1916 in literature
Events from the year 1916 in literature . Events January The Journal of Negro History is founded by Carter G. Woodson, father of "Black History" and "Negro History Week" in the United States. Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's short story, The Nose, is published in a student magazine. March 1 – The National Library of Wales completes its transfer to purpose-built premises in Aberystwyth. March 22 – J. R. R. Tolkien and Edith Bratt marry at St Mary Immaculate Roman Catholic Church, Warwick, England. They will serve as inspiration for the fictional characters Beren and Lúthien. Tolkien leaves for military service in France at the beginning of June. March 30 – Don Marquis introduces the characters Archy and Mehitabel in "The Sun Dial" column in The Evening Sun (New York City). Archy is a poetry-writing cockroach unable to operate the typewriter shift key; Mehitabel is a cat. April–June – Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry live as neighbours to D. H. and Frieda Lawrence at Higher Tregerthen, near Zennor in Cornwall (England). April 24–30 – In the Easter Rising in Ireland, members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood proclaim an Irish Republic and the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army occupy the General Post Office and other buildings in Dublin, before surrendering to the British Army. Of the seven subsequently executed leaders of the Rising, Thomas MacDonagh, Patrick Pearse and Joseph Plunkett are poets and James Connolly a balladeer and playwright. The events are the theme of W. B. Yeats' poem "Easter, 1916", first published this September. May 16 – Natsume Sōseki's novel Light and Darkness (明暗, Mei An) begins to be serialized in the Tokyo and Osaka editions of the newspaper Asahi Shimbun, but will remain unfinished at the author's death on December 9, aged 49. July 1 The poets W. N. Hodgson, Will Streets, Gilbert Waterhouse, Henry Field, Alfred Ratcliffe, Alexander Robertson and Bernard White are among 19,000 British soldiers killed on the First day on the Somme alone. The same day is chosen for the death of fictitious poet Cecil Valance in Alan Hollinghurst's 2011 novel The Stranger's Child. The Battle of the Somme continues until October 18, during which time American poet Alan Seeger (serving with the French), Irish writer Tom Kettle, English poet Edward Tennant, English short story writer Saki and English bowler Percy Jeeves (whose name P. G. Wodehouse borrowed for his character) are all killed. The English writer Robert Graves, novelist Stuart Cloete, playwright/actor Arnold Ridley and artist/poet David Jones are seriously injured – Graves is for a time believed killed. Ford Madox Hueffer suffers concussion and shell shock. A. A. Milne and J. R. R. Tolkien are invalided out. The English poet Siegfried Sassoon wins the Military Cross. The Cameron Highlander Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna composes the Scottish Gaelic love song An Eala Bhàn (The White Swan) in the oral literature tradition. The future U.K. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is wounded in September's Battle of Flers–Courcelette; sheltering in a slit trench, he reads Aeschylus in the original