Books · 1916
Modernist Masterpieces and Wartime Prose of 1916
In 1916, as World War I raged across Europe, literature captured both the harrowing realities of the front lines and the quiet shift toward modernism. Writers broke from Victorian conventions to pioneer revolutionary techniques in prose and poetry that reshaped twentieth-century literature.
- James Joyce · Fiction · Literary Classic
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Joyce's modernist coming-of-age masterpiece traces Stephen Dedalus's intellectual and religious awakening as he rejects dogma to pursue artistic freedom.
- Henri Barbusse · Novel · Award-Winning
Under Fire
Based on Barbusse's experience as a French soldier, this gritty war novel exposed the unvarnished brutality and mud-soaked misery of WWI trench warfare.
- Robert Frost · Poetry · Classic
Mountain Interval
Featuring 'The Road Not Taken,' this landmark poetry collection established Frost as a master of rural New England wisdom and subtle existential reflection.
- H. G. Wells · Novel · Bestseller
Mr. Britling Sees It Through
Wells captured the social transformation and strain of wartime Britain through the eyes of an idealist writer whose world is upended by global conflict.
- Carl Sandburg · Poetry · Influential
Chicago Poems
Sandburg broke traditional poetic conventions with vivid free verse celebrating the industrial muscle, diverse working class, and raw energy of Chicago.
- Mark Twain · Fiction · Classic
The Mysterious Stranger
Twain’s dark novella critiques human morality and reality through the arrival of an unearthly figure named Satan in a sixteenth-century Austrian village.
- Booth Tarkington · Fiction · Bestseller
Seventeen
A humorous and affectionate chronicle of adolescent first love, this smash-hit novel captured the American public and became a dominant bestseller of 1916.
- E. R. Burroughs · Fiction · Bestseller
The Beasts of Tarzan
The third installment in Burroughs's iconic adventure series finds Tarzan marooned on an island, forcing him to assemble a wild animal army to rescue his family.
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