1906 in literature

Events

• February 8 – The writer Hilaire Belloc becomes a Liberal Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom.
• February 15 – J. M. Dent and Co. initiates the U.K. Everyman's Library series, edited by Ernest Rhys. The first title is Boswell's Life of Johnson.
• March 13 – The Romanian nationalist historian Nicolae Iorga instigates a boycott of the National Theater Bucharest over its staging of French-language plays. A riot ensues.
• April 10–October 13 – Maxim Gorky visits the United States with his mistress, the actress Maria Andreyeva, to raise funds for the Bolsheviks. In the Adirondack Mountains he writes his novel of revolutionary conversion and struggle, The Mother. The couple then move to Capri.
• April 18 – The 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroys the unfinished premises of Stanford University Library. Many of the city's leading poets and writers retreat to join the arts colony at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California known as The Barness.
• May–October – Jack London's novel White Fang is serialized in the American magazine Outing.
• June – Virginia Stephen, the future Virginia Woolf, writes her first work of fiction, a short story which becomes known as "Phyllis and Rosamond" when first published, posthumously.
• July 11 – The Murder of Grace Brown in Herkimer County, New York will inspire Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy and Jennifer Donnelly's young-adult novel A Northern Light.
• Pre-September – The last full-scale court performance of gambuh dance-drama is held in Bali.
• September 1 – Annie Carroll Moore begins work as Superintendent of the Department of Work with Children at the New York Public Library.
• September 18 – August Strindberg's naturalist drama Miss Julie , written in 1888, is first performed on the Swedish professional stage, on tour in Lund, directed by August Falck, with Manda Bjorling in the title rôle and :sv:August Palme|August Palme as Jean. It is first staged in Stockholm on December 13 at the Folkan.
• November 8 – Max Reinhardt inaugurates the Kammerspiele series of new plays at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, with a production of Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen, designed by Edvard Munch.
• November 20 – Frank Wedekind's play Spring Awakening: A Children's Tragedy , completed 1901, receives its first staging, as the second work presented in the Deutsches Theater's Kammerspiele series in Berlin, directed by Max Reinhardt.
• December 24 – Reginald Fessenden transmits the first radio program, a poetry reading, a violin solo, and a speech, from Brant Rock, Massachusetts.

• Livraria Lello & Irmão opens a new bookstore in Porto.
• The magazine Eesti Kirjandus is founded in the Governorate of Estonia, as part of the Estonian national awakening.

  New books

Fiction

• Henry Adams – The Education of Henry Adams
• Pio Baroja – Paradox, rey
• Rex Beach – The Spoilers
• Hall Caine – Drink: A Love Story on a Great Question
• Paul Carus – Amitabha
• Mary Cholmondeley – Prisoners
• William de Morgan –
• Arthur Conan Doyle – Sir Nigel
• Douglas Morey Ford – A Time of Terror: The Story of a Great Revenge
• Ford Madox Ford – The Fifth Queen
• Zona Gale – Romance Island
• John Galsworthy – The Man of Property
• Ellen Glasgow – The Wheel of Life
• Elinor Glyn – Beyond the Rocks
• Remy de Gourmont – Une Nuit au Luxembourg
• O. Henry – The Four Million
• Hermann Hesse – Beneath the Wheel
• Robert Hichens – The Call of the Blood
• Mikhail Kuzmin – Wings
• W. J. Locke – The Beloved Vagabond
• Arthur Machen – The House of Souls
• George Moore – My Dead Life
• Robert Musil – The Confusions of Young Törless
• Natsume Sōseki
• *Botchan
• *Kusamakura
• *Shumi no Iden
• Baroness Orczy
• *I Will Repay
• *A Son of the People
• David M. Parry – The Scarlet Empire
• Rafael Sabatini – Bardelys the Magnificent
• Felix Salten – Josephine Mutzenbacher
• Upton Sinclair – The Jungle
• Rabindranath Tagore – Naukadubi
• Mary Augusta Ward – Fenwick's Career
• H. G. Wells – In the Days of the Comet
• Owen Wister – Lady Baltimore
• P. G. Wodehouse – Love Among the Chickens

  Children and young people

• L. Frank Baum
• *John Dough and the Cherub
• *Annabel
• *Aunt Jane's Nieces
• *Daughters of Destiny
• *Sam Steele's Adventures on Land and Sea
• *The Twinkle Tales
• Angela Brazil – The Fortunes of Philippa
• Rudyard Kipling – Puck of Pook's Hill
• Selma Lagerlöf – The Wonderful Adventures of Nils
• Jack London – White Fang
• Ferenc Molnár – A Pál utcai fiúk
• Ferenc Móra – Öreg diófák alatt
• Edith Nesbit
• *The Railway Children
• *The Story of the Amulet
• Beatrix Potter
• *The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher
• *The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit
• *The Story of Miss Moppet

  Drama