Thomas Chatterton was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. In August 1770, while walking in St Pancras Churchyard, Chatterton was much absorbed in thought, and did not notice a newly dug open grave in his path, and subsequently tumbled into it. On observing this event, his walking companion helped Chatterton out of the grave, and told him in a jocular manner that he was happy in assisting at the resurrection of genius. Chatterton replied, "My dear friend, I have been at war with the grave for some time now." Chatterton died by suicide three days later. On 24 August 1770, he retired for the last time to his attic in Brook Street, carrying with him the arsenic, which he drank after tearing into fragments whatever literary remains were at hand. He was 17 years and nine months old. There has been some speculation that Chatterton may have taken the arsenic as a treatment for a venereal disease, as it was commonly used for such at that time.
Jan Potocki was a Polish nobleman, ethnologist, linguist, traveller and author of the Enlightenment period. Believing he was becoming a werewolf, Potocki committed suicide on 23 December 1815 by fatally shooting himself with a silver bullet blessed by his Catholic village priest.
Karoline Louise Brachmann was a German writer. She made a suicide attempt at age 23. After the death of her parents and her sister she tried to create a living by writing. Unhappy love relationships, constant lack of money and lack of artistic appreciation cause her a deep depression. After several suicide attempts she drowned herself on 17 September 1822 in the river Saale.
Heinrich von Kleist was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, short story writer and journalist. Kleist met Henriette Vogel in 1809 through his friend Adam Müller; the relationship between the two became intimate in the autumn of 1811. On November 21, 1811, the two traveled from Berlin to Wannsee. Prior to their departure, they penned farewell letters, which along with an account of the final night they spent at the inn Gasthof Stimming, are part of world literature. Upon their arrival in the vicinity of the Wannsee in Potsdam, Kleist shot Henriette, then turned the gun on himself.
Karoline von Günderrode was a German Romantic poet. She used the pen name Tian. Karoline von Günderrode suffered with mental health problems throughout her life. When she was living in Frankfurt, she spent much of her time alone in her room, despite having a circle of friends. In letters to Kunigunde Brentano, Günderrode describes her difficulties in making friends and feeling close to people. In her relationships with men she found herself similarly unfulfilled. Creuzer refused to elevate their relationship to a serious one, leading her to commit suicide.
Henry Neele was an English poet and literary scholar. Following a period of overwork, he is said to have become confused and deranged about nine days before he committed suicide at home in Marylebone by slitting his own throat on 7 February 1828.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes was an English poet, dramatist and physician. He committed suicide by poison at Basel, in 1849, at the age of 45.
Henry Joseph Steele Bradfield was a colonial official and author. Bradfield killed himself by drinking a bottle of prussic acid at the St. Alban's Hotel, 12 Charles Street, St James's Square, Westminster, on 11 October 1852.
He ended his life by committing suicide March 7, 1864 in Paris after long suffering because of impending blindness.
Adalbert Stifter was an Austrian writer, poet, painter, and pedagogue. His physical and mental health began to decline in 1863, and he became seriously ill from cirrhosis of the liver in 1867. In deep depression, he slashed his neck with a razor on the night of 25 January 1868 and died three days later.
Armand Barthet was a French journalist, poet, playwright and writer. While in a psychiatric hospital, he castrated himself with a razor and died of blood loss.
Ernest Coeurderoy was a medical doctor, a revolutionary journalist and a French libertarian writer. He lived in exile for most of his life and committed suicide.
Camilo Castelo Branco was a prolific Portuguese writer of the 19th century. Going blind (because of syphilis) and suffering from chronic nervous disease, Castelo Branco committed suicide with a revolver in 1890, while sitting in his now-famous wooden rocking chair.
Nikolai Uspensky was a Russian writer. Uspensky wrote extensively about the realities of peasant life in rural Russia around the time of the Emancipation Act of 1861 by Tsar Alexander II, achieving critical and commercial success. After experiencing increasing alienation and career decline, Uspensky committed suicide on 2 November 1889.
