text:
1941 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1941.

Events

 * January 3 – A decree (Normalschrifterlaß) issued in Nazi Germany by Martin Bormann on behalf of Adolf Hitler calls for replacement of blackletter typefaces by Antiqua.
 * January 20 – Chittadhar Hridaya begins a six-year sentence of imprisonment in Kathmandu for writing poetry in Nepal Bhasa, during which time he secretly composes his Buddhist epic Sugata Saurabha in that language.
 * January 21–23 – A failed "Legionary Rebellion" in Bucharest, opposing loyalists of the Ion Antonescu government to the radically fascist Iron Guard, doubles as a pogrom against Romanian Jews. Avant-garde poet Ion Barbu joins a rebel squad storming into the Ministry of Education; meanwhile, his colleague Ion Vinea protects a Jewish friend, the novelist Sergiu Dan. The destruction of Jewish life and property is documented from inside the Jewish community by the photojournalist F. Brunea-Fox, and by Marcel Janco. Janco's brother-in-law, essayist Jacques G. Costin, survives, but his brother is tortured and killed by the Guard; the murder prompts Janco to leave for British Palestine in February.
 * Spring – The Antioch Review is founded as a literary magazine at Antioch College in Ohio.
 * March
 * Jean-Paul Sartre is released from prisoner-of-war camp on health grounds.
 * Eugene O'Neill completes Long Day's Journey into Night (published and premiered in 1956).
 * Publication of Lord David Cecil's The English Poets by William Collins in London, first of the 'Britain in Pictures' series devised by Hilda Matheson (died 1940) to celebrate British identity.
 * April 6 – The National Library of Serbia is destroyed by bombing.
 * April 19 – Bertolt Brecht's anti-war play Mother Courage and Her Children (Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder) is launched at the Schauspielhaus Zürich in Switzerland, with Therese Giehse in the title rôle.
 * May 5 – Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin meet while both reading English at St John's College, Oxford.
 * May 21 – The 1941 theatre strike in Norway begins. Actors in the Norwegian professional theater strike in response to the revocation of work permits for six actors who refuse to perform on state radio for the Quisling regime during the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany.
 * June – Noël Coward's comedy Blithe Spirit is premièred at Manchester Opera House in England. Opening in London on July 2, its run of 1,997 consecutive performances sets a record for non-musical plays in the West End theatre, which will not be surpassed for more than twenty years. The original cast stars Kay Hammond as Elvira, Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati, Cecil Parker as Charles and Fay Compton as Ruth. The Broadway première takes place on November 5 at the Morosco Theatre.
 * June 22 – Among those fleeing the Operation Barbarossa attack on the Soviet Union is a Moldovan Jewish poet, Alexandru Robot, declared missing, presumed dead by August.
 * June 29
 * For unknown reasons, the Hungarian philosopher György Lukács is arrested by the NKVD and held at Lubyanka Building in Moscow; he will be released on August 26, possibly after a plea made by Mátyás Rákosi.
 * The Iași pogrom in Nazi-allied Romania is witnessed by the Italian war correspondent Curzio Malaparte, who recounts it in a chapter of his novel Kaputt (1944), for long the only work to deal with the events.
 * August 6 – C. S. Lewis begins a series of BBC Radio broadcasts that give rise to Mere Christianity.
 * August 18 – Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., a 19-year-old poet of American paternity serving in Britain with the Royal Canadian Air Force, makes a high-altitude test flight in a Spitfire V from RAF Llandow in Wales, and then by September 3 completes the sonnet "High Flight" about the experience. On December 11 he dies in an air collision over England.
 * Fall – Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is launched under the editorship of Frederic Dannay, by Lawrence E. Spivak's Mercury Publications in New York City.
 * September – In Nazi-allied Romania, George Călinescu publishes his companion to Romanian literature (Istoria literaturii române de la origini până în prezent). It is condemned in the far-right press for including entries on Romanian Jewish writers, whose work has been explicitly banned. It is eventually withdrawn from circulation, but its own racist undertones are criticized by intellectuals such as the Jewish (Felix Aderca and Mihail Sebastian) and the Romanian (Șerban Cioculescu, Mihai Ralea and Vladimir Streinu).
 * September 6–7 – Under Nazi occupation, Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever is among the Polish Jews interned in the Vilna Ghetto.
 * c. October – The first known reference to Babi Yar in poetry is written soon after the Babi Yar massacres, the work of the young Jewish-Ukrainian poet from Kyiv and an eyewitness, Liudmila Titova; her poem "Babi Yar" will be discovered only in the 1990s.
 * October 27 – F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Last Tycoon, unfinished on his death in 1940, is edited by Edmund Wilson and published by Charles Scribner's Sons in New York City.
 * November – Brendan Behan is released from Borstal in England and deported back to Ireland.
 * December
 * During the Siege of Leningrad, Yakov Druskin, ill and starving, and Maria Malich, second wife of Russian avant-garde poet Danil Kharms (arrested this summer for treason and imprisoned in the psychiatric ward at Leningrad Prison No. 1, where he will die in 1942), trudge to Kharms' bombed-out apartment building to collect a trunk of manuscripts, so preserving his work and that of Alexander Vvedensky's for decades until it can be circulated. Vvedensky, arrested in September in Kharkiv for "counterrevolutionary agitation", is evacuated, but dies of pleurisy on the way.
 * Penguin Books publishes in the U.K. the first story book in its Puffin Books children's paperback imprint: Worzel Gummidge by Barbara Euphan Todd. The series editor is Eleanor Graham.
 * unknown dates
 * The new National and University Library of Slovenia building in Ljubljana, designed by Jože Plečnik in 1930/1931, is completed and opened to the public.
 * Biblioteca Cantonale (Cantonal Library) at Lugano in the Italian-speaking Canton of Ticino in neutral Switzerland, designed by Rino and Carlo Tami, is completed.
 * The Bosnian Serb writer Branko Ćopić joins the Yugoslav Partisans.
 * The poet Ezra Pound applies unsuccessfully to return to the U.S. from Italy. He begins appearing on Rome Radio with antisemitic broadcasts sympathetic to the Axis powers.
 * The Classic Comics series is launched in the United States with a version of The Three Musketeers.

Fiction

 * Margery Allingham – Traitor's Purse
 * Isaac Asimov – Nightfall (novelette)
 * William Attaway – Blood on the Forge
 * Pierre Benoit – The Gobi Desert
 * Frans G. Bengtsson – The Long Ships, part 1 (Röde Orm, originally translated as Red Orm)
 * Maurice Blanchot – Thomas l'Obscur (Thomas the Obscure)
 * Godfried Bomans – Erik of het klein insectenboek (Erik and His Little Insect Book)
 * Jorge Luis Borges – The Garden of Forking Paths (El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, short stories)
 * Phyllis Bottome – London Pride
 * Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon – No Bed for Bacon
 * Christianna Brand
 * Death in High Heels
 * Heads You Lose
 * Pearl S. Buck – China Sky
 * Gerald Butler – They Cracked Her Glass Slipper
 * James M. Cain – Mildred Pierce
 * Joyce Cary – Herself Surprised
 * John Dickson Carr
 * The Case of the Constant Suicides
 * Death Turns the Tables
 * Seeing is Believing (as by Carter Dickson)
 * Peter Cheyney
 * It Couldn't Matter Less
 * Your Deal, My Lovely
 * Agatha Christie
 * Evil Under the Sun
 * N or M?
 * J. Storer Clouston – Beastmark the Spy
 * Colette – Julie de Carneilhan
 * J.J. Connington – The Twenty-One Clues
 * John Creasey – Salute the Toff
 * Freeman Wills Crofts
 * James Tarrant, Adventurer
 * The Losing Game
 * A. J. Cronin – The Keys of the Kingdom
 * Eric Cross – The Tailor and Ansty
 * Cecil Day-Lewis – The Case of the Abominable Snowman
 * L. Sprague de Camp – Lest Darkness Fall (complete novel)
 * August Derleth – Someone in the Dark
 * Walter D. Edmonds – The Matchlock Gun
 * Ilya Ehrenburg – The Fall of Paris («Падение Парижа», Padeniye Parizha)
 * F. Scott Fitzgerald (died 1940) – The Last Tycoon
 * Anthony Gilbert
 * The Vanishing Corpse
 * The Woman in Red
 * Marcus Goodrich – Delilah
 * Patrick Hamilton – Hangover Square
 * Robert A. Heinlein – Methuselah's Children
 * James Hilton – Random Harvest
 * Anne Hocking – Miss Milverton
 * Dorothy B. Hughes – The Bamboo Blonde
 * Soeman Hs – Kawan Bergeloet (Playmate, collected short stories)
 * Hammond Innes – Attack Alarm
 * Michael Innes – Appleby on Ararat
 * Anna Kavan – Change the Name
 * C. S. Lewis – The Screwtape Letters
 * Janet Lewis – The Wife of Martin Guerre
 * E. C. R. Lorac – Case in the Clinic
 * Compton Mackenzie – The Red Tapeworm
 * Hugh MacLennan – Barometer Rising
 * Ngaio Marsh
 * Death and the Dancing Footman
 * Surfeit of Lampreys
 * W. Somerset Maugham – Up at the Villa
 * Oscar Micheaux – The Wind From Nowhere
 * Betty Miller – Farewell, Leicester Square
 * Henry Miller – The Colossus of Maroussi
 * Gladys Mitchell
 * Hangman's Curfew
 * When Last I Died
 * Edgar Mittelholzer – Corentyne Thunder
 * Vilhelm Moberg – Ride This Night (Rid i natt)
 * Paul Morand – The Man in a Hurry (L'Homme pressé)
 * Vladimir Nabokov – The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
 * Flann O'Brien – An Béal Bocht
 * E. Phillips Oppenheim – The Shy Plutocrat
 * Rafael Sabatini – Columbus
 * Budd Schulberg – What Makes Sammy Run?
 * Anya Seton – My Theodosia
 * Georges Simenon – Strange Inheritance
 * Armstrong Sperry – Call It Courage
 * Cecil Street
 * Death at the Helm
 * They Watched by Night
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor
 * The Perennial Boarder
 * The Hollow Chest (as by Alice Tilton)
 * Kylie Tennant – The Battlers
 * Franz Werfel – The Song of Bernadette (Das Lied von Bernadette)
 * Rex Warner – The Aerodrome
 * Eudora Welty – A Curtain of Green
 * Ethel Lina White – She Faded into Air
 * Virginia Woolf (suicide March 28) – Between the Acts

Children and young people

 * Enid Blyton
 * The Adventurous Four
 * The Twins at St. Clare's
 * Walter D. Edmonds – The Matchlock Gun
 * Mary Grannan – Just Mary
 * Robert McCloskey – Make Way for Ducklings
 * Arthur Ransome – Missee Lee
 * H. A. Rey and Margret Rey – Curious George (first in the Curious George series of seven books)
 * Mary Treadgold – We Couldn't Leave Dinah
 * Dorothy Vicary – Lucy Brown's Schooldays etc.
 * Laura Ingalls Wilder – Little Town on the Prairie

Drama

 * Jean Anouilh
 * Eurydice
 * Le Rendez-vous de Senlis
 * Bertolt Brecht
 * Mother Courage and Her Children
 * The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (written)
 * Noël Coward – Blithe Spirit
 * Kenneth Horne – Love in a Mist
 * Molly Keane – Ducks and Drakes
 * Esther McCracken – Quiet Weekend
 * Pablo Picasso – Desire Caught by the Tail (Le Désir attrapé par la queue, written)
 * Enrique Jardiel Poncela – We Thieves Are Honourable (Los ladrones somos gente honrada)
 * Vernon Sylvaine
 * Warn That Man!
 * Women Aren't Angels
 * Xavier Villaurrutia – Invitación à la muerte
 * Richard Wright and Paul Green - Native Son produced by Orson Welles at the St. James Theatre NYC, on March 24.

