1917 in literature
See also: 1916 in literature, other events of 1917, 1918 in literature, list of years in literature.
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Events
- Siegfried Sassoon issues his "Soldier's Declaration" and is sent by the military authorities to Craiglockhart Military Hospital in Edinburgh, where he meets Wilfred Owen.
- June 4 - The very first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for a biography (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.
- December 25 - Why Marry?, first dramatic play to win a Pulitzer Prize, opens at the Astor Theatre in New York City.
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New books
- Canada at Flanders — Max Aitken
- Christine — Elizabeth von Arnim
- A Daughter of the Morning — Zona Gale
- Ethiopia, The Land of Promise — Clayton Adams
- His Family — Ernest Poole
- The Homesteader — Oscar Micheaux
- The Job — Sinclair Lewis
- Knights of Araby — Marmaduke Pickthall
- The Leopard's Claw — George Washington Ellis
- The Man With Two Left Feet — P. G. Wodehouse
- Missing — Mary Augusta Ward
- On Growth and Form — D'Arcy Thompson
- The Rise of David Levinsky — Abraham Cahan
- South Wind — Norman Douglas
- Summer — Edith Wharton
- Susan Lenox: Her Rise and Fall — David Graham Phillips
- A Thorn in the Flesh — Rhoda Broughton
- The Three Black Pennys — Joseph Hergesheimer
- Towards the Goal — Mary Augusta Ward
- Under Fire — Henri Barbusse
- Under One Roof — Mary Cholmondeley
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New drama
- Ferdinand Bruckner - Der Herr in den Nebeln
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Poetry
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Births
- February 11 - Sidney Sheldon, novelist
- February 25 - Anthony Burgess, novelist
- March 1 - Robert Lowell, poet
- June 16 - Katharine Graham, journalist
- November - Conor Cruise O'Brien, biographer and political writer
- December 21 - Heinrich Böll, German author, Nobel Prize winner
- date unknown - Jack Davis, dramatist
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Deaths
- January 15 - William de Morgan, novelist
- February 16 - Octave Mirbeau, novelist and critic
- April 9 - Edward Thomas, poet and prose writer
- April 14 - L. L. Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto
- April 21 - Francis Burnand, dramatist and editor of "Punch"
- July 2 - Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, actor-manager
- July 31 - Francis Ledwidge, war poet
- July 31 - Hedd Wyn, Welsh-language poet
- November 15 - Émile Durkheim, sociologist
- December 15 - Lady Anne Blunt, descendant of Lord Byron and wife of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
- date unknown - R. E. Vernède, war poet
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