Manuel Acuña was a 19th-century Mexican writer. He focused on poetry but also wrote some novels and plays. He committed suicide at age 24. It is not certain why he killed himself, but it is thought that he did so because of a woman.
Victoria Benedictsson was a Swedish author. She committed suicide in room No. 17 in Leopold's Hotel on Hovedvagtsgade – near Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen.
Vsevolod Garshin was a Russian author of short stories. Despite early literary success, he had periodical bouts of mental illness. Garshin attempted to commit suicide by throwing himself down the stone stairs leading to his apartment building. Although not immediately fatal, he died as a result of his injuries in a hospital in April 1888, at the age of 33. Despite early literary success, he had periodical bouts of mental illness. Garshin attempted to commit suicide by throwing himself down the stone stairs leading to his apartment building. Although not immediately fatal, he died as a result of his injuries in a hospital in April 1888, at the age of 33.
John Davidson was a Scottish poet, playwright and novelist, best known for his ballads. In 1909, financial difficulties, as well as physical and mental health problems, led to his suicide.
Gustav Wied was a Danish writer. Wied fell ill, suffering from severe stomach aches. Badly affected by his condition and despondent, he committed suicide with an overdose of potassium cyanide in 1914.
Francis William Lauderdale Adams was an English essayist, poet, dramatist, novelist and journalist. Adams shot himself dead at a boarding house in Margate, England, during a severe tubucular haemorrhage that would probably have been fatal in any case. He had long carried a pistol for this purpose. He was survived by his second wife, Edith (née Goldstone), who assisted his suicide but was not convicted of any crime.
Kitamura Tokoku was a Japanese poet and essayist. Before dawn on 16 May 1894, Tokoku hanged himself in his garden at his home near Shiba Park in Tokyo.
Bizan Kawakami was a Japanese novelist of the Meiji era.
Margaret Fairless Barber was an English Christian writer. Barber starved herself to death.
Charlotte Mew was an English poet whose work spans the eras of Victorian poetry and Modernism. After the death of her sister from cancer in 1927, Mew descended into a deep depression and was admitted to the Beaumont Street Nursing Home in Marylebone, where she committee suicide by drinking Lysol, a disinfectant.
Dimitrie Anghel was a Romanian poet. He fell in love with Iosif's wife Natalia Negru, who left her husband and divorced him. Anghel and Negru married in November 1911. In the autumn of 1914, during a quarrel, Anghel fired a warning shot at Negru, lightly wounding her. Believing he had killed her, he shot himself in the chest. The resulting wound became infected, and he died of sepsis two weeks later.
André Baillon was a Belgian novelist. Withdrawn and prone to nervous instability, he took up gambling as a young man and became obsessed with suicidal thoughts. He was hospitalized frequently, writing plainly about the subject of mental illness, which had hitherto been taboo. Eventually, he was unable to master his self-doubt, and he succumbed to his suicidal tendencies.
Jack London was an American novelist and journalist. London died November 22, 1916, in a sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch. At the time of his death, he suffered from dysentery, late-stage alcoholism, and uremia; he was in extreme pain and taking morphine and opium, both common, over-the-counter drugs at the time. Because he was using morphine, many older sources describe London's death as a suicide.
Rex Ellingwood Beach was an American novelist and playwright. In 1949, two years after the death of his wife Edith, Beach committed suicide in Sebring, Florida at the age of 72.[8] In 2005, when the home Beach lived in was remodeled, a bullet was found in the wall, believed to be the bullet that ended his life.
Max Alsberg was a famous criminal lawyer of the Weimar Republic. He also wrote plays. Max Alsberg committed suicide by gunshot on 11 September 1933.
Peyo Yavorov was a Bulgarian Symbolist poet. In 1913, Lora, his spouse, shot herself and Yavorov tried to commit suicide. The bullet went through his temporal bone, which left him blind. In despair over the trial provoked by Lora's death and the rumor that he had killed her, Yavorov poisoned and then shot himself in autumn 1914, at the age of 36.