Poetry

 * W. H. Auden – New Year Letter (British edition of 'The Double Man')
 * William Rose Benét – The Dust which is God
 * Laurence Binyon – The North Star and Other Poems
 * T. S. Eliot – The Dry Salvages (third of the Four Quartets; in February New English Weekly)
 * A Choice of Kipling's Verse by T. S. Eliot (published December)
 * G. S. Fraser – The Fatal Landscape and Other Poems
 * Patrick Kavanagh – The Great Hunger
 * John Gillespie Magee, Jr. – "High Flight"
 * John Pudney – "For Johnny"

Non-fiction

 * Frank Buck with Ferrin Fraser – All in a Lifetime
 * George Călinescu – Istoria literaturii române de la origini până în prezent
 * Joyce Cary
 * The Case for African Freedom
 * A House of Children
 * Leonora Eyles – For My Enemy Daughter
 * Victor Gollancz – Russia and Ourselves
 * Louis MacNeice – The Poetry of W. B. Yeats
 * The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
 * Michael Richey – "Sunk by a Mine. A Survivor's Story"
 * Vita Sackville-West – English Country Houses
 * Antal Szerb – A világirodalom története (History of World Literature)
 * Robert Vansittart – Black Record. Germans Past and Present
 * Rebecca West – Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: a journey through Yugoslavia
 * Stefan Zweig – Brasilien. Ein Land der Zukunft (Brazil, Land of the Future)

Births

 * January 19 – Colin Gunton, English theologian and academic (died 2003)
 * January 24 – Gary K. Wolf, American humorist
 * March 13
 * Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet (died 2008)
 * Donella Meadows, American environmentalist (died 2001)
 * March 22 – Billy Collins, American poet
 * April 10 – Paul Theroux, American novelist and travel writer
 * May 13 – Miles Kington, Northern Irish-born humorist and journalist (died 2008)
 * May 19 – Nora Ephron, American novelist and screenwriter (died 2012)
 * May 24 – Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, American singer-songwriter, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature
 * June 5 – Spalding Gray, American screenwriter and dramatist (died 2004)
 * June 27 – James P. Hogan, English-born American science fiction author (died 2010)
 * July 9 – Cirilo Bautista, Filipino poet, author and critic (died 2018)
 * July 12 – John Lahr, American-born author and critic
 * August 9
 * Shirlee Busbee, American novelist
 * Jamila Gavin, Anglo-Indian children's writer
 * September 1 – Gwendolyn MacEwen, Canadian poet (died 1987)
 * September 3 – Sergei Dovlatov, Russian short-story writer and novelist (died 1990)
 * September 15 – Lindsay Barrett, Jamaican novelist, poet and journalist
 * October 2 – John Sinclair, American poet
 * October 4 – Anne Rice, American horror/fantasy writer (died 2021)
 * October 10 – Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian writer (executed 1995)
 * October 13 – John Snow, English cricketer and poet
 * October 20 – Stewart Parker, Northern Irish poet and playwright (died 1988)
 * October 25 – Anne Tyler, American novelist
 * October 27 – Gerd Brantenberg, Norwegian novelist, author and feminist
 * November 18 – Marta Pessarrodona, Spanish poet, literary critic, essayist, biographer
 * November 23 – Derek Mahon, Irish poet (died 2020)
 * December 5 – Sheridan Morley, English biographer and critic (died 2007)
 * unknown dates
 * Jonathan Aaron, American poet
 * John Mole, English poet and musician
 * Pepetela, Angolan novelist
 * Jay Rubin, American scholar and translator

Deaths

 * January 1 – József Konkolics, Hungarian Slovene writer (born 1859)
 * January 4 – Henri Bergson, French philosopher (born 1859)
 * January 6
 * Franz Hessel, German writer and translator (born 1880)
 * F. R. Higgins, Irish poet and theatre director (born 1896)
 * January 13 – James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet (born 1882)
 * January 23 – William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham), English journalist, novelist and poet (born 1852)
 * February 5 – Banjo Paterson, Australian bush poet and journalist (born 1864)
 * February 9 – Elizabeth von Arnim, Australian-born English novelist (born 1866)
 * February 22 – G. E. Trevelyan, English novelist (born 1903; died of injuries sustained in air raid)
 * February 24 – Robert Byron, English travel writer (born 1905; torpedoed)
 * March 13 – Elizabeth Madox Roberts, American novelist and poet (born 1881)
 * March 28 – Virginia Woolf, English novelist and writer (born 1882; suicide)
 * June 1 – Sir Hugh Walpole, New Zealand-born English novelist (born 1884)
 * June 15 – Evelyn Underhill, English poet, Christian mystic and pacifist (born 1875)
 * June 27 – Ieremia Cecan, Bessarabian journalist and Christian polemicist (born 1867; shot)
 * July 4
 * Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, Polish writer, translator and gynecologist (born 1874)
 * Luella Dowd Smith, American educator and author (born 1847)
 * August 7 – Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali polymath and writer (born 1861)
 * August 31 – Marina Tsvetaeva, Soviet Russian poet (born 1892; suicide)
 * September 19 – H. E. Marshall, Scottish history writer for children (born 1867)
 * October 16 – Sergei Efron, Soviet Russian poet and secret police operative (born 1893; executed)
 * October 17 – May Ziadeh, Lebanese-Palestinian poet, essayist and translator (born 1886)
 * October 26 – Arkady Gaidar, Soviet Russian soldier and children's story writer (born 1904; killed in action)
 * November 8 – Gaetano Mosca, Italian political scientist and public servant (born 1909)
 * November 18 – Émile Nelligan, French Canadian poet (born 1879)
 * unknown date – Anne Elliot, English novelist (born 1856)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Mary Treadgold, We Couldn't Leave Dinah
 * Frost Medal: Robert Frost
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Joyce Cary, A House of Children
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: John Gore, King George V
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Armstrong Sperry, Call It Courage
 * Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, There Shall Be No Night
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Leonard Bacon: Sunderland Capture
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: No award given

title: 1941 in literature


text:
1942 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1942.

Events

 * January 1 – The U.K. Book Production War Economy Agreement comes into force.
 * February 20 – Jean Bruller's novella Le Silence de la mer (Silence of the Sea), about resistance to the Nazi occupation of France, is issued clandestinely as the first publication of Les Éditions de Minuit in Paris, under the pseudonym "Vercors". A hundred copies are distributed from late summer; the rest are destroyed by the occupying authorities.
 * February 22 – The Austrian-born novelist Stefan Zweig and his wife Lotte are found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their home in Petrópolis, Brazil, leaving notes indicating despair at the future of European civilization. The manuscript of Zweig's autobiography The World of Yesterday, posted to his publisher a day earlier, is first published in Stockholm later in the year as Die Welt von Gestern.
 * March – Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are introduced in his short story "Runaround", published in Astounding Science-Fiction.
 * March 1 – The Canadian novelist Robertson Davies begins a 13-year spell as editor of the Peterborough Examiner in Ontario.
 * March 28 – The Spanish poet Miguel Hernández dies of tuberculosis as a political prisoner in a prison hospital, having scrawled his last verse on the wall.
 * April 29 – The newspaper Asia Raja is first published in the Dutch East Indies under Japanese occupation; it will publish a number of literary works.
 * May – The German novelist Thomas Mann moves to California.
 * May 4 – The French novelist André Gide moves to Tunis.
 * May 8 – The English novelist David Garnett marries as his second wife, the painter and writer Angelica Bell, daughter of Garnett's lover Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell.
 * June 4 – The film Mrs. Miniver is released, for which the novelist James Hilton will share an Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) on 4 March 1943.
 * June 12 – Anne Frank, on her 13th birthday, makes the first entry in her new diary in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
 * August – The French Resistance unit to which expatriate Irish writer Samuel Beckett belongs is betrayed. He has to flee from occupied Paris on foot to Roussillon, Vaucluse in south-eastern France, where he continues work on his novel Watt.
 * August 9 – The New York Times launches the national version of its influential New York Times Best Seller list.
 * August 28 – Polish writer Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, as head of the underground organization Front for the Rebirth of Poland, publishes in Warsaw her Protest! leaflet against the mass murder of Jews in German-occupied Poland.
 * Autumn – Vasily Grossman attends the Battle of Stalingrad as a reporter for the Soviet Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda. The experience later governs his novels Stalingrad («Сталингра́д», original Russian publication 1952) and Life and Fate («Жизнь и судьба», completed 1959).
 * October – The English poet Keith Douglas takes part in the Second Battle of El Alamein, against orders.
 * November 19 – The Polish Jewish writer and artist Bruno Schulz is shot dead by a Gestapo officer, while walking through the "Aryan quarter" of his home town, Drohobych.

Fiction

 * Samuel Hopkins Adams – The Harvey Girls
 * Martha Albrand – No Surrender
 * Nelson Algren – Never Come Morning
 * Charlotte Armstrong – Lay On, Mac Duff!
 * Nigel Balchin – Darkness Falls from the Air
 * John Brophy – Immortal Sergeant
 * John Bude – Death Knows No Calendar
 * Albert Camus – The Stranger (L'Étranger)
 * John Dickson Carr
 * The Emperor's Snuff-Box
 * The Gilded Man (as by Carter Dickson)
 * Camilo José Cela – The Family of Pascual Duarte (La Familia de Pascual Duarte)
 * Raymond Chandler – The High Window
 * Peter Cheyney
 * Dark Duet
 * Never a Dull Moment
 * Sorry You've Been Troubled
 * Agatha Christie
 * The Body in the Library
 * Five Little Pigs
 * The Moving Finger
 * J.J. Connington – No Past Is Dead
 * James Gould Cozzens – The Just and the Unjust
 * John Creasey – The Toff Goes to Market
 * Freeman Wills Crofts – Fear Comes to Chalfont
 * Lloyd C. Douglas – The Robe
 * Daphne du Maurier – Frenchman's Creek
 * Rachel Field – And Now Tomorrow
 * Anthony Gilbert – Something Nasty in the Woodshed
 * Natalia Ginzburg (as Alessandra Tornimparte) – La strada che va in città (The Road to the city)
 * James Gunn – Deadlier Than the Male
 * Robert A. Heinlein – Beyond This Horizon
 * Robert Hichens – A New Way of Life
 * Robert Hillyer – My Heart for Hostage
 * Anne Hocking – One Shall Be Taken
 * Michael Innes – The Daffodil Affair
 * Kalki Krishnamurthy
 * Magudapathi
 * Parthiban Kanavu (பார்த்திபன் கனவு, Parthiban's Dream)
 * Maura Laverty – Never No More
 * C. S. Lewis – The Screwtape Letters (Christian apologetics)
 * E. C. R. Lorac
 * Rope's End, Rogue's End
 * The Sixteenth Stair
 * Mary McCarthy – The Company She Keeps
 * Sándor Márai – Embers (A gyertyák csonkig égnek)
 * Gladys Mitchell – Laurels are Poison
 * David Leslie Murray – Enter Three Witches
 * J. B. Priestley – Blackout in Gretley
 * Ellery Queen – Calamity Town
 * Raymond Queneau – Pierrot mon ami
 * Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings – Cross Creek
 * Clayton Rawson – No Coffin for the Corpse
 * Anna Seghers – The Seventh Cross (Das siebte Kreuz)
 * Nevil Shute – Pied Piper
 * Georges Simenon – Young Cardinaud
 * Curt Siodmak – Donovan's Brain
 * Clark Ashton Smith – Out of Space and Time
 * Eleanor Smith
 * Caravan
 * The Man in Grey
 * John Steinbeck – The Moon is Down
 * Rex Stout – Black Orchids
 * Cecil Street
 * The Fourth Bomb
 * Night Exercise
 * This Undesirable Residence
 * Antal Szerb (as A. H. Redcliff) – Oliver VII (VII. Olivér)
 * Tomita Tsuneo (富田常雄) – Sanshiro Sugata (姿三四郎)
 * Vercors – Le Silence de la mer
 * Hugh Walpole (died 1941) – The Killer and the Slain
 * Evelyn Waugh – Put Out More Flags
 * Franz Werfel – The Song of Bernadette
 * Ethel Lina White – Midnight House
 * Cornell Woolrich – Black Alibi
 * Wu Cheng'en (吳承恩), translated by Arthur Waley – Monkey (15th century)
 * Xiao Hong (蕭紅) – Hulanhe zhuan (呼兰河传, Tales of the Hulan River)
 * Francis Brett Young – A Man About the House

Children and young people

 * BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford) – The Little Grey Men
 * Enid Blyton
 * Five on a Treasure Island
 * Mary Mouse and the Doll's House
 * Eleanor Estes – The Middle Moffat
 * Janette Sebring Lowrey – The Poky Little Puppy
 * Diana Ross – The Little Red Engine Gets a Name (first in the Little Red Engine series of nine books)
 * David Severn – Rick Afire
 * Solomon Simon – Di Helden fun Khelm (The Heroes of Chełm)
 * Hildegarde Swift – The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge
 * Elizabeth Gray Vining (as Elizabeth Janet Gray) – Adam of the Road
 * Ursula Moray Williams – Gobbolino, the Witch's Cat

Drama

 * Jean Anouilh – Antigone
 * Jacinto Benavente – La honradez de la cerradura
 * Paul Vincent Carroll – The Strings Are False
 * Constance Cox – The Romance of David Garrick
 * Henry de Montherlant – La Reine morte
 * Maurice Druon – Mégarée
 * Patrick Hastings – Escort
 * Arthur Miller – Thunder from the Hills (radio play)
 * Kaj Munk – Niels Ebbesen
 * Eugene O'Neill – A Touch of the Poet (written)
 * Terence Rattigan – Flare Path
 * John Van Druten – The Damask Cheek

Poetry

 * Morwenna Donnelly – Beauty and Ashes
 * T. S. Eliot – Little Gidding
 * Patrick Kavanagh – The Great Hunger
 * Saint-John Perse – Exil

Non-fiction

 * Elizabeth Bowen – Bowen's Court
 * Albert Camus – The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe)
 * Salvador Dalí – The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí
 * Edith Hamilton – Mythology
 * Richard Hillary – The Last Enemy
 * Aldous Huxley – The Art of Seeing
 * Beryl Markham – West with the Night
 * C. S. Lewis – A Preface to Paradise Lost
 * Elliot Paul – The Last Time I Saw Paris
 * Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. – Picketing Hell
 * Radu D. Rosetti – Odinioară
 * Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Flight to Arras
 * Rebecca West – Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

Births

 * January 7 – Terenci Moix, Spanish writer (died 2003)
 * January 7 – Božin Pavlovski, Macedonian-Australian author
 * January 9 – Enrique Estrázulas, Uruguayan writer, poet, essayist, playwright, journalist and diplomat (died 2016)
 * January 19 – Paul-Eerik Rummo, Estonian poet, playwright and politician
 * January 31 – Derek Jarman, English film director, writer and diarist (died 1994)
 * February 1 – Terry Jones, Welsh comedic actor and writer (died 2020)
 * February – David Williamson, Australian playwright
 * March 2 – John Irving, American novelist and screenwriter
 * March 28 – Daniel Dennett, American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist
 * April 1 – Samuel R. Delany, American novelist, essayist and critic
 * April 4 – Kitty Kelley, American biographer and journalist
 * April 20 – Arto Paasilinna, Finnish novelist and journalist (died 2018)
 * April 27 – Ruth Glick, American cookery author and novelist
 * May 6 – Ariel Dorfman, Argentine/Chilean novelist, playwright and essayist
 * May 11 – Rachel Billington, English author
 * June 25 – Michel Tremblay, French Canadian novelist and playwright
 * July 2 – Mukhtar Shakhanov, Kazakh writer and lawmaker
 * August 2 – Isabel Allende, Chilean novelist
 * August 7 – Garrison Keillor, American humorous writer and broadcaster
 * August 9 – David Steinberg, Canadian comedian, actor, writer, director, and author
 * August 22 – Uğur Mumcu, Turkish journalist and writer (died 1993)
 * September 1 – António Lobo Antunes, Portuguese novelist and physician
 * September 14 – Bernard MacLaverty, Irish writer
 * September 21, Luis Mateo Díez, Spanish writer
 * October 16 – Joseph Bruchac, Native American author
 * October 20 – Bob Graham, Australian children's writer and illustrator
 * October 23
 * Michael Crichton, American writer and director (died 2008)
 * Douglas Dunn, Scottish poet and scholar
 * October 24 – Frank Delaney, Irish-born novelist, journalist and broadcaster (died 2017)
 * November 7 – Helen Garner, Australian writer
 * November 8 – Fernando Sorrentino, Argentine writer
 * November 19 – Sharon Olds, American poet
 * November 24 – Craig Thomas, Welsh novelist (died 2011)
 * December 6 – Peter Handke, Austrian novelist and playwright
 * unknown date – Ghada al-Samman, Syrian writer

Deaths

 * January 8 – Chaudhry Afzal Haq, Indian writer and humanitarian (born 1891)
 * January 14 – Porfirio Barba-Jacob, Colombian writer (born 1883)
 * February 2 – Daniil Kharms, Russian poet, writer and dramatist (died in prison, born 1905)
 * February 18 – Henri Stahl, Romanian historian, short story writer, memoirist and stenographer (born 1877)
 * March 16 – Rachel Field, American author and poet (born 1894)
 * March 26 – Carolyn Wells, American novelist and poet (born 1862)
 * March 28 – Miguel Hernández, Spanish poet (died in prison, born 1910)
 * April 24 – Lucy Maud Montgomery, Canadian novelist and children's writer (born 1874)
 * May 11 – Sakutarō Hagiwara (萩原 朔太郎), Japanese poet (born 1886)
 * May 20 – Nini Roll Anker, Norwegian novelist and playwright (born 1873)
 * May 26 – Libero Bovio, Neapolitan dialect poet (born 1883)
 * May 29 – Akiko Yosano (与謝野 晶子, Yosano Shiyo), Japanese poet and feminist (born 1878)
 * May – Jakob van Hoddis (Hans Davidsohn) German poet (died in extermination camp, born 1887)
 * June 30 – Léon Daudet, French writer and journalist (born 1867)
 * July 1 – Peadar Toner Mac Fhionnlaoich, Irish writer in Irish (born 1857)
 * August 17 – Irène Némirovsky, Russian-born French novelist (died in concentration camp, born 1903)
 * August 27 – Lev Nussimbaum, Russian and Azerbaijani novelist (gangrene; born 1905)
 * September 26 – Oskar Kraus, Czech philosopher (born 1872)
 * October 14 – Cosmo Hamilton, English dramatist and novelist (born 1870)
 * October 20 – Friedrich Münzer, German classicist (born 1868)
 * October 29 – Màrius Torres, Catalan Spanish poet (born 1910)
 * November 4
 * Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson, American novelist and textbook and children's writer (born 1863)
 * Clementine Krämer, German poet and short-story writer (died in concentration camp, born 1873)
 * December 23 – Konstantin Balmont, Russian Symbolist poet and translator (born 1867)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Denys Watkins-Pitchford, The Little Grey Men
 * Frost Medal: Edgar Lee Masters
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Arthur Waley, Translation of Monkey by Wu Cheng'en
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, Henry Ponsonby: Queen Victoria's Private Secretary
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Walter D. Edmonds, The Matchlock Gun
 * Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: not awarded
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: William Rose Benet, The Dust Which Is God
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Ellen Glasgow, In This Our Life

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: 1942 in literature


text:
1943 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1943.

Events

 * January 4 – Thomas Mann completes Joseph der Ernährer (Joseph the Provider) in California, the last of his Joseph and His Brothers (Joseph und seine Brüder) tetralogy, on which he began in December 1926.
 * February 4 – The première of Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan (Der gute Mensch von Sezuan) takes place at the Schauspielhaus Zürich in Switzerland, with Leonard Steckel directing.
 * March – The self-illustrated children's novella The Little Prince by the exiled French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the all-time best-selling book originated in French, is published in New York.
 * May – A strongly antisemitic production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is staged at the Burgtheater in Vienna, with Werner Krauss as Shylock.
 * June 30 – Having transferred from the Merchant Marine to the United States Navy and served eight days of active duty Jack Kerouac is honorably discharged on psychiatric grounds. In New York City, he, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg become friends.
 * September
 * George Orwell resigns from the BBC to become literary editor of the left-wing London paper Tribune.
 * Retreating German forces set fire to the library of the Royal Society of Naples, and on September 30 to the Montesano Villa containing the most valuable State Archives of Naples.
 * September 9 – The première of Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo (Leben des Galilei, 1939) is held at the Schauspielhaus Zürich in Switzerland, with Leonard Steckel directing and playing the title role.
 * October – Tristan Bernard is arrested, but subsequently released from the Drancy internment camp in France after public protests.
 * October 14 – The contents of Biblioteca della Comunità Israelitica in Rome are looted by Nazi German troops.
 * December
 * Philip Larkin, with a degree from the University of Oxford, takes his first post as a librarian in Wellington, Shropshire.
 * Philip Van Doren Stern sends copies of his story "The Greatest Gift" to friends as a Christmas card.
 * December 22 – On the death of children's writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter at Near Sawrey, over 4,000 acre of land in the English Lake District are bequeathed to the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty (the Heelis Bequest).
 * unknown dates
 * Isaac Bashevis Singer becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen.
 * Publication begins of a new comprehensive edition of Friedrich Hölderlin's complete works (the Sämtliche Werke, or Große Stuttgarter Ausgabe).
 * The Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States places Richard Wright under surveillance.

Fiction

 * Lars Ahlin – Tåbb with the Manifesto (Tåbb med manifestet)
 * Sabahattin Ali – Madonna in a Fur Coat (Kürk Mantolu Madonna)
 * Charlotte Armstrong – The Case of the Weird Sisters
 * Sholem Asch – The Apostle
 * Marcel Aymé – The Passer through Walls (Le Passe-muraille)
 * Nigel Balchin – The Small Back Room
 * Vaikom Muhammad Basheer – Premalekhanam
 * Vicki Baum – Hotel Berlin
 * Henry Bellamann – Victoria Grandolet
 * Georges Bernanos – Monsieur Ouine
 * Marjorie Bowen – Airing in a Closed Carriage
 * Ivan Bunin – Dark Avenues («Тёмные аллеи», Tyomnyye allei, short stories, first edition)
 * Gerald Butler – Their Rainbow Had Black Edges
 * Victor Canning – Green Battlefield
 * John Dickson Carr (as Carter Dickson) – She Died A Lady
 * Raymond Chandler – The Lady in the Lake
 * Peter Cheyney – You Can Always Duck
 * Colette – Le Képi
 * Freeman Wills Crofts – The Affair at Little Wokeham
 * Simone de Beauvoir – She Came to Stay (L'Invitée)
 * Pierre Drieu La Rochelle – The Man on Horseback (L'Homme à cheval)
 * Howard Fast – Citizen Tom Paine
 * Carlo Emilio Gadda – Gli anni
 * Jean Genet (anonymously) – Our Lady of the Flowers (Notre Dame des Fleurs)
 * Anthony Gilbert – The Mouse Who Wouldn't Play Ball
 * Robert Graves – Claudius the God
 * Elizabeth Janet Gray – Adam of the Road
 * Graham Greene – The Ministry of Fear
 * Hermann Hesse – The Glass Bead Game (Das Glasperlenspiel)
 * Anne Hocking – Nile Green
 * Dorothy B. Hughes – The Blackbirder
 * Michael Innes – The Weight of the Evidence
 * Aleksander Kamiński (as Juliusz Górecki) – Kamienie na szaniec (Stones for the Rampart)
 * C. S. Lewis – Perelandra
 * Clarice Lispector – Near to the Wild Heart (Perto do coração selvagem)
 * Richard Llewellyn – None but the Lonely Heart
 * E. C. R. Lorac – Death Came Softly
 * H. P. Lovecraft – Beyond the Wall of Sleep (collection)
 * Compton Mackenzie – Keep the Home Guard Turning
 * Naguib Mahfouz – Rhadopis of Nubia
 * Ngaio Marsh – Colour Scheme
 * Bruce Marshall – Yellow Tapers for Paris
 * Gladys Mitchell
 * Sunset Over Soho
 * The Worsted Viper
 * C. L. Moore – Earth's Last Citadel
 * Robert Musil (died 1942) – The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, publication concludes, uncompleted)
 * Kate O'Brien – The Last of Summer
 * E. Phillips Oppenheim – Mr. Mirakel
 * Roger Peyrefitte – Les Amitiés particulières (Special Friendships)
 * J. B. Priestley – Daylight on Saturday
 * Ellery Queen – There Was an Old Woman
 * Ayn Rand – The Fountainhead
 * Mary Renault – The Friendly Young Ladies
 * Betty Smith – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
 * Margit Söderholm – Sunshine Follows Rain (Driver dagg faller regn)
 * Cecil Street
 * Dead on the Track
 * Men Die at Cyprus Lodge
 * Antal Szerb – The Queen's Necklace (A királyné nyaklánca)
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor
 * Going, Going, Gone
 * Proof of the Pudding
 * File for Record (as Alice Tilton)
 * Kylie Tennant – Ride on Stranger
 * Denton Welch – Maiden Voyage
 * H. G. Wells – Crux Ansata
 * Dorothy Whipple – They Were Sisters
 * Chancellor Williams – The Raven
 * Virginia Woolf (suicide 1941) – A Haunted House and Other Short Stories

Children and young people

 * Enid Blyton
 * The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage
 * The Magic Faraway Tree
 * Virginia Lee Burton – The Little House
 * Eleanor Estes – Rufus M.
 * Roald Dahl – The Gremlins
 * Esther Forbes – Johnny Tremaine
 * C. S. Forester – The Ship
 * Mary Norton – The Magic Bed Knob; or, How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons
 * Arthur Ransome – The Picts and the Martyrs
 * Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince)
 * Malcolm Saville – Mystery at Witch End (first in the Lone Pine series of twenty books)
 * Laura Ingalls Wilder – These Happy Golden Years

Drama

 * Bertolt Brecht
 * The Good Person of Szechwan (Der gute Mensch von Sezuan)
 * Life of Galileo (Leben des Galilei)
 * Albert Camus – The Misunderstanding (Le Malentendu)
 * Moss Hart – Winged Victory
 * Frank Harvey – Brighton Rock
 * Fritz Hochwälder – Das Heilige Experiment (The Holy Experiment, The Strong Are Lonely)
 * Esther McCracken – Living Room
 * Elena Miramova – Dark Eyes
 * M. J. Molloy – Old Road
 * Armijn Pane – Kami, Perempuan (We, the Women)
 * J. B. Priestley – They Came to a City
 * Terence Rattigan - While the Sun Shines
 * Nelson Rodrigues – Vestido de Noiva (The Wedding Dress)
 * Jean-Paul Sartre – The Flies (Les Mouches)
 * Yang Jiang – As You Desire (Chenxin ruyi)

Non-fiction

 * Georges Bataille – L'Expérience intérieure
 * James Burnham – The Managerial Revolution
 * Julius Evola – The Doctrine of Awakening (La dottrina del risveglio)
 * Katharine Butler Hathaway – The Little Locksmith
 * Louis Hjelmslev – Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (Omkring sprogteoriens grundlæggelse)
 * C. S. Lewis – The Abolition of Man
 * John Neal – Observations on American Art: Selections from the Writings of John Neal (1793-1876) (edited by Harold Edward Dickson)
 * Reinhold Niebuhr – The Nature and Destiny of Man
 * Martin Noth – Uberlieferungsgeschischtliche Studien: Die sammelnden und bearbeitenden Geschichtswerke im Alten Testament
 * N. Porsenna – Visul Profetic (On the Prophetic Dream)
 * Jean-Paul Sartre – Being and Nothingness (L'Être et le néant: Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique)
 * J. A. Schumpeter – Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
 * I. C. Vissarion – Energie mecanică în lumea în care ne găsim (Mechanic Energy for This World We Now Inhabit)
 * Edna Walling – Gardens in Australia
 * William Foote Whyte – Street Corner Society
 * Stefan Zweig (suicide 1942) – The World of Yesterday (first English edition)

Births

 * January 4
 * Doris Kearns Goodwin, American political biographer
 * Hwang Sok-yong, Korean novelist
 * Jesús Torbado, Spanish novelist (died 2018)
 * Priit Vesilind, Estonian-American author and photographer
 * January 6 – Francis M. Nevins, American mystery writer, biographer, film historian and law professor
 * January 8 – Charles Murray, American political science writer (The Bell Curve)
 * January 11 – Jim Hightower, American radio host and author
 * January 13 – Lorna Sage, English scholar and biographer (died 2001)
 * February 8 – Pirzada Qasim, Pakistani poet and academic
 * February 15 – Elke Heidenreich, German journalist and writer
 * February 16 – Graham Lord, Rhodesian-born English literary biographer and novelist (died 2015)
 * February 18 – Graeme Garden, Scottish-born writer, comedian and actor
 * February 21 – Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Russian fiction writer
 * February 22 – Terry Eagleton, English scholar and publicist
 * February 27 – Sheila Rowbotham, English feminist author
 * March 26 – Bob Woodward, American journalist
 * April 6 – Max Clifford, English publicist
 * April 17 – Gwynne Dyer, Canadian journalist
 * April 22 – Louise Glück, American poet, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (died 2023)
 * April 30 – Paul Jennings, English-born Australian children's author
 * May 5 – Michael Palin, English comedy writer and television broadcaster
 * May 7 – Peter Carey, Australian novelist
 * May 8 – Pat Barker, English novelist
 * May 20 – Justin Cartwright, South African-born novelist (died 2018)
 * June 7
 * Nikki Giovanni, American author, poet and educator
 * Michael Pennington, English writer, actor and director
 * June 10 – Simon Jenkins, English journalist
 * June 15 – Xaviera Hollander, Dutch East Indies-born writer
 * July 14 – Christopher Priest, English novelist
 * July 16 – Reinaldo Arenas, Cuban writer (died 1990)
 * August 2 – Rose Tremain (Rosemary Thomson), English novelist
 * August 30 – Robert Crumb, American cartoonist
 * September 12 – Michael Ondaatje, Ceylonese-born Canadian novelist and poet
 * September 24 – Antonio Tabucchi, Italian writer, academic and translator (died 2012)
 * October 5 – Michael Morpurgo, English children's writer
 * October 8 - R. L. Stine, American novelist
 * October 9 – L. E. Modesitt, Jr., American fantasy and science fiction writer
 * October 17 – Laila al-Othman, Kuwaiti writer
 * November 5 – Sam Shepard, American playwright, writer and actor
 * November 6 – Berlie Doherty (Beryl Hollingworth), English children's and young-adults' writer
 * November 7 – Stephen Greenblatt, American Shakespeare scholar
 * November 12 – Wallace Shawn, American actor and dramatist
 * December 9 – Joanna Trollope, English novelist
 * unknown dates
 * Christine Evans, Welsh poet in English
 * Vicki Feaver, English poet and academic
 * Hadrawi (Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame), Somali poet
 * Ebrahim Hussein, Tanzanian playwright in Swahili

Deaths

 * January 3 – F. M. Cornford, English classicist and poet (born 1874)
 * January 9 – R. G. Collingwood, English philosopher and historian (born 1889)
 * January 13 – Else Ury, German children's fiction writer (killed in Auschwitz concentration camp; born 1877)
 * February 1 – Lola Szereszewska, Polish-Jewish poet and journalist (born 1895)
 * March 10 – Laurence Binyon, English poet and scholar (born 1869)
 * March 13 – Stephen Vincent Benét, American author (born 1898)
 * April 7 – Jovan Dučić, Herzegovina Serb poet and diplomat (born 1871)
 * April 29 – Sidney Keyes, English poet (killed in action; born 1922)
 * April 30 – Beatrice Webb, English sociologist, economist and social reformer (born 1858)
 * May 27 – Arthur Mee, English encyclopedist and writer (born 1875)
 * May 29 – Guido Mazzoni, Italian poet (born 1859)
 * June 17 – Annie S. Swan ('David Lyall'), Scottish novelist and journalist (born 1859)
 * June 28 – Frida Uhl, Austrian writer and translator (born 1872)
 * July 18 – Miyake Kaho, Japanese novelist, essayist and poet (born 1868)
 * c. August 8 – Haig Acterian (Mihail), Romanian poet, dramatist and journalist (missing in action; born 1904)
 * August 12 – Kurt Eggers, Nazi German writer, poet, songwriter and playwright (killed in action; born 1905)
 * August 22 – Virgilio Dávila, Puerto Rican poet and politician (born 1869)
 * August 24 – Simone Weil, French philosopher (born 1909)
 * October 3 – Ida Lee, Australian historian and poet (born 1865)
 * October 7 – Radclyffe Hall, English novelist and poet (born 1880)
 * November 19 – Georg Hermann, German fiction writer (killed in Auschwitz concentration camp; born 1871)
 * November 27 – Louis Esson, Australian poet and playwright (born 1878)
 * November 30 – Etty Hillesum, Dutch correspondent and diarist (killed in Auschwitz concentration camp; born 1914)
 * December 2
 * Drummond Allison, English poet (killed in action; born 1921)
 * Nordahl Grieg, Norwegian poet and author (born 1902)
 * December 22 – Beatrix Potter, English children's writer and illustrator (born 1866)

Awards

 * Frost Medal: Edna St. Vincent Millay
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Mary Lavin, Tales from Bective Bridge
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: G. G. Coulton, Fourscore Years
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Janet Gray, Adam of the Road
 * Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded
 * Prix Goncourt: Marius Grout, Passage de l'Homme
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Frost: A Witness Tree
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Upton Sinclair – Dragon's Teeth

title: 1943 in literature


text:
1944 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1944.

Events

 * February 6 – The première of Jean Anouilh's tragedy Antigone takes place at the Théâtre de l'Atelier in Nazi-occupied Paris.
 * March 19 – The première of Pablo Picasso's play Desire Caught by the Tail (Le Désir attrapé par la queue) is a private reading in Paris by the author that includes Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Valentine Hugo and Raymond Queneau directed by Albert Camus.
 * May – The première of Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist drama Huis Clos is held at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in Nazi-occupied Paris.
 * June 1 and 5 – The first and (modified) second lines respectively of Paul Verlaine's 1866 poem Chanson d'automne ("Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne / Bercent mon cœur d'une langueur monotone") are broadcast by the Allies over BBC Radio Londres among coded messages to the French Resistance to prepare for the D-Day landings (second broadcast at 22:15 local time).
 * June
 * D-Day landings and Invasion of Normandy: The English soldier-poet Keith Douglas is killed; William Golding commands Landing Craft Tank (Rocket) 460 at Gold Beach; Vernon Scannell (as John Bain) experiences the incident that gives rise to the poem "Walking Wounded" (1965) and is wounded; J. D. Salinger, having landed on Utah Beach, works on an early version of The Catcher in the Rye during lulls in the fighting; Dennis B. Wilson writes the poem that appears as Elegy of a Common Soldier in 2012; Kingsley Amis and John Wyndham serve as signallers; Alexander Baron's experiences of the invasion form the basis of his novel From the City, From the Plough (1948).
 * The final edition of the Breton nationalist newspaper L'Heure Bretonne is published.
 * August – With the Liberation of Paris, Jean Genet's novel Notre Dame des Fleurs (1943) can begin to circulate openly.
 * September 14 – Laurence Olivier takes the title rôle in the production of Richard III that opens at The Old Vic in London.
 * October
 * The contents of the Załuski Library are destroyed during the planned destruction of Warsaw by its Nazi occupiers.
 * The teenage Günter Grass, having volunteered for active service, is drafted into the Waffen-SS.
 * October 2
 * After a few months' internment at Drancy and Birkenau, Benjamin Fondane is one of 700 prisoners put to death in the gas chamber – the last such killings before Birkenau is evacuated. Upon selection, Fondane is heard joking about the irony of his misfortune.
 * Dylan Thomas is to be best man at the wedding of a friend and fellow Welsh poet, Vernon Watkins, in London, but fails to turn up.
 * November 9 – Collaborationist Georges Suarez becomes the first journalist executed during the épuration légale in France.
 * November 22 – The release in England of Laurence Olivier's Henry V makes it the first work of Shakespeare to be filmed in colour.
 * November 23 – Arthur Miller's play The Man Who Had All the Luck (written in 1940) has its Broadway première at the Forrest Theatre in New York City, but runs for only four performances.
 * December 26 – Tennessee Williams' semi-autobiographical "memory play" The Glass Menagerie, adapted from a short story, is premièred at the Civic Theatre in Chicago.
 * unknown date – The English actor-manager Geoffrey Kendal arrives in India for the first time with the Entertainments National Service Association, touring Patrick Hamilton's drama Gaslight; from 1947 Kendal's touring repertory company "Shakespeareana" will perform Shakespeare in towns and villages across India for some decades.

Fiction

 * Samuel Hopkins Adams – Canal Town
 * Jorge Amado – Terras do Sem Fim (The Violent Land)
 * Esther Averill – The Cat Club
 * Vaikom Muhammad Basheer – Balyakalasakhi
 * H. E. Bates – Fair Stood the Wind for France
 * Saul Bellow – Dangling Man
 * Jorge Luis Borges – Ficciones
 * Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon – No Nightingales
 * Christianna Brand – Green for Danger
 * John Brophy – Target Island
 * John Bude – Death in White Pyjamas
 * John Dickson Carr
 * Till Death Do Us Part
 * He Wouldn't Kill Patience (as Carter Dickson)
 * Joyce Cary – The Horse's Mouth
 * Louis-Ferdinand Céline – Guignol's Band
 * Peter Cheyney
 * The Dark Street
 * They Never Say When
 * Agatha Christie
 * Death Comes as the End
 * Towards Zero
 * Absent in the Spring (as Mary Westmacott)
 * Colette – Gigi
 * J.J. Connington – Jack-in-the-Box
 * Edmund Crispin – The Case of the Gilded Fly
 * A. J. Cronin – The Green Years
 * Esther Forbes – Johnny Tremain
 * Anthony Gilbert – The Scarlet Button
 * Walter Greenwood – Something in My Heart
 * L. P. Hartley – The Shrimp and the Anemone
 * John Hersey – A Bell for Adano
 * Georgette Heyer – Friday's Child
 * Dorothy B. Hughes – The Delicate Ape
 * Margaret Irwin – Young Bess
 * Charles R. Jackson – The Lost Weekend
 * Pamela Hansford Johnson – The Trojan Brothers
 * Kalki Krishnamurthy – Sivagamiyin Sapatham (சிவகாமியின் சபதம், The Vow of Sivagami)
 * Pär Lagerkvist – Dvärgen
 * Margaret Landon – Anna and the King of Siam (basis for 1951 musical The King and I)
 * Anne Morrow Lindbergh – The Steep Ascent
 * E. C. R. Lorac
 * Checkmate to Murder
 * Fell Murder
 * H. P. Lovecraft – Marginalia
 * Curzio Malaparte – Kaputt
 * W. Somerset Maugham – The Razor's Edge
 * Oscar Micheaux – The Case of Mrs. Wingate
 * Gladys Mitchell – My Father Sleeps
 * Alberto Moravia – Agostino (Two Adolescents)
 * Gunnar Myrdal – An American Dilemma
 * Anaïs Nin – Under a Glass Bell
 * Ernest Raymond – For Them That Trespass
 * Rafael Sabatini – King in Prussia
 * Anna Seghers
 * Transit
 * "Der Ausflug der toten Mädchen" (The Excursion of the Dead Girls, short story)
 * Anya Seton – Dragonwyck
 * Clark Ashton Smith – Lost Worlds
 * Eleanor Smith – Magic Lantern
 * Howard Spring – Hard Facts
 * Philip Van Doren Stern – The Greatest Gift (first trade publication)
 * Rex Stout – Not Quite Dead Enough
 * Cecil Street – Death Invades the Meeting
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor (as Alice Tilton) – Dead Ernest
 * Donald Wandrei – The Eye and the Finger
 * Henry S. Whitehead – Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales
 * Martin Wickremasinghe – Gamperaliya
 * Vaughan Wilkins – Being Met Together
 * Kathleen Winsor – Forever Amber

Children and young people

 * Esther Averill – The Cat Club
 * Enid Blyton – The Island of Adventure
 * Robert Bright – Georgie
 * Alice Dalgliesh – The Silver Pencil
 * Eleanor Estes – The Hundred Dresses
 * Pipaluk Freuchen – Ivik, den faderløse (translated as Eskimo Boy)
 * Eric Linklater – The Wind on the Moon
 * Feodor Rojankovsky – The Tall Book of Nursery Tales
 * Margery Sharp – Cluny Brown
 * Tasha Tudor – Mother Goose

Drama

 * Jean Anouilh – Antigone
 * Reginald Beckwith – A Soldier for Christmas
 * Ugo Betti – Corruzione al Palazzo di giustizia (Corruption in the Palace of Justice, written)
 * Bertolt Brecht – The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis), written
 * Mary Chase – Harvey
 * Daphne du Maurier – The Years Between
 * Balwant Gargi – Lohākuṭ (Blacksmith)
 * Philip King – See How They Run
 * Max Otto Koischwitz – Vision of Invasion (broadcast propaganda)
 * Esther McCracken – No Medals
 * Terence Rattigan - Love In Idleness (rewriting of Less Than Kind)
 * Lawrence Riley – Time to Kill
 * Jean-Paul Sartre – No Exit (Huis Clos)
 * John Van Druten – I Remember Mama
 * Franz Werfel – Jacobowsky and the Colonel (Jacobowsky und der Oberst)
 * Tennessee Williams – The Glass Menagerie

Poetry

 * James K. Baxter – Beyond the Palisade
 * Paul Éluard – Au Rendez-vous allemand (To the German Rendezvous)
 * Five Young American Poets, volume 3, including work by Eve Merriam, John Frederick Nims, Jean Garrigue, Tennessee Williams and Alejandro Carrión
 * Nicholas Moore – The Glass Tower
 * Francis Brett Young – The Island

Non-fiction

 * Charles William Beebe – Book of Naturalists
 * F. Brunea-Fox – Orașul Măcelului (City of Slaughter)
 * Aleister Crowley – The Book of Thoth
 * Friedrich Hayek – The Road to Serfdom
 * Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno – Dialectic of Enlightenment (Dialektik der Aufklärung)
 * Margaret Landon – Anna and the King of Siam
 * Gunnar Myrdal – An American Dilemma
 * Beverley Nichols – Verdict on India
 * Karl Polanyi – The Great Transformation
 * L. T. C. Rolt – Narrow Boat
 * Charles Stevenson – Ethics and Language
 * G. M. Trevelyan – English Social History: a survey of six centuries from Chaucer to Queen Victoria

Births

 * January 8 – Terry Brooks, American writer of fantasy fiction
 * January 17 – Jan Guillou, Swedish author
 * January 21 – Jack Abbott, American writer (suicide 2002)
 * February 7 – Witi Ihimaera, New Zealand Māori writer
 * February 9 – Alice Walker, American novelist and poet
 * February 11 – Joy Williams, American fiction writer
 * February 14
 * Carl Bernstein, American journalist
 * Alan Parker, English director and writer
 * February 16 – Richard Ford, American novelist
 * February 27
 * Ken Grimwood, American writer (died 2003)
 * Roger Scruton, English philosopher and writer (died 2020)
 * April 18 – Kathy Acker, American postmodernist experimental novelist and punk poet (died 1997)
 * May 13 – Armistead Maupin, American novelist
 * May 17 – Uldis Bērziņš, Latvian poet and translator
 * May 18 – W. G. Sebald, German novelist (died 2001)
 * June 5
 * John Fraser, Canadian journalist
 * Nigel Rees, English writer and broadcaster
 * June 9 - Jeanne DuPrau, American writer
 * July 21 – Buchi Emecheta, Nigerian-born novelist and children's writer (died 2017)
 * August 10 – Barbara Erskine, English novelist
 * August 18 – Paula Danziger, American young adult novelist (died 2004)
 * August 19 – Bodil Malmsten, Swedish writer (died 2016)
 * August 22 – Tom Leonard, Scottish dialect poet
 * August 30 – Molly Ivins, American journalist (died 2007)
 * September 19 – Ismet Özel, Turkish poet
 * September 24 – Eavan Boland, Irish poet (died 2020)
 * October 2 – Vernor Vinge, American science fiction novelist
 * October 5 – Tomás de Jesús Mangual, Puerto Rican journalist (died 2011)
 * November 7 – Peter Wilby, English journalist
 * November 24 – Eintou Pearl Springer, Trinidadian poet
 * November 28 – Rita Mae Brown, American writer and political activist
 * December 1 – Tahar Ben Jelloun, French Moroccan-born novelist
 * December 2 – Botho Strauß, German writer and dramatist
 * December 9 – Ki Longfellow, American novelist
 * December 15 – Elizabeth Arnold, English children's writer
 * December 17 – Jack L. Chalker, American science fiction novelist (died 2005)
 * December 21 – James Sallis, American crime novelist
 * unknown dates
 * Margaret Busby, Ghanaian-born British publisher
 * Shena Mackay, Scottish-born novelist
 * Patrick O'Connell, Canadian poet (died 2005)

Deaths

 * January 6 – Ida Tarbell, American journalist (born 1857)
 * January 7 – Napoleon Lapathiotis, Greek lawyer and poet (born 1888)
 * January 8 – Joseph Jastrow, Polish American psychologist (born 1863)
 * January 15– Armand Praviel, French poet, novelist, and journalist (born 1875)
 * January 31 – Jean Giraudoux, French dramatist (born 1882)
 * February – David Vogel, Hebrew poet (died in concentration camp, born 1891)
 * February 2 – Jane Agnes Stewart, American author, editor, and contributor to periodicals (born 1860)
 * February 9 – Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux, English-born poet, biographer and novelist (born 1857)
 * February 10 – Israel Joshua Singer, Yiddish novelist (born 1893)
 * February 12 – Olive Custance, Lady Alfred Douglas, English poet (born 1874)
 * February 23 – Augusta Peaux, Dutch poet (born 1859)
 * March 5
 * Max Jacob, French poet and critic (died in internment camp, born 1876)
 * Alun Lewis, Welsh war poet (accidental shooting, born 1915)
 * March 11 – Irvin S. Cobb, American writer (born 1876)
 * March 28 – Stephen Leacock, English-born Canadian humorous writer and economist (born 1869)
 * April 21 – Florence Trail, American educator and author (born 1854)
 * May 3 – Anica Černej, Slovenian poet (in concentration camp, born 1900)
 * May 12
 * Max Brand, American Western, pulp fiction and screenwriter (killed as war correspondent, born 1892)
 * Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch ("Q"), English author and critic (born 1863)
 * May 16 – George Ade, American journalist and dramatist (born 1866)
 * May 24 – Harold Bell Wright, American writer (born 1872)
 * June – Joseph Campbell, Northern Irish poet (born 1879)
 * June 9 – Keith Douglas, English war poet (killed in action, born 1920)
 * June 13 – Elizabeth Wharton Drexel, American socialite and author (born 1868)
 * June 16 – Marc Bloch, French historian (executed, born 1886)
 * July 31 – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French pilot and writer (lost in aircraft, born 1900)
 * August 13 – Ethel Lina White, Welsh-born English crime novelist (born 1876)
 * August 25 – Musa Cälil, Soviet Tatar poet and resistance fighter (executed, born 1905)
 * September 4 – Margery Williams, English-born American children's writer (born 1881)
 * September 13 – W. Heath Robinson, English cartoonist and illustrator (born 1872)
 * October 2 – Benjamin Fondane, Romanian-born French poet, playwright and critic (Nazi gas chamber, born 1898)
 * October 8 – Elsa Lindberg-Dovlette, Swedish writer of harem stories (born 1874)
 * October 19 – Karel Poláček, Czech writer, humorist and journalist (born 1892)
 * October 29 – Stephen Hudson (born Sydney Schiff), English novelist, translator and arts patron (born 1868)
 * November 15 – Edith Durham, English travel writer (born 1863)
 * December 2 – Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Italian poet, art theorist and Futurist writer (born 1876)
 * December 17 – Robert Nichols, English poet and dramatist (born 1893)
 * December 30 – Romain Rolland, French author and Nobel laureate (born 1866)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Eric Linklater, The Wind on the Moon
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Forrest Reid, Young Tom
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: C. V. Wedgwood, William the Silent
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain
 * Nobel Prize for literature: Johannes V. Jensen
 * Premio Nadal (first award): Carmen Laforet, Nada
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Stephen Vincent Benét, Western Star
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Martin Flavin, Journey in the Dark
 * Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry: E. E. Cummings

title: 1944 in literature


text:
1945 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1945.

Events

 * January – In Paris, journalist and poet Robert Brasillach is tried and found guilty of "intelligence with the (German) enemy" during World War II, sparking a major dispute in French society over collaboration and clemency.
 * c. January 1 – Jean-Paul Sartre refuses the Légion d'honneur.
 * January 27 – Primo Levi is among those liberated from the Auschwitz concentration camp complex.
 * February – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is sentenced to eight years in a labour camp for criticizing Joseph Stalin.
 * February 13–15 – The bombing of Dresden in World War II is seen by the German Jewish diarist Victor Klemperer, the novelist Kurt Vonnegut as an American prisoner of war, and Miles Tripp as a British bomb aimer. It will feature in Józef Mackiewicz's novel Sprawa pulkownika Miasojedowa (Colonel Miasoyedov's Case, 1962), Bohumil Hrabal's Ostře sledované vlaky (Closely Observed Trains, 1965) and Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969).
 * March 4 – Poet Pablo Neruda is elected a Chilean senator and officially joins the Communist Party of Chile four months later.
 * March 8 – Federico García Lorca's play The House of Bernarda Alba, completed just before his assassination in 1936, is first performed, in Buenos Aires.
 * March 31 – Tennessee Williams' semi-autobiographical "memory play" The Glass Menagerie (1944, adapted from a short story) opens on Broadway at the Playhouse Theatre (New York City), starring Laurette Taylor and winning the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.
 * About end March – Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs complete their mystery novel And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a fictionalization of manslaughter committed in 1944 by their friend Lucien Carr, but it will not appear fully until 2008.
 * May – The Estonian poet Heiti Talvik is deported to Siberia and never heard of again.
 * May 2
 * The expatriate American poet Ezra Pound is arrested by the Italian resistance movement and taken to its headquarters in Chiavari, but soon released as of no interest. On May 5, he turns himself in to the United States Army. He is held in a military detention camp outside Pisa, spending 25 days in an open cage before being given a tent. There he appears to suffer a nervous breakdown. While in the camp he drafts The Pisan Cantos.
 * French novelist Colette is the first woman admitted to the Académie Goncourt.
 * May 8 – The occupying powers in Allied-occupied Germany and Austria impose publishing curbs as part of denazification.
 * June – Ern Malley hoax: Australia's most celebrated literary hoax takes place when Angry Penguins is published with poems by the fictional Ern Malley. Poets James McAuley and Harold Stewart created the poems from lines of other published work and then sent them as the purported work of a recently deceased poet. The hoax is played on Max Harris, at this time a 22-year-old avant garde poet and critic who had started the modernist magazine Angry Penguins. Harris and his circle of literary friends agreed that a hitherto completely unknown modernist poet of great merit had come to light in suburban Australia. The Autumn 1944 edition of the magazine with the poems comes out in mid-1945 due to wartime printing delays with cover illustration by Sidney Nolan. An Australian newspaper uncovers the hoax within weeks. McAuley and Stewart loved early Modernist poets but despise later modernism and especially the well-funded Angry Penguins and are jealous of Harris's precocious success.
 * c. July – Theatre Workshop is formed in the north of England by Joan Littlewood, Ewan MacColl and other former members of Theatre Union as a touring company.
 * August 17 – The allegorical dystopian novella Animal Farm by George Orwell, a satire on Stalinism, is first published by Fredric Warburg in London.
 * September 11 – The Citizens Theatre opens in Glasgow under this name.
 * September – J. B. Priestley's drama An Inspector Calls is premièred in Russian translation in Leningrad.
 * October 29 – Vladimir Nabokov's 1940 application for U.S. citizenship is granted.
 * November 1 – The U.S. magazine Ebony appears.
 * November 21 – André Malraux is named Minister of Information by the new French President, Charles de Gaulle.
 * November 26 – The U.K. film Brief Encounter, adapted from Noël Coward's short play Still Life, is released.
 * November – Astrid Lindgren's children's book Pippi Långstrump, with illustrations by Ingrid Vang Nyman, is published in Sweden by Rabén & Sjögren, having won a competition run by the publisher for children's books in August. It introduces an anarchic child heroine. An English translation appears as Pippi Longstocking.
 * December – Nag Hammadi library, a collection of Gnostic texts, is discovered in Upper Egypt.
 * Canadian author Elizabeth Smart's novel in prose poetry By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept is published in London (U.K.); the writer's mother Louise leads a successful campaign with government officials to have the book banned in Canada, buying up as many copies as she can find of those that make their way into the country and having them burned.

Fiction

 * Ivo Andrić
 * The Bridge on the Drina (Na Drini Ćuprija)
 * Travnička hronika (Travnik Chronicle, Bosnian Chronicle, Bosnian Story, The Days of the Consuls)
 * Gospođica (The Young Lady, The Woman from Sarajevo)
 * Nigel Balchin – Mine Own Executioner
 * Charlotte Armstrong – The Innocent Flower
 * Banine – Caucasian days (Jours caucasiens)
 * Frans G. Bengtsson – The Long Ships (Röde Orm), part 2
 * Adolfo Bioy Casares – A Plan for Escape (Plan de evasión)
 * Robert Bloch – The Opener of the Way (anthology)
 * Arna Bontemps – Anyplace But Here
 * Victor Bridges – Trouble on the Thames
 * Hermann Broch – The Death of Virgil (Der Tod des Vergil)
 * Gwendolyn Brooks – A Street in Bronzeville
 * Gerald Butler – Mad with Much Heart
 * Taylor Caldwell – The Wide House
 * John Dickson Carr (as Carter Dickson) – The Curse of the Bronze Lamp
 * Winifred Carter – Princess Fitz
 * Vera Caspary – Bedelia
 * Peter Cheyney
 * I'll Say She Does
 * Night Club
 * Sinister Errand
 * Agatha Christie – Sparkling Cyanide
 * Thomas B. Costain – The Black Rose
 * Gertrude Crampton – Tootle
 * Edmund Crispin – Holy Disorders
 * Freeman Wills Crofts – Enemy Unseen
 * Sergiu Dan – Unde începe noaptea
 * Simone de Beauvoir – The Blood of Others (Le Sang des autres)
 * August Derleth
 * "In Re: Sherlock Holmes" – The Adventures of Solar Pons
 * Something Near
 * C. S. Forester – The Commodore (also Commodore Hornblower)
 * Varian Fry – Surrender on Demand
 * Anthony Gilbert – Don't Open the Door
 * Rumer Godden – A Fugue in Time
 * Julien Gracq – A Dark Stranger
 * Winston Graham – The Forgotten Story
 * F.L. Green – Odd Man Out
 * Henry Green – Loving
 * James Hilton – So Well Remembered
 * Chester Himes – If He Hollers Let Him Go
 * Anne Hocking – The Vultures Gather
 * Dorothy B. Hughes – Dread Journey
 * Leonhard Huizinga – Six Candles for Indonesia
 * Michael Innes – Appleby's End
 * Ruth Krauss – The Carrot Seed
 * Margery Lawrence – Number Seven, Queer Street
 * Robert Lawson – Rabbit Hill
 * J. Sheridan Le Fanu (d. 1873) – Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories
 * C. S. Lewis – That Hideous Strength
 * E. C. R. Lorac – Murder by Matchlight
 * H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth – The Lurker at the Threshold
 * Compton Mackenzie – The North Wind of Love, Book 2 (last of The Four Winds of Love hexalogy)
 * Hugh MacLennan – Two Solitudes
 * Ngaio Marsh – Died in the Wool
 * Gladys Mitchell – The Rising of the Moon
 * Nancy Mitford – The Pursuit of Love
 * R. K. Narayan – The English Teacher
 * George Orwell – Animal Farm
 * Gabrielle Roy – Bonheur d'occasion (The Tin Flute)
 * Jean-Paul Sartre – L'Âge de raison (The Age of Reason)
 * Elizabeth Smart – By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
 * John Steinbeck – Cannery Row
 * Noel Streatfeild – Saplings
 * Cecil Street – Bricklayer's Arms
 * Julian Symons – The Immaterial Murder Case
 * James Thurber – The Thurber Carnival (anthology)
 * Tarjei Vesaas – The House in the Dark
 * Elio Vittorini – Uomini e no (Men and not Men)
 * Mika Waltari – The Egyptian (Sinuhe egyptiläinen)
 * Evangeline Walton – Witch House
 * Evelyn Waugh – Brideshead Revisited
 * Charles Williams – All Hallows' Eve
 * Cornell Woolrich – Night Has a Thousand Eyes

Children and young people

 * Rev. W. Awdry – The Three Railway Engines (first in 42 Railway Series books by Awdry and his son Christopher Awdry)
 * Selina Chönz and Alois Carigiet – Uorsin (Schellen-Ursli. Ein Engadiner Bilderbuch, translated as A Bell for Ursli)
 * Marguerite Henry – Justin Morgan Had a Horse
 * Tove Jansson – The Moomins and the Great Flood (Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen, first in the Moomin series of 14 books)
 * Jim Kjelgaard – Big Red
 * Ruth Krauss – The Carrot Seed
 * Robert Lawson – Rabbit Hill
 * Lois Lenski – Strawberry Girl
 * Astrid Lindgren – Pippi Longstocking (Pippi Långstrump, first in the Pippi Longstocking series of three full-length and six picture books)
 * E. B. White – Stuart Little

Drama

 * Jacinto Benavente – La infanzona
 * Mary Chase – Harvey
 * Warren Chetham-Strode – Young Mrs. Barrington
 * Campbell Christie and Dorothy Christie – Grand National Night
 * Eduardo De Filippo – Napoli milionaria ("The Millions of Naples")
 * Norman Ginsbury – The First Gentleman
 * Jean Giraudoux (died 1944) – The Madwoman of Chaillot (La Folle de Chaillot)
 * Curt Goetz – The House in Montevideo (Das Haus in Montevideo)
 * Walter Greenwood – The Cure for Love
 * Arthur Laurents – Home of the Brave
 * John Perry – A Man About the House
 * Colin Morris – Desert Rats
 * J. B. Priestley – An Inspector Calls
 * Irwin Shaw – The Assassin
 * Edward Percy Smith – The Shop at Sly Corner
 * Lesley Storm – Great Day
 * Aimée Stuart – Lady from Edinburgh
 * Vernon Sylvaine – Madame Louise
 * Emlyn Williams – The Wind of Heaven

Poetry

 * Idris Davies – Tonypandy and other poems

Non-fiction

 * Ion Biberi – Lumea de mâine (World of Tomorrow)
 * Vannevar Bush – As We May Think
 * R. G. Collingwood – The Idea of Nature
 * Françoise Frenkel – Rien où poser sa tête (No Place to Lay One's Head)
 * Carlo Emilio Gadda – Eros e Priapo
 * Jacquetta Hawkes – Early Britain
 * Aldous Huxley – The Perennial Philosophy
 * Arthur Koestler – The Yogi and the Commissar and Other Essays
 * Carlo Levi – Christ Stopped at Eboli (Cristo si è fermato a Eboli)
 * C. S. Lewis – The Great Divorce (serialization concludes and book publication)
 * Betty MacDonald – The Egg and I
 * Karl Popper – The Open Society and Its Enemies
 * Bertrand Russell – A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day
 * Ernesto Sabato – One and the Universe (Uno y el Universo)
 * Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. – The Age of Jackson
 * Henry DeWolf Smyth – Smyth Report (A General Account of the Development of Methods of Using Atomic Energy for Military Purposes)
 * Richard Wright – Black Boy

Births

 * January 3 – David Starkey, English historian
 * January 20 – Robert Olen Butler, American novelist and short story writer
 * January 30 – Michael Dorris, American writer (died 1997)
 * February 12 – David Small, American author and illustrator
 * February 13 - William Sleator, American science-fiction writer (died 2011)
 * February 23 – Robert Gray, Australian poet and critic
 * February 25 – Shiva Naipaul, Trinidad-born novelist (died 1985)
 * March 19 – Jim Turner, American literary editor (died 1999)
 * April 2 – Anne Waldman, American poet
 * April 16 – Sebastian Barker, English poet and journalist (died 2014)
 * April 27 – August Wilson, American playwright (died 2005)
 * April 30 – Annie Dillard, American poet and prose writer
 * June 11 – Robert Munsch, American-Canadian author and academic
 * June 13 – Whitley Strieber, American horror novelist
 * June 21 – Adam Zagajewski, Polish poet, novelist and essayist
 * July 5 – Michael Blake, American novelist and screenwriter (died 2015)
 * July 9 – Dean Koontz, American novelist
 * July 12 – Remy Sylado (Yapi Panda Abdiel Tambayong), Indonesian writer
 * July 21 – Wendy Cope, English poet
 * July 25 - Joseph Delaney, English author (died 2022)
 * July 30 – Patrick Modiano, French novelist, Nobel laureate
 * September 1 – Mustafa Balel, Turkish author and translator
 * October 15 – John Murrell, American-born dramatist
 * November 5 – Richard Holmes, English literary biographer
 * November 24 – Nuruddin Farah, Somali novelist
 * December 17 – Jacqueline Wilson, English children's writer
 * December 21 – Raymond E. Feist, American fantasy writer
 * unknown dates
 * Esther Croft, French Canadian novelist and short-story writer
 * Rabai al-Madhoun, Palestinian writer
 * Mari Strachan, Welsh novelist
 * Mohamed Zafzaf, Moroccan novelist (died 2001)

Deaths

 * January 13 – Margaret Deland, American novelist (born 1857)
 * January 15
 * Ursula Bethell, English-born New Zealand poet (born 1874)
 * Kate Simpson Hayes, Canadian playwright and legislative librarian (born 1856)

 * January 22 – Else Lasker-Schüler, German-born Jewish poet (born 1869)
 * January 27 – Antal Szerb, Hungarian writer (in concentration camp, born 1901)
 * February 6 – Robert Brasillach, French writer (executed, born 1909)
 * February 23 – Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Russian writer (born 1883)
 * c. March 12 – Anne Frank, German-born Dutch child diarist (probable typhus in concentration camp, born 1929)
 * March 15 – Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, French novelist (suicide, born 1893)
 * March 20 – Lord Alfred Douglas, English poet (born 1870)
 * March 31 – Maurice Donnay, French dramatist (born 1859)
 * April – Josef Čapek, Czech artist and writer (in concentration camp, born 1887)
 * April 9 – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian (hanged in concentration camp, born 1906)
 * May 15 – Charles Williams, English author (born 1886)
 * May 29 – Mihail Sebastian, Romanian Jewish playwright, essayist, and novelist (road accident, born 1907)
 * June 5 – Ilie Bărbulescu, Romanian linguist and journalist (born 1873)
 * June 8 – Robert Desnos, French poet (in concentration camp, born 1900)
 * June 11 – Lurana W. Sheldon, American author and newspaper editor (born 1862)
 * July 13 – Alla Nazimova, Crimean-born American scriptwriter and actress (born 1879)
 * July 25 – Charles Gilman Norris, American novelist (born 1881)
 * August 18 – E. R. Eddison, English fantasy writer (born 1882)
 * August 20 – Alexander Roda Roda, Austro-Croatian-born novelist (born 1872)
 * August 26 – Franz Werfel, Bohemian-born writer (born 1890)
 * September 9 – Zinaida Gippius, émigré Russian writer (born 1869)
 * September 21 – Ioan C. Filitti, Romanian historian, political theorist and essayist (born 1879)
 * September 22 – Thomas Burke, English novelist and story writer (born 1886)
 * October 8 – Felix Salten, Austrian-born children's writer (born 1869)
 * November 21 – Robert Benchley, American humorist (born 1889)
 * December 4 – Arthur Morrison, English writer (born 1863)
 * December 14 - Maurice Baring, English poet and writer (born 1874)
 * December 28 – Theodore Dreiser, American author (born 1871)

Awards

 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: L. A. G. Strong, Travellers
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: D. S. MacColl, Philip Wilson Steer
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Robert Lawson, Rabbit Hill
 * Nobel Prize for literature: Gabriela Mistral
 * Premio Nadal: José Félix Tapia, La luna ha entrado en casa
 * Prix Goncourt: Jean-Louis Bory, Mon village à l'heure allemande
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Mary Chase, Harvey
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Karl Shapiro, V-Letter and Other Poems
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: John Hersey, A Bell for Adano

title: 1945 in literature


text:
1946 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1946.

Events

 * January – The Penguin Classics imprint is launched in the U.K. under the editorship of E. V. Rieu, whose translation of the Odyssey is the first of the books published, and will be the country's best-selling book over the next decade.
 * January 5 – The Estonian writer Jaan Kross is arrested and imprisoned by the occupying Soviet authorities.
 * February – The poet Ezra Pound, brought back to the United States on treason charges, is found unfit to face trial due to insanity and sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C., where he remains for 12 years.
 * May 20 – The English poet W. H. Auden becomes a United States citizen.
 * May 22 – George Orwell leaves London to spend much of the next 18 months on the Scottish island of Jura, working on his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (known at an earlier stage of composition as The Last Man in Europe). This year his Animal Farm becomes book of the year in the United States.
 * August 18 – The Assamese poet Amulya Barua is killed aged 24 in communal violence while studying at the University of Calcutta. His only collection of poems, Achina (The Stranger), is published posthumously.
 * October 1 – The English première of J. B. Priestley's drama An Inspector Calls (set in 1912) shows at the New Theatre, London. It stars Ralph Richardson.
 * October 9 – The Broadway première of Eugene O'Neill's drama The Iceman Cometh, set in 1912, is held at the Martin Beck Theatre, New York City.
 * October 10 – Die Chinesische Mauer by Swiss writer Max Frisch, receives its stage première.
 * November 7 – Walker Percy, a U.S. writer of philosophical novels, marries Mary Bernice Townsend.
 * November 8 – The English novelist and diarist Christopher Isherwood becomes a U.S. citizen.
 * December 18
 * Brendan Behan is released from internment in the Republic of Ireland under an amnesty.
 * Damon Runyon's ashes are scattered over New York City from an airplane piloted by Eddie Rickenbacker.
 * December 23 – Giovannino Guareschi publishes the first story about the priest Don Camillo in his magazine Candido.
 * December 26 – David Lean's film of Great Expectations is released in England.
 * unknown dates
 * The publisher August Aimé Balkema produces his first book in South Africa, Vyjtig Gedigte by the poet C. Louis Leipoldt.
 * The American writer and theologian Frederick Buechner resumes his B.A. degree course at Princeton University after war service.

Fiction

 * Jorge Amado – Seara Vermelha
 * Francis Ambrière – The Long Holiday (Les Grandes Vacances)
 * Charlotte Armstrong – The Unsuspected
 * Miguel Ángel Asturias – El Señor Presidente
 * René Barjavel – The Tragic Innocents
 * Vicki Baum – Mortgage on Life
 * Simone de Beauvoir – All Men are Mortal (Tous les hommes sont mortels)
 * Algernon Blackwood – The Doll and One Other
 * Jorge Luis Borges – Deutsches Requiem
 * Tadeusz Borowski – This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (or Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber, originally Pożegnanie z Marią (Farewell to Maria), short stories)
 * Phyllis Bottome – The Lifeline
 * Christianna Brand – Suddenly at His Residence
 * John Bude – Trouble A-Brewing
 * Ivan Bunin – Dark Avenues («Тёмные аллеи», Tyomnyye allei, short stories, complete edition)
 * John Dickson Carr
 * He Who Whispers
 * My Late Wives (as by Carter Dickson)
 * Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo – Los que aman, odian (Those Who Love, Hate)
 * Vera Caspary – Stranger Than Truth
 * Peter Cheyney
 * G-Man at the Yard
 * Uneasy Terms
 * Agatha Christie – The Hollow
 * A. E. Coppard – Fearful Pleasures
 * Edmund Crispin – The Moving Toyshop
 * Kenneth Fearing – The Big Clock
 * Adonias Filho – Os servos da morte
 * Errol Flynn – Showdown
 * C. S. Forester - Lord Hornblower
 * Pat Frank – Mr. Adam
 * Carlo Emilio Gadda – That Awful Mess on Via Merulana (Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana, serial publication)
 * Stella Gibbons – Westwood
 * Anthony Gilbert – The Spinster's Secret
 * William Lindsay Gresham – Nightmare Alley
 * Ruth Guimarães – Água Funda (Deep Water, in Paraíba Valley dialect of Brazilian Portuguese)
 * João Guimarães Rosa – Sagarana
 * Thomas Heggen – Mister Roberts
 * Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas, editors – Adventures in Time and Space
 * George Wylie Henderson – Jule
 * William Hope Hodgson – The House on the Borderland and Other Novels
 * Robert E. Howard – Skull-Face and Others
 * Michael Innes
 * From London Far
 * What Happened at Hazelwood
 * Christopher Isherwood – The Berlin Stories
 * Cläre Jung – Aus der Tiefe rufe ich
 * Nikos Kazantzakis – Zorba the Greek (Βίος και Πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά, Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas)
 * Arthur Koestler – Thieves in the Night
 * Philip Larkin – Jill
 * Marghanita Laski (as Sarah Russell) – To Bed with Grand Music
 * Violette Leduc – L'Asphyxie (translated as In the Prison of Her Skin)
 * Lois Lenski – Strawberry Girl
 * Eric Linklater – Private Angelo
 * Frank Belknap Long – The Hounds of Tindalos
 * E. C. R. Lorac
 * Fire in the Thatch
 * The Theft of the Iron Dogs
 * W. Somerset Maugham – Then and Now
 * Carson McCullers – Member of the Wedding
 * Oscar Micheaux – The Story of Dorothy Stanfield
 * A. A. Milne – Chloe Marr
 * Gladys Mitchell – Here Comes a Chopper
 * Mervyn Peake – Titus Groan (first of the Gormenghast series)
 * Ann Petry – The Street
 * Isaac Rosenfeld – Passage from Home
 * Anya Seton – The Turquoise
 * Margit Söderholm – All the World's Delights
 * Rex Stout – The Silent Speaker
 * Cecil Street
 * Death in Harley Street
 * The Lake House
 * Situation Vacant
 * Tugelbay Sydykbekov – Bizdin zamandyn kišileri (People of our time)
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor
 * The Asey Mayo Trio
 * Punch with Care
 * Ruthven Todd
 * Bodies in a Bookshop
 * The Death Cap
 * Death for Madame
 * Swing Low, Swing Death
 * Gore Vidal – Williwaw
 * A. E. van Vogt – Slan
 * Boris Vian
 * I Spit on Your Graves (J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, as Vernon Sullivan)
 * Vercoquin and the Plankton (Vercoquin et le plancton)
 * H. Russell Wakefield – The Clock Strikes Twelve
 * Mervyn Wall – The Unfortunate Fursey
 * Robert Penn Warren – All the King's Men
 * Eudora Welty – Delta Wedding
 * Henry S. Whitehead – West India Lights
 * Kiichirō Yamate – Momotarō-zamurai (桃太郎侍)
 * Ivan Yefremov – The Land of Foam («На краю Ойкумены», Na krayu Oikumeny, At the edge of infinity)
 * Seishi Yokomizo – The Honjin Murders (本陣殺人事件, Honjin satsujin jiken)

Children and young people

 * Rev. W. Awdry – Thomas the Tank Engine (second in The Railway Series of 42 books by him and his son Christopher Awdry)
 * Carolyn Sherwin Bailey – Miss Hickory
 * Nancy Barnes – Wonderful Year
 * Enid Blyton – First Term at Malory Towers (first in the Malory Towers series of 6 books)
 * Godfried Bomans
 * De Avonturen van Pa Pinkelman (The Adventures of Pa Pinkelman)
 * Sprookjes (The Wily Wizard and the Wicked Witch and other weird stories)
 * Jan Brzechwa – Academy of Mr. Kleks (Akademia Pana Kleksa, 1946)
 * Gertrude Crampton – Scuffy the Tugboat
 * Ernest Elmore – Snuffly Snorty Dog
 * William Glynne-Jones – Brecon Adventure
 * Elizabeth Goudge – The Little White Horse
 * Graham Greene – The Little Train
 * Racey Helps – Footprints in the Snow
 * Tove Jansson – Comet in Moominland (Kometjakten / Mumintrollet på kometjakt / Kometen kommer)
 * Madeleine L'Engle – Ilsa
 * Astrid Lindgren – Pippi Goes on Board
 * Sheila Stuart – Alison's Highland Holiday (first in the Alison series of 15 books)
 * Charles Tazewell – The Littlest Angel
 * Ivy Wallace – Pookie (first in the Pookie series of ten books)
 * T. H. White – Mistress Masham's Repose

Drama

 * Arthur Adamov – L'Aveu (The Confession)
 * Clifford Bax – Golden Eagle
 * S. N. Behrman – Jane
 * Ugo Betti – Delitto all'isola delle capre (Crime on Goat Island)
 * Jean Cocteau – L'Aigle à deux têtes
 * Constance Cox – Vanity Fair
 * Eduardo De Filippo
 * Filumena Marturano
 * Questi fantasmi (All these ghosts)
 * Eynon Evans – Wishing Well
 * Christopher Fry – A Phoenix Too Frequent (verse)
 * Kenneth Horne – Fools Rush In
 * Frederick Lonsdale – But for the Grace of God
 * Ewan MacColl – Uranium 235
 * Donagh MacDonagh – Happy as Larry
 * Robert McLeish – The Gorbals Story
 * Louis MacNeice – The Dark Tower (radio play)
 * Bernard Miles – Let Tyrants Tremble!
 * Ronald Millar – Frieda
 * Henry de Montherlant – Malatesta
 * Eugene O'Neill – The Iceman Cometh
 * J. B. Priestley – Ever Since Paradise
 * Terence Rattigan – The Winslow Boy
 * Nelson Rodrigues – Álbum de família
 * Carl Zuckmayer – Des Teufels General (The Devil's General)

Poetry

 * Elizabeth Bishop – North & South
 * Josef Čapek – Básně z koncentračního tabora (Poems from a Concentration Camp; published posthumously)
 * William Carlos Williams – Paterson, Book One

Non-fiction

 * Erich Auerbach – Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur)
 * Marc Bloch (died 1944) – L'Étrange défaite: Témoignage écrit en 1940 (Strange Defeat: a Statement of Evidence Written in 1940)
 * R. G. Collingwood (died 1943) – The Idea of History (collected lectures)
 * John Stewart Collis – While Following the Plough
 * Viktor Frankl – ...trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager (...nevertheless Say 'Yes' to Life: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp, translated as Man's Search for Meaning)
 * Jean Genet – Miracle de la rose
 * John Hersey – Hiroshima
 * Jens Müller – Tre kom tilbake (Three Came Back)
 * George Orwell – Critical Essays
 * Jean-Paul Sartre – Existentialism and Humanism (L'Existentialisme est un humanisme)
 * Benjamin Spock – The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
 * Władysław Szpilman (as told to Jerzy Waldorff) – Śmierć miasta ("Death of a City", later translated as The Pianist)
 * Paramahansa Yogananda – Autobiography of a Yogi

Births

 * January 4 – Lisa Appignanesi, Polish-born author and academic
 * January 21 – Gretel Ehrlich, American travel writer, poet and essayist
 * February 7 – Brian Patten, English poet
 * February 25 – Franz Xaver Kroetz, German dramatist
 * March 1 – Jim Crace, English author
 * March 5 – Mem Fox (Merrion Frances Partridge), Australian children's writer
 * April 2 – Sue Townsend, English comic novelist and playwright (died 2014)
 * April 29 – Humphrey Carpenter, English biographer, children's fiction writer and radio broadcaster (died 2005)
 * May 8 – Ruth Padel, English poet and author
 * May 11 – Valerie Grove, English journalist and author
 * May 12 – L. Neil Smith, American author and activist
 * June 28 – John Birtwhistle, English poet and librettist
 * July 22 – Ryoki Inoue, born José Carlos Ryoki de Alpoim Inoue, prolific Brazilian novelist
 * July 26 – Joel Mokyr, Israeli economic historian
 * July 28 – Fahmida Riaz, Pakistani writer
 * August 1 – Paul Torday, English novelist (died 2013)
 * August 2 – James Howe, American journalist and author of juvenile fiction
 * August 29 – Leona Gom, Canadian poet and novelist
 * September 12 – Neil Lyndon, English journalist and author of No More Sex War: The Failures of Feminism
 * September 26 – Andrea Dworkin, American writer and activist (died 2005)
 * October 1 – Tim O'Brien, American novelist
 * October 4 - Susan Sarandon American actress
 * October 19 - Philip Pullman, English author
 * October 20 – Elfriede Jelinek, Austrian novelist and Nobel laureate
 * October 28 – Sharon Thesen, Canadian poet
 * November 7 – Diane Francis, Canadian journalist and author
 * November 18 – Alan Dean Foster, American science fiction author
 * November 25 – Marc Brown, author and creator of Arthur
 * December 2 – Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, Egyptian novelist
 * December 4 – Maria Antònia Oliver Cabrer, Majorca-born Spanish Catalan fiction writer
 * December 11 – Ellen Meloy, American nature writer (died 2004)

Uncertain date
 * Sarah Harrison, English novelist and children's writer

Deaths

 * January 6 – Dion Fortune, British occultist, Christian Qabalist, ceremonial magician and novelist (born 1890)
 * February 11 – John Langalibalele Dube, South African Zulu writer (born 1871)
 * March 19 – Catherine Carswell, Scottish novelist and biographer (born 1879)
 * March 20 – Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson), Australian novelist (born 1870)
 * April 1 – Edward Sheldon, American dramatist (born 1886)
 * April 11 – Dem. Theodorescu, Romanian novelist and journalist (born 1888)
 * May 19 – Booth Tarkington, American novelist and dramatist (born 1869)
 * May 20 – Jane Findlater, Scottish novelist (born 1866)
 * May 25 – Ernest Rhys, English writer and book series editor of Welsh extraction (born 1859)
 * Summer – Ștefan Foriș, Hungarian and Romanian journalist and communist activist (murdered, born 1892)
 * June 6 – Gerhart Hauptmann, German dramatist, novelist and poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (born 1862)
 * July 8 – Orrick Glenday Johns, American poet and playwright (born 1887)
 * July 22 – Edward Sperling, Russian-born American humorist (killed by bomb, born 1889)
 * July 27 – Gertrude Stein, American novelist, poet and dramatist (born 1874)
 * July 30 – Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov, Russian poet and revolutionary (born 1854)
 * August 13 – H. G. Wells, English novelist (born 1866)
 * August 18 – Marion Angus, Scottish poet (born 1865)
 * August 31 – Harley Granville-Barker, English actor, dramatist and critic (born 1877)
 * September 9 – Violet Jacob, Scottish historical novelist and poet (born 1863)
 * September 21 – Lydia J. Newcomb Comings, American author, educator, lecturer (born 1850)
 * September 26 – William Strunk, Jr., American professor of English (born 1869)
 * November 5 – Thomas Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard de Walden, English author and patron of the arts(born 1880)
 * November 14 – May Sinclair, English novelist (born 1863)
 * December 10 – Damon Runyon, American short-story writer (born 1880)
 * December 17 – Constance Garnett, English translator (born 1861)
 * December 23 – Ellen Marriage, English translator (born 1865)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Oliver Onions, Poor Man's Tapestry
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Richard Aldington, Wellington
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Lois Lenski, Strawberry Girl
 * Nobel Prize for literature: Hermann Hesse
 * Premio Nadal: José María Gironella, Un hombre
 * Prix Goncourt: Jean-Jacques Gautier, Histoire d'un fait divers
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Russel Crouse, Howard Lindsay, State of the Union
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: no award given
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: no award given

title: 1946 in literature