1941 in literature explained
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.[1]
- 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;[2] meanwhile, his colleague Ion Vinea protects a Jewish friend, the novelist Sergiu Dan.[3] The destruction of Jewish life and property is documented from inside the Jewish community by the photojournalist F. Brunea-Fox,[4] 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.[5]
- Spring – The Antioch Review is founded as a literary magazine at Antioch College in Ohio.
- March
- 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.[8]
- May 5 – Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin meet while both reading English at St John's College, Oxford.[9]
- 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.[10] The original cast stars Kay Hammond as Elvira, Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati, Cecil Parker as Charles and Fay Compton as Ruth.[11] 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.[12]
-
- 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.[14]
- August 6 – C. S. Lewis begins a series of BBC Radio broadcasts that give rise to Mere Christianity.[15]
- 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.[16]
- 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.[17] 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).[18]
- 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.[19]
- 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.[20]
- 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.[21] 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.[22]
- unknown dates
New books
Fiction
Children and young people
Drama
Poetry
See main article: 1941 in poetry.
Non-fiction
Births
- January 19 – Colin Gunton, English theologian and academic (died 2003)
- January 24 – Gary K. Wolf, American humorist
- March 13
- 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)[32]
- 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)[33]
- June 27 – James P. Hogan, English-born American science fiction author (died 2010)
- July 9 – Cirilo Bautista, Filipino poet, author and critic (died 2018)[34]
- July 12 – John Lahr, American-born author and critic
- August 9
- 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
Deaths
- January 1 – József Konkolics, Hungarian Slovene writer (born 1859)
- January 4 – Henri Bergson, French philosopher (born 1859)
- January 6
- 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)[39]
- 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)[40]
- 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
- 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)[41]
- unknown date – Anne Elliot, English novelist (born 1856)
Awards
Robert Frost
not awarded
Robert E. Sherwood, There Shall Be No Night
Leonard Bacon: Sunderland Capture
No award given
Notes and References
- Web site: "The Bormann Decree" banning the use of the Fraktur typeface . About.com . 2013-10-23 . 2013-12-02 . https://web.archive.org/web/20131202221347/http://german.about.com/library/gallery/blfoto_fraktur06E.htm . dead .
- News: Râpeanu . Valeriu . Valeriu Râpeanu . 2003-04-12 . Când totul se prăbușea . Curierul Național . Bucharest .
- Corneliu . Coposu . Corneliu Coposu . Corneliu Coposu despre atitudinea lui Iuliu Maniu față de evrei . Caiete Silvane . 112 . 2014 . ro . bot: unknown . https://web.archive.org/web/20150705081408/http://www.caietesilvane.ro/indexcs.php?cmd=articol&idart=2342 . 2015-07-05.
- Book: Crohmălniceanu, Ovid S. . Ovid Crohmălniceanu . Evreii în mișcarea de avangardă românească . Editura Hasefer . Bucharest . 2001 . 130–132 . 973-8056-52-7.
- Book: Sandqvist, Tom . Dada East. The Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire . MIT Press . Cambridge, Massachusetts & London . 2006 . 379–380 . 0-262-19507-0.
- Book: David Burke. Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light. 1 March 2009. Catapult. 978-1-58243-958-7. 231.
- Book: Carney, Michael. Britain in Pictures: a history and bibliography. London. Werner Shaw. 1995. 9780907961093.
- Therese Giehse interview with W. Stuart McDowell, 1968, in "Acting Brecht: The Munich Years," The Brecht Sourcebook, Carol Martin and Henry Bial, editors (Routledge, 2000) p. 71.
- Book: Bradford, Richard . The Odd Couple: The curious friendship between Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin . London . Robson Press . 2012 . 9781849543750.
- Book: Day, Barry . Coward on Film: The Cinema of Noël Coward . 2005 . Scarecrow Press . 0-8108-5358-2 . 83.
- News: Piccadilly Theatre: Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward. . London . 1941-07-03 . 48968 . 2.
- Iurie . Colesnic . Iurie Colesnic . Alexandru Robot – poetul enigmelor (90 de ani de la naștere) . Magazin Bibliologic . 1 . 2006 . 73 . ro . bot: unknown . https://web.archive.org/web/20120227091056/http://87.248.191.115/bnrm/publicatii/files/1/2006_1_10.pdf . 2012-02-27.
- A. S. . Stykalin . V. T. . Sereda . 1941. György Lukács la Lubianka . Magazin Istoric . 12 . 2001 . 48–52.
- Book: Gheorghiu, Mihai-Dinu . Glăjar, Valentina . Teodorescu, Jeanine . Local History, Transnational Memory in the Romanian Holocaust . Palgrave Macmillan . New York . 2011 . 47–56 . The Iași Pogrom in Curzio Malaparte's Kaputt: Between History and Fiction . 978-1-349-29451-0.
- Web site: Publication History of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity . Mike W. . Perry . 1998-07-01 . C. S. Lewis Web . 2013-12-02.
- Book: Jon Tuska. In Manors and Alleys: A Casebook on the American Detective Film. 1988. Greenwood Press. 978-0-313-25007-1. 106.
- Book: Rotman, Liviu . Demnitate în vremuri de restriște . Editura Hasefer, Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania & Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania . Bucharest . 2008 . 174–177 . 978-973-630-189-6.
- Book: Boia, Lucian . Lucian Boia . Capcanele istoriei. Elita intelectuală românească între 1930 și 1950 . Humanitas . Bucharest . 2012 . 238–245 . 978-973-50-3533-4.
- Web site: Первые стихи о Бабьем Яре. Людмила Титова . https://archive.today/20130407021913/http://babiy-yar.livejournal.com/4786.html . dead . 2013-04-07 . Babiy-Yar.Livejournal.com . 2012-10-04 . 2013-02-23.
- News: Scott Fitzgerald's Last Novel . J. Donald . Adams . . 1941-11-09 . 2014-01-08.
- Vvedensky in Love . Epstien . Thomas . The New Arcadia Review . Boston College Honors Program . 2 . 2004 . 2006-12-08 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20101208230109/http://www.bc.edu/publications/newarcadia/archives/2/vvedensky/ . 2010-12-08.
- Web site: Penguin Archive Timeline . . 2013-10-30.
- Book: David H. Stam. International Dictionary of Library Histories. November 2001. Routledge. 978-1-136-77785-1. 700.
- Book: Some Yugoslav Novelists. 1954. Jugoslovenska knjiga. 15.
- Book: Ackroyd, Peter . Peter Ackroyd . Ezra Pound and His World . Thames and Hudson Ltd . London . 1980 . 0500130698 . Chronology . 118.
- Book: George Watson. Ian R. Willison. The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. 1972. CUP Archive. 557.
- Book: T. A. Shippey. Magill's Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: Lest darkness fall. 1996. Salem Press. 978-0-89356-909-9. 559.
- Book: Keating, H. R. F. . H. R. F. Keating . Whodunit? – a guide to crime, suspense and spy fiction . London . Windward. 1982 . 0-7112-0249-4.
- Book: Hopkins, Chris . English Fiction in the 1930s: Language, Genre, History . London . Continuum International Publishing Group . 2007 . 0826489389 . 138–57.
- Book: Cox, Michael . The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature . Oxford University Press . 2004 . 0-19-860634-6 . registration .
- Daughter Vivyan Leonora Eyles (1909–1984) was still in Italy with her husband Mario Praz.
- News: Nora Ephron obituary. Bergan. Ronald. June 27, 2012. The Guardian. March 22, 2017. en-GB. 0261-3077.
- Book: Edward Vilga. Acting Now: Conversations on Craft and Career. 1997. Rutgers University Press. 978-0-8135-2403-0. 100.
- News: De Vera. Ruel. National Artist for Literature Cirilo F. Bautista, 76, writes 30. 7 May 2018. Philippine Daily Inquirer. 6 May 2018.
- Book: Kerry Flattley. Chris Wallace-Crabbe. From the Republic of Conscience: An International Anthology of Poetry. 1993. White Pine Press. 978-1-877727-26-9. 177.
- Book: John Mole. Depending on the Light. 1993. Peterloo Poets. 978-1-871471-38-0.
- Book: Alba della Fazia Amoia. Professor Emeritus Alba Amoia. Bettina Liebowitz Knapp. Multicultural Writers Since 1945: An A-to-Z Guide. 2004. Greenwood Publishing Group. 978-0-313-30688-4. 410.
- Book: David Karashima. Who We're Reading When We're Reading Murakami. 1 September 2020. Soft Skull Press. 978-1-59376-590-3. 92.
- http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35883 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition (UK library card required): Arnim, Mary Annette [