Takeo Arishima was a Japanese novelist, short-story writer and essayist during the late Meiji and Taishō periods. Arishima married in 1910, but his wife died in 1916 of tuberculosis leaving him three children. In 1922, Arishima met Akiko Hatano, a married woman and an editor working for the Fujin Koron, a famous women's magazine. Their relationship quickly developed into an extramarital affair, which came to be known by Hatano's husband. This led to Arishima and Hatano committing suicide in Karuizawa by hanging themselves. Due to the isolated location, their bodies were not discovered for over a month, and were identified largely by the suicide note left behind.
Horacio Quiroga was an Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer. In 1935 Quiroga began to experience uncomfortable symptoms, apparently related to prostatitis or another prostate disease. With the pain intensifying and difficulty urinating, his wife managed to convince him to go to Posadas, where he was diagnosed with prostate hypertrophy. In 1937, an exploratory surgery revealed that he suffered from an advanced case of prostate cancer, untreatable and inoperable. María Elena and his large group of friends came to comfort him. Feeling desperate about his present suffering and realizing that his life was over, he told Batistessa his plan to shorten his suffering and Batistessa promised to help. That morning (February 19, 1937) in the presence of his friend, Horacio Quiroga drank a glass of cyanide that killed him within minutes of unbearable pain.
Vachel Lindsay was an American poet. He is considered a founder of modern singing poetry. Crushed by financial worry and in failing health, Lindsay sank into depression. On December 5, 1931, he committed suicide by drinking a bottle of lye. His last words were: "They tried to get me; I got them first!"
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. In his final years, he would declare himself in love with the country, writing about it in the book Brazil, Land of the Future. Nonetheless, as the years passed Zweig became increasingly disillusioned and despairing at the future of Europe, and he and his wife Lotte were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in Petrópolis on 23 February 1942.
Virginia Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. On 28 March 1941, Woolf drowned herself by filling her overcoat pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse near her home.
Gyula Juhász was a Hungarian poet, who was awarded the Baumgarten Prize. He committed suicide in 1937, after multiple failed attempts.
Sara Teasdale was an American lyric poet. A common urban legend surrounds Teasdale's suicide. The poem "I Shall Not Care" was speculated to be her suicide note because of its depressing undertone. The legend claims that her poem "I Shall Not Care" (which features themes of abandonment, bitterness, and contemplation of death) was penned as a suicide note to a former lover. However, the poem was actually first published in her 1915 collection Rivers to the Sea, a full 18 years before her suicide.
Stanisław Witkiewicz was a Polish writer, painter, philosopher, theorist, playwright, novelist, and photographer active before World War I and during the interwar period. Shortly after Poland was invaded by Germany in September 1939, Witkiewicz escaped with his young lover Czesława to the rural frontier town of Jeziory, in what was then eastern Poland. After hearing the news of the Soviet invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939, Witkacy committed suicide on 18 September by taking a drug overdose and trying to slit his wrists. He convinced Czesława to attempt suicide with him by consuming Luminal, but she survived.
Carl Einstein was an influential German Jewish writer, art historian, anarchist, and critic. Trapped in southern France following Nazi Germany's defeat of the French Third Republic, Einstein took his own life by jumping from a bridge on 5 July 1940.
Georg Trakl was an Austrian poet. He is perhaps best known for his poem "Grodek", which he wrote shortly before he died of a cocaine overdose.
Kurt Tucholsky was a German journalist, satirist, and writer. Weakened by chronic illness, on the evening of 20 December 1935 Tucholsky took an overdose of sleeping tablets in his house in Hindås. The next day he was found in a coma and taken to hospital in Gothenburg. He died there on the evening of 21 December. Recently, Tucholsky's biographer Michael Hepp has called into doubt the verdict of suicide, saying that he considers it possible that the death was accidental. However, this claim is disputed among Tucholsky researchers.
Johannes Vares was an Estonian and Soviet poet, medical doctor, and politician. He committed suicide in presidential residence in Kadriorg, Tallinn, in November 1946.
