1917 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1917. Events January Francis Picabia produces the first issue of the Dada periodical 391 in Barcelona. Philosopher Hu Shih, the main advocate of replacing scholarly language with the vernacular in Chinese literature, publishes an article in the magazine New Youth (Xin Qingnian), "A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform", offering eight guidelines for writers. J. R. R. Tolkien, on medical leave from the British Army at Great Haywood, begins The Book of Lost Tales (the first version of The Silmarillion), starting with the "Fall of Gondolin". This first chronicles Tolkien's mythopoeic Middle-earth legendarium in prose. February 4 or 5 – The English writer Hugh Kingsmill is captured in action in France. February 16 – The publisher Boni & Liveright is founded in New York City by Horace Liveright with Albert Boni, and initiates the "Modern Library" imprint. April – Leonard and Virginia Woolf take delivery of a hand printing press needed to establish the Hogarth Press at their home in Richmond upon Thames. Their first publication is Two Stories. May – W. B. Yeats acquires Thoor Ballylee in Ireland. June 4 – The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first for biography (for Julia Ward Howe), Jean Jules Jusserand the first for history with With Americans of Past and Present Days, and Herbert B. Swope the first for journalism for his work for the New York World. June 18 – Luigi Pirandello's drama Right You Are (if you think so) (Così è (se vi pare)) is first performed, in Milan. July – Siegfried Sassoon issues a "Soldier's Declaration" against prolonging World War I. He is sent by the military (with assistance from Robert Graves) to Edinburgh's Craiglockhart War Hospital, where Wilfred Owen introduces himself on August 18. At Sassoon's urging, Owen writes his two great war poems, "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce et Decorum est", although like almost all his poetry they remain unpublished until after his death in action next year. Their meeting would later inspire Stephen MacDonald's drama Not About Heroes (1982) and Pat Barker's novel Regeneration (1991). Summer – The Siuru expressionist and neo-romantic literary movement in Estonia is formed by young poets and writers. September 6 – At the National Eisteddfod of Wales in Birkenhead, the Chairing of the Bard ceremony ends with the chair draped in black, the winner, Hedd Wyn, having died a month earlier in battle. October Ernest Hemingway takes his first job, as a reporter on The Kansas City Star. D. H. Lawrence is forced to leave Cornwall at three days' notice under terms of the Defence of the Realm Act in the United Kingdom. October 20 – The 51-year-old poet W. B. Yeats marries 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees at Harrow Road register office in London, with Ezra Pound as best man, a couple of months after Yeats' proposal of marriage to his ex-mistress's daughter, Iseult Gonne, is rejected. December 25 –