production of
Uncle Vanya •
January 21 – The French actress
Sarah Bernhardt, having taken over management of the Paris theatre she renames the
Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, opens it in the title rôle of
Victorien Sardou's
La Tosca. On
May 20 she premières an adaptation of Shakespeare's
Hamlet, with herself in the title rôle. •
March 20 –
W. H. Davies, "tramp-poet", loses his foot trying to jump on a freight train at Renfrew, Ontario. • April –
Karl Kraus establishes the radical periodical
Die Fackel (The Torch) in Vienna. • April–June –
Rainer Maria Rilke, still an art student at the time, travels to Moscow to meet
Leo Tolstoy. • May–December – The only work of fiction by the British politician
Winston Churchill,
Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania, is serialised in ''
Macmillan's Magazine''. • May –
Jack London's first published work, the short story "
A Thousand Deaths", appears in
The Black Cat; its acceptance convinces London that he can make a living from literature. •
May 8 – The
Irish Literary Theatre, founded by
W. B. Yeats,
Augusta, Lady Gregory,
George Moore and
Edward Martyn, puts on its first production in Dublin, a version of Yeats' verse drama
The Countess Cathleen. •
June 20 – The English writer
Edward Thomas, an Oxford undergraduate at this time, marries Helen Noble at
Fulham register office. •
July 31 –
Arthur Machen's wife Amy dies after a long illness, an event that has a devastating effect on him. •
September 1 – The
National Theatre in Norway opens with pieces by
Holberg and
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's 1862 trilogy
Sigurd Slembe. • September – The British Mutoscope and Biograph Company's
King John (a very
short silent film starring
Herbert Beerbohm Tree) becomes the first known film based on a Shakespeare play. • November – The oldest surviving Japanese film,
Momijigari, is shot by
Tsunekichi Shibata in Tokyo. It records the
kabuki actors
Onoe Kikugorō V and
Ichikawa Danjūrō IX performing a scene from the play
Momijigari. production of
Ben-Hur •
November 6 –
William Gillette's play
Sherlock Holmes, based (with authorisation) on the writings of
Arthur Conan Doyle, opens in New York City with himself in the title rôle. •
November 7 (October 26
Old Style) –
Anton Chekhov's
Uncle Vanya («Дя́дя Ва́ня»,
Dyádya Ványa), a reworking of his
The Wood Demon (1889), receives its Russian metropolitan première at the
Moscow Art Theatre, with
Konstantin Stanislavski directing and playing the rôle of Astrov, and
Olga Knipper as Yeléna. •
November 18 –
Leo Tolstoy completes his last novel,
Resurrection («Воскресение»,
Voskreseniye), published serially in
Niva. •
December 12 –
Herbert Putnam is appointed
Librarian of Congress in the United States, where he will introduce in practice the
Library of Congress Classification (LCC) scheme. • December – The imprisoned William Sydney Porter's
pseudonym O. Henry first appears over the
short story "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking" in this month's ''
McClure's Magazine''. •
unknown dates •
Curtis Brown (literary agents) is established in London by the American Albert Curtis Brown. •
Edgar Rice Burroughs begins a brief spell working in his father's battery business. •
Simon Pokagon's
O-gi-maw-kwe Mit-I-gwa-ki (Queen of the Woods) is published, the first novel both by and about
Native Americans in the United States. •
Lin Shu's first translation into Chinese from a Western text,
The Lady of the Camellias, is published as 巴黎茶花女遺事. • The first series of the
Arden Shakespeare under the general editorship of
W. J. Craig begins publication by
Methuen in London with an edition of
Hamlet edited by
Edward Dowden. • The
Bulgarian language is officially codified. ==New books==