Events from the year 1919 in literature .
Events
February – Richmal Crompton's anarchic English schoolboy William Brown is introduced in the first published Just William story, "Rice-Mould", in Home magazine. March 1 – October 15 – Publication runs of the American pulp magazine The Thrill Book are oriented towards the fantasy genre or science fiction. It includes the serialization of The Heads of Cerberus, written by Gertrude Barrows Bennett as Francis Stevens, with its early thematic use of an alternate time-track, or parallel worlds. March – The diaries up to the end of 1917 from the English naturalist W. N. P. Barbellion (Bruce Frederick Cummings) are published as The Journal of a Disappointed Man in London by Chatto & Windus. This treats his resignation to the disease multiple sclerosis, of which he will die on October 22, aged 30, at Gerrards Cross. March 28 – Two paintings by E. E. Cummings appear in an exhibition of the New York Society of Independent Artists. April 2 – Vladimir Nabokov leaves Russia with his family. April 7 – The anarchist writers Gustav Landauer and Erich Mühsam play leading roles in creating the Bavarian Soviet Republic. They are later joined by the essayist and debt relief advocate Silvio Gesell. Taken over by the Communist Party of Germany, the republic is eventually crushed by the Freikorps; Landauer is killed in prison (May 2). Combatants on the Freikorps side include Ernst Kantorowicz, later famous as a historian. April and October – The English writers Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby return after war service to complete their degree courses at Somerville College, Oxford . June – The Algonquin Round Table of writers, critics, actors and wits led by Alexander Woollcott first meets at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. July 29 – Alfred Harcourt and Donald Brace set up the publishing company Harcourt, Brace & Howe in New York City. October 28 – Arthur Ransome leaves Russia with his future wife Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina, previously Trotsky's secretary, carrying a diplomatic message for Estonia. November – The literary monthly The London Mercury is launched with J. C. Squire as editor. November 19 – An American expatriate, Sylvia Beach, opens the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. November 29 – The Großes Schauspielhaus opens as a theater in Berlin, with an interior designed by Hans Poelzig. It begins with the director Max Reinhardt's production of the Oresteia. December – T. E. Lawrence loses most of the manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom while changing trains at Reading in England en route from the Paris Peace Conference to Oxford. unknown dates The column "By the Way" and the pen name Beachcomber in the London newspaper the Daily Express are taken over by D. B. Wyndham Lewis as a humorous feature. Singer House in Petrograd (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) is allocated to the Petrograd State Publishing House, quickly becoming the city's largest bookstore. It will be known subsequently as Дом Книги (Dom knigi, "The House of Books").