1900 in Literature

The year 1900 in literature involved some significant new books and publications, as well as the deaths of several highly prominent writers, including among them the late Irish poet Oscar Wilde and the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

The highly influential American author L. Frank Baum wrote the first and most famous of his Oz books, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in 1900. The book would later go on to be translated into hundreds of languages, distributed worldwide, and come to be part of American popular culture for decades, as well as inspire an equally successful and memorable 1939 screening, along with numerous other adaptations.

The year marked several publications on the literarily influential Boer Wars: Winston Churchill, the future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and a major Allied political figure in World War II penned a memoir, Ian Hamilton's March, describing his experiences accompanying the British army during the Second Boer War, and Arthur Conan Doyle (famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes) wrote on the subject in his The Great Boer War.

Zelda Fitzgerald, the future American novelist and wife of fellow writer F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on July 24 of 1900. Margaret Mitchell, who would become known as the author of Gone With the Wind, was born little more than 3 months later.