Poly Pudding
- Percy F. Westerman – A Lad of Grit
Drama
- J. M. Barrie – What Every Woman Knows
- Jacinto Benavente – :es:Señora ama|Señora ama
- Tristan Bernard – The Brighton Twins
- Alexandre Bisson – Madame X
- Hall Caine – Pete
- Maxim Gorky – The Last Ones
- Maurice Maeterlinck – The Blue Bird
- Octave Mirbeau – Home
- Emma Orczy – Beau Brocade
- Alicia Ramsey – Byron
- W. Graham Robertson – Pinkie and the Fairies
- Edward Sheldon – Salvation Nell
- J. M. Synge – The Tinker's Wedding
- Israel Zangwill – The Melting Pot''
Poetry
- Edward Carpenter – Iolaus: Anthology of Friendship
- W. H. Davies – Nature Poems
- Maria Konopnicka – Rota
Non-fiction
- Robert Baden-Powell – Scouting for Boys
- Sarah Bernhardt – My Double Life
- Annie Besant, C. W. Leadbeater – Occult Chemistry
- Edward Carpenter – The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women
- G. K. Chesterton – All Things Considered
- W. H. Davies – The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp
- Levi H. Dowling – The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
- Gertrude Jekyll – Colour in the Flower Garden
- Jack London – War of the Classes
- Francisco I. Madero – La sucesión presidencial en 1910
- Titu Maiorescu – Critice
- Friedrich Nietzsche – Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist
- M. Ostrogorski – Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties
- George Panu – Amintiri de la Junimea din Iași
- Charlotte Carmichael Stopes – The Sphere of 'Man' in Relation to that of 'Woman' in the Constitution
- Alfred R. Tucker – Eighteen Years in Uganda and East Africa
Births
- January 9 – Simone de Beauvoir, French feminist philosopher
- January 16 – Pavel Nilin, Soviet novelist and playwright
- January 18 – Jacob Bronowski, Polish-born scientist and poet
- January 20
- *Fleur Cowles, American journalist, editor and illustrator
- *Jean S. MacLeod, Scottish-English romantic novelist
- February 4 – Julian Bell, English poet
- February 29 – Dee Brown, American novelist and historian
- March 6 – Dame Felicitas Corrigan, English writer and Benedictine nun
- March 8 – Ebrahim Al-Arrayedh, Indian-born Bahraini poet
- March 22 – Louis L'Amour, American author
- May 17 – Frederic Prokosch, American novelist and poet
- May 25 – Theodore Roethke, American poet
- May 27 – Peggy Ramsay, born Margaret Venniker, Australian-born British theatrical agent
- May 28 – Ian Fleming, English espionage novelist
- June 14 – Kathleen Raine, English poet, scholar, and translator
- June 27 – João Guimarães Rosa, Brazilian novelist
- July 23 – Elio Vittorini, Italian author
- August 21 – M. M. Kaye, Indian-born English novelist and autobiographer
- August 23 – Arthur Adamov, French Absurdist playwright
- August 28
- *Robert Merle, French novelist
- *Marguerite Young, American novelist, poet and biographer
- September 4 – Richard Wright, African-American novelist and poet
- September 9 – Cesare Pavese, Italian poet and novelist
- September 17 – John Creasey, English crime writer
- October 5 – Joshua Logan, American stage and film writer and director
- October 13 – Robert Liddell, English biographer, novelist and poet
- October 24 – Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Dominican writer
- November 8 – Zhou Yang, Chinese literary theorist
- November 8 – Martha Gellhorn, American journalist
- November 9 – Lucian Boz, Romanian and Australian literary critic
- November 21 – Elizabeth George Speare, American children's writer
- November 23 – Nelson S. Bond, American author, playwright and scriptwriter
- November 28
- *Claude Lévi-Strauss, Belgian-born French anthropologist
- *Mary Oppen, American poet, activist and photographer
- November 30 – Buddhadeb Bosu, Bengali poet and writer
- December 14 – Mária Szepes, Hungarian novelist and screenwriter
Deaths
- January 14 – Holger Drachmann, Danish poet and dramatist
- January 18 – Edmund Clarence Stedman, American poet and critic
- January 25 – Ouida, English novelist
- February 7 – Alexander Ertel, Russian novelist and short story writer
- March 4 – Mrs. Henry Clarke, English historical novelist and children's writer
- March 19 – Eduard Zeller, German philosopher
- March 25 – Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov, Russian poet, dramatist and critic
- April 20 – Henry Chadwick, English-born American baseball writer and historian
- May 7 – Ludovic Halévy, French playwright and author
- June 5 – Jonas Lie, Norwegian writer
- June 16 – Mary Elizabeth Hawker, Scottish-born English fiction writer
- July 3 – Joel Chandler Harris, American journalist and author
- July 28 – Otto Pfleiderer, German theologian
- August 4 – Bronson Howard, American dramatist
- August 14 – Anton Giulio Barrili, Italian novelist
- September 29 – Machado de Assis, Brazilian writer
- November 8 – Victorien Sardou, French dramatist
Awards
- Nobel Prize for Literature: Rudolf Christoph Eucken
- Newdigate prize: Julian Huxley