Walter Hasenclever was a German Expressionist poet and playwright. His works were banned when the Nazis came to power and he went into exile in France. During the Second World War Hasenclever was imprisoned twice as a "foreign enemy" in France. When France fell to Germany, he was in the prison camp of Camp des Milles in the south-east of France. In the early hours of 22 June 1940 he took his own life with an overdose of the barbiturate Veronal, so as not to fall into the hands of the Nazis.
Akutagawa Ryūnosuke was a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is regarded as the "father of the Japanese short story", and Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him. He committed suicide at the age of 35 through an overdose of barbital.
Alfonsina Storn was an Argentine poet and playwright of the modernist period. In 1935, Storni may have discovered a lump on her left breast and decided to undergo an operation. On May 20, 1935, she underwent a radical mastectomy. In 1938 she found out that the breast cancer had reappeared. Around 1:00 AM on Tuesday, 25 October 1938, Storni left her room and headed towards the sea at La Perla beach in Mar del Plata, Argentina and committed suicide. Later that morning two workers found her body washed up on the beach. Although her biographers hold that she jumped into the water from a breakwater, popular legend is that she slowly walked into the sea until she drowned.
Marina Tsvetaeva was a Russian poet. On 31 August 1941, while living in Yelabuga, Tsvetaeva hanged herself. She left a note for her son Mur: "Forgive me, but to go on would be worse. I am gravely ill, this is not me anymore. I love you passionately. Do understand that I could not live anymore. Tell Papa and Alya, if you ever see them, that I loved them to the last moment and explain to them that I found myself in a trap."
Pierre Drieu la Rochelle was a French writer of novels, short stories and political essays. He was born, lived and died in Paris. Drieu La Rochelle became a proponent of French fascism in the 1930s, and was a well-known collaborationist during the German occupation. Beginning in 1943, however, he became disillusioned by the New Order, and turned to the study of Eastern spirituality. In a final, provocative act, he again embraced Jacques Doriot's PPF, simultaneously declaring in his secret diary his admiration for Stalinism. Upon the liberation of Paris in 1944, Drieu had to go into hiding. Despite the protection of his friend André Malraux, and after a failed first attempt in July 1944, Drieu committed suicide.
Josef Weinheber was an Austrian lyric poet, narrative writer and essayist. Falling prey to alcohol during the later events of the War, he committed suicide in April 1945 by taking an overdose of morphine at the time of the advancing Red Army and Germany's impending defeat.
Vladimir Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet. On 12 April 1930, Mayakovsky was seen in public for the last time: he took part in a discussion at the Sovnarkom meeting concerning the proposed copyright law. On 14 April 1930, his current partner, actress Veronika Polonskaya, upon leaving his flat, heard a shot behind the closed door. She rushed in and found the poet lying on the floor; he had apparently shot himself through the heart.The handwritten death note read: "To all of you. I die, but don't blame anyone for it, and please do not gossip. The deceased disliked that sort of thing terribly. Mother, sisters, comrades, forgive me – this is not a good method (I do not recommend it to others), but there is no other way out for me. Lily – love me. Comrade Government, my family consists of Lily Brik, mama, my sisters, and Veronika Vitoldovna Polonskaya. If you can provide a decent life for them, thank you. Give the poem I started to the Briks. They'll sort them out." The 'unfinished poem' in his suicide note read, in part: "And so they say – "the incident dissolved" / the love boat smashed up / on the dreary routine. / I'm through with life / and [we] should absolve / from mutual hurts, afflictions and spleen."
Ernst Toller was a German author, playwright, left-wing politician and revolutionary, known for his Expressionist plays. Suffering from depression, separated from his wife and struggling with financial woes (he had given all his money to Spanish Civil War refugees), Toller committed suicide on 22 May 1939. He hanged himself in his room at the Mayflower Hotel, after laying out on his hotel desk "photos of Spanish children who had been killed by fascist bombs".
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