1913 in literature

Events

• January – Acmeist poetry, with roots back to 1909, is officially born as a reaction to Russian Futurism. Manifestos are printed in the journal Apollon by Nikolay Gumilyov and Sergey Gorodetsky, with illustrative works by both, and by Anna Akhmatova, Vladimir Narbut, and Osip Mandelstam — the last with "Hagia Sophia".
• January 1 – The German National Library is founded in Leipzig.
• January 8 – Harold Monro founds the Poetry Bookshop in London, which becomes a noted literary meeting-place.
• April 5 – Serialization of the adventures of Gaston Leroux's character :fr:Chéri-Bibi|Chéri-Bibi begins in Le Matin.
• April – Bernhard Kellermann's novel Der Tunnel sells 100,000 copies in its first six months.
• c. April – Humphrey S. Milford becomes publisher to the University of Oxford and head of the London operations of Oxford University Press, after the retirement of Henry Frowde.
• September – F. Scott Fitzgerald enters Princeton University, where he meets Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop.
• November 8 – Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck, unfinished on his death in 1837, receives its first performance at the Residenztheater, Munich.
• November 13 – Marcel Proust's Swann's Way , volume 1 of In Search of Lost Time , is published by Éditions Grasset in Paris at the author's expense.
• December 13 – Ambrose Bierce, an observer with Pancho Villa's army in the Mexican Revolution, is last heard from.
• December 21 – Arthur Wynne's "word-cross", the first crossword puzzle, appears in the New York World.

• Zaynab, by Husayn Haykal, is published; it is sometimes called the first modern Arabic novel.
• Norbert von Hellingrath begins publishing his edition of Friedrich Hölderlin's complete works, restoring it to literary prominence.
• Henri Stahl publishes excerpts from his novel Un român în lună, one of the earliest works of Romanian science fiction.

  New books

Fiction

• Alain-Fournier – Le Grand Meaulnes
• Maurice Barrès – The Sacred Hill
• Andrei Bely – Petersburg
• Arnold Bennett – The Regent
• E. F. Benson
• *Dodo's Daughter
• *Thorley Weir
• *The Weaker Vessel
• Edmund Clerihew Bentley – Trent's Last Case
• Algernon Blackwood – A Prisoner in Fairyland
• Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić – The Brave Adventures of Lapitch
• Mary Grant Bruce – Norah of Billabong
• John Buchan – The Power-House
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – The Return of Tarzan
• Hall Caine – The Woman Thou Gavest Me
• Willa Cather – O Pioneers!
• Joseph Conrad – Chance
• Miguel de Unamuno – El espejo de la muerte
• Grazia Deledda – :it:Canne al vento|Canne al vento
• Ethel M. Dell – The Knave of Diamonds
• Arthur Conan Doyle – The Poison Belt
• Roger Martin du Gard – Jean Barois
• Edna Ferber – Roast Beef, Medium
• Ellen Glasgow – Virginia
• Elinor Glyn
• *The Sequence
• *The Contrast and Other Stories
• Knut Hamsun – Børn av Tiden
• Husayn Haykal – Zaynab
• Franz Hessel – Der Kramladen des Glücks
• Robert Hichens – The Way of Ambition
• Henry James – A Small Boy and Others
• Annie Fellows Johnston – Miss Santa Clause of the Pullman
• Mary Johnston – Hagar
• Bernhard Kellermann – Der Tunnel
• Valery Larbaud – A. O. Barnabooth
• D. H. Lawrence – Sons and Lovers
• Gaston Leroux – The Secret of the Night
• Jack London
• *The Valley of the Moon
• *The Abysmal Brute
• Marie Belloc Lowndes
• * The End of Her Honeymoon
• * The Lodger
• Arnold Lunn – The Harrovians
• Compton Mackenzie – Sinister Street, vol. 1
• Katherine Mansfield – "Millie"
• Patricio Mariano – Ang Tala sa Panghulo
• Flora Mayor – The Third Miss Symons
• Oscar Micheaux – Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
• Octave Mirbeau – Dingo
• Lucy Maud Montgomery – The Golden Road
• Mori Ōgai – The Wild Geese
• Baroness Orczy – Eldorado
• Luigi Pirandello – I vecchi e i giovani
• Marcel Proust – Swann's Way
• Sax Rohmer – The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu
• Saki – When William Came
• Ewald Gerhard Seeliger – Peter Voss, Thief of Millions
• Gene Stratton-Porter – Laddie
• Booth Tarkington – The Flirt
• Vincent Cartwright Vickers – The Google Book
• Edgar Wallace
• * The Fourth Plague
• * Grey Timothy
• * The River of Stars
• Hugh Walpole – Fortitude
• Mary Augusta Ward
• *The Coryston Family
• *The Mating of Lydia
• Edith Wharton – The Custom of the Country
• P. G. Wodehouse – The Little Nugget
• Leonard Woolf – The Village in the Jungle

  Children and young people

• L. Frank Baum
• *The Patchwork Girl of Oz
• *Little Wizard Stories of Oz
• *Aunt Jane's Nieces on the Ranch
• Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić – The Brave Adventures of Lapitch
• Gertrude Minnie Faulding – Fairies
• Ferenc Móra – Csilicsali Csalavári Csalavér
• E. Nesbit – Wet Magic
• Eleanor H. Porter – Pollyanna
• Beatrix Potter – The Tale of Pigling Bland
• Else Ury – Nesthäkchen and Her Dolls

  Drama