1902 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1902.

Events

 * January 5
 * The political drama Danton's Death (Dantons Tod, completed and published in 1835) by Georg Büchner (died 1837), is first performed, at the Belle-Alliance-Theater in Berlin by the Vereins Neue Freie Volksbühne.
 * George Bernard Shaw's controversial 1893 play Mrs. Warren's Profession receives its first performance at a private London club.
 * January 23 – The first example of a Sherlockian game – a study of inconsistencies of dates in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (the serialisation of which in The Strand Magazine concludes in April) by publisher Frank Sidgwick – appears in The Cambridge Review.
 * April – Mark Twain buys a home in Tarrytown, New York. On June 4 he receives an honorary doctorate of literature from the University of Missouri.
 * June 16 – Bertrand Russell writes to Gottlob Frege about the mathematical problem to become known as Russell's paradox.
 * July 1 – The Romanian language literary review Luceafărul begins publication in Budapest.
 * August 6 – În sat sau la oraș (In the Village or in the City), by the Romanian peasant leader Constantin Dobrescu-Argeș, is performed in his native Mușătești, in front of an audience comprising Education Minister Spiru Haret and some 2,000 villagers.
 * September 9 – P. G. Wodehouse leaves his job at the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Company in London to become a freelance writer. On September 18, his first published novel, the St. Austin's school story The Pothunters, is published in London by A & C Black, as a truncation of the version in their Public School Magazine from January to March.
 * Early October – Beatrix Potter's self-illustrated children's book The Tale of Peter Rabbit (originally published privately a year earlier) appears in its first trade edition with Frederick Warne & Co in London. It sells 28,000 copies by the end of the year.
 * October 5 – Thousands attend the funeral of the French novelist Émile Zola at the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris. They include Alfred Dreyfus, given special permission by Mme Zola to attend.
 * November 4 – J. M. Barrie's comedy The Admirable Crichton is first performed, at the Duke of York's Theatre in London, starring H. B. Irving, Henry Kemble and Irene Vanbrugh. It runs for 828 performances.
 * December 5 – Leo Tolstoy's drama The Power of Darkness («Власть тьмы», Vlast' t'my, written in 1886) has its Russian-language première at the Moscow Art Theatre by Konstantin Stanislavski with some success, although Stanislavski is self-critical.
 * December 18 – Maxim Gorky's drama The Lower Depths – Scenes from Russian Life («На дне», Na dne) is first performed, at the Moscow Art Theatre, as a first major success for Konstantin Stanislavsky as director and star.
 * unknown date – The poet Ștefan Petică's cycle Fecioara în alb is published, marking a maturing of Romanian Symbolism.

Fiction

 * Azorín – La voluntad (Volition)
 * Jane Barlow – The Founding of Fortunes
 * Pío Baroja – Camino de perfección (pasión mística) (Road to Perfection)
 * Edward Harold Begbie (as Caroline Lewis) – Clara in Blunderland
 * Arnold Bennett
 * Anna of the Five Towns
 * The Grand Babylon Hotel
 * Rhoda Broughton – Lavinia
 * Joseph Conrad
 * Typhoon (serialized in The Pall Mall Magazine January–March and US book publication)
 * Youth: a Narrative, and Two Other Stories, incorporating Youth: a Narrative (1898) and Heart of Darkness (first 1899)
 * The End of the Tether
 * Marie Corelli – Temporal Power: A Study in Supremacy
 * Miguel de Unamuno – Amor y pedagogía
 * Ramón del Valle-Inclán – Sonatas: Memorias del Marqués de Bradomín – Sonata de otoño (Sonatas: The Pleasant Memories of the Marquis of Bradomín – Autumn Sonata)
 * Arthur Conan Doyle – The Hound of the Baskervilles
 * Paul Laurence Dunbar – The Sport of the Gods
 * Hamlin Garland – The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop
 * André Gide – L'immoraliste
 * Ellen Glasgow – The Battle-Ground
 * Annie French Hector – Kitty Costello
 * Theodor Herzl – The Old New Land
 * Violet Jacob – The Sheepstealers
 * W. W. Jacobs – The Lady of the Barge (short stories, including "The Monkey's Paw")
 * Henry James – The Wings of the Dove
 * Alfred Jarry – Supermale (Le Surmâle: roman moderne)
 * Mary Johnston – Audrey
 * Olha Kobylianska – Zemlya (Land)
 * Liang Qichao – Xin Zhongguo weilai ji (新中國未來記, The Future of New China; unfinished)
 * Jack London – A Daughter of the Snows
 * George Barr McCutcheon – Brewster's Millions
 * Charles Major – Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall
 * A. E. W. Mason – The Four Feathers
 * W. Somerset Maugham – Mrs Craddock
 * Dmitri Merejkowski – The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci
 * Frank Norris – The Pit (serialization)
 * Luigi Pirandello – Il Turno
 * W. Heath Robinson – The Adventures of Uncle Lubin
 * Saki – The Westminster Alice
 * Percy Sykes – Ten Thousand Miles in Persia
 * Jules Verne – The Kip Brothers (Les Frères Kip)
 * Eduard Vilde – Mahtra sõda (The War at Mahtra)
 * Owen Wister – The Virginian

Children and young people

 * L. Frank Baum – The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus
 * J. M. Barrie – The Little White Bird (includes the story "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens")
 * Edith Ogden Harrison – Prince Silverwings and other fairy tales
 * William Dean Howells – The Flight of Pony Baker
 * Rudyard Kipling – Just So Stories for Little Children
 * Bessie Marchant – Fleckie: A Story of the Desert, etc.
 * E. Nesbit – Five Children and It
 * Beatrix Potter – The Tale of Peter Rabbit
 * Edward Stratemeyer – The Young Volcano Explorers
 * Mrs George de Horne Vaizey – A Houseful of Girls
 * C. N. and A. M. Williamson – The Lightning Conductor: the Strange Adventures of a Motor-car
 * P. G. Wodehouse – The Pothunters

Drama

 * J. M. Barrie – The Admirable Crichton
 * Gordon Bottomley – The Crier by Night
 * Gaston Arman de Caillavet and Robert de Flers – Le Cœur a ses raisons
 * Constantin Dobrescu-Argeș – În sat sau la oraș (In the Village or in the City, first performance)
 * Clyde Fitch – The Girl with the Green Eyes
 * Cosmo Gordon-Lennox – The Marriage of Kitty
 * Maxim Gorky – The Lower Depths
 * Haralamb Lecca – Septima. Câiniĭ
 * Maurice Maeterlinck – Monna Vanna
 * Frank Wedekind – King Nicolo
 * W. B. Yeats – Cathleen Ní Houlihan

Poetry

 * Edwin James Brady – The Earthen Floor
 * Walter de la Mare (as Walter Ramal) – Songs of Childhood
 * Ștefan Petică – Fecioara în alb

Non-fiction

 * Jane Addams – Democracy and Social Ethics
 * James Allen – As a Man Thinketh
 * Hilaire Belloc – The Path to Rome
 * Euclides da Cunha – Os Sertões (translated as Rebellion in the Backlands)
 * Arthur Conan Doyle – The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct
 * Michael Fairless (pseudonym of Margaret Barber) – The Roadmender
 * John A. Hobson – Imperialism: a study
 * William James – The Varieties of Religious Experience
 * Vilfredo Pareto – Les Systèmes socialistes
 * Bertrand Russell – A Free Man's Worship
 * Southern Education Board – Educational Conditions in the Southern Applachians
 * William Wynn Westcott – Collectanea Hermetica (finishes publication)

Births

 * January 1 - Muhammad Zaki Abd al-Qadir, Egyptian journalist and writer (d. 1981)
 * January 5 – Stella Gibbons, English novelist (died 1989)
 * January 20 – Nazim Hikmet, Turkish lyricist and dramatist (died 1963)
 * January 30 – Nikolaus Pevsner, German-born architectural historian (died 1983)
 * February 1 – Langston Hughes, African-American poet and novelist (died 1967)
 * February 16 – Ion Călugăru, Romanian novelist, short story writer and journalist (died 1956)
 * February 19 – Kay Boyle, American writer, educator and political activist (died 1992)
 * February 27 – John Steinbeck, American novelist and journalist (died 1968)
 * March 9 – Thomas Owen Beachcroft, English novelist (died 1988)
 * March 10 – Stefan Inglot, Polish historian (died 1994)
 * March 29 – Marcel Aymé, French novelist and short-story writer (died 1967)
 * April 2 – Jan Tschichold, German-born typographer (died 1974)
 * April 6 – Julien Torma, French poet and dramatist (died 1933)
 * April 9 – Lord David Cecil, English literary critic and biographer (died 1986)
 * April 23 – Halldór Laxness, Icelandic novelist (died 1998)
 * June 5 – Hugo Huppert, Austrian poet, writer and translator (died 1982)
 * July 10 – Nicolás Guillén, Afro-Cuban poet (died 1989)
 * July 8 – Gwendolyn B. Bennett, African American writer and artist (died 1981)
 * July 27 - Yaroslav Halan, Ukrainian playwright, translator, and publicist (died 1949)
 * August 15 – Katharine Brush, American short story writer (died 1952)
 * August 16 – Georgette Heyer, English novelist (died 1974)
 * August 19 – Ogden Nash, American poet and humorist (died 1971)
 * August 24
 * Felipe Alfau, Spanish-American fiction writer, poet and translator (died 1999)
 * Fernand Braudel, French historian (died 1985)
 * September 21 – Luis Cernuda, Spanish poet (died 1963)
 * September 25 – Ernst von Salomon, German writer (died 1972)
 * October 13 – Arna Bontemps, African American poet (died 1973)
 * October 23 – Dadie Rylands (George Rylands), English Shakespeare scholar (died 1999)
 * October 26 – Beryl Markham (Beryl Clutterbuck), English-born Kenyan adventurer and memoirist (died 1986)
 * October 31 – Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Brazilian poet (died 1987)
 * November 1 – Nordahl Grieg, Norwegian poet and author (killed in action 1943)
 * November 2
 * Hu Feng (胡风), Chinese novelist (died 1985)
 * Gyula Illyés, Hungarian author (died 1983)
 * November 29 – Carlo Levi, Italian writer (died 1975)
 * December 7 – Nicolae Crevedia, Romanian poet, novelist and journalist (died 1978)
 * December 20 – Jolán Földes, Hungarian novelist and playwright (died 1963)

Deaths

 * January 7 – Wilhelm Hertz, German poet and translator (born 1835)
 * April 6 – Gleb Uspensky, Russian writer (born 1843)
 * April 20 – Frank R. Stockton, American writer and humorist (born 1834)
 * April 21 – Ethna Carbery, Irish poet (born 1866)
 * April 27 – Nancy H. Adsit, American art lecturer, art educator, and writer of art literature (born 1825)
 * May 5 – Bret Harte, American author and poet (born 1836)
 * May 6
 * Martha Perry Lowe, American social activist and organizer (born 1829)
 * Emma Augusta Sharkey, American dime novelist (born 1858)
 * May 17/18 — Harriet Abbott Lincoln Coolidge, American philanthropist, author and reformer (b. 1849)
 * June 10 – Jacint Verdaguer, Catalan poet (born 1845)
 * June 18 – Samuel Butler, English novelist (born 1835)
 * July 10 – Annie French Hector (pseudonym Mrs Alexander), Irish-born novelist (born 1825)
 * August 31
 * August 31
 * Grace Hinsdale, American religious writer (born 1832)
 * Mathilde Wesendonck, German poet (born 1828)
 * September 11 – Ernst Dümmler, German historian (born 1830)
 * September 19 – Masaoka Shiki (正岡 子規), Japanese haiku poet (born 1867)
 * September 29
 * William McGonagall, Scottish doggerel poet (born 1825)
 * Émile Zola, French novelist (carbon monoxide poisoning, born 1840)
 * October 7 – George Rawlinson, English historian (born 1812)
 * October 13 – John George Bourinot, Canadian historian (born 1836)
 * October 25 – Frank Norris, American novelist (peritonitis, born 1870)
 * October 31 – Cornélie Huygens, Dutch writer, social democrat and feminist (born 1848)
 * November 16 – G. A. Henty, English historical novelist (born 1832)
 * December 26 – Mary Hartwell Catherwood, American author and poet (born 1849)

Awards

 * Nobel Prize for Literature: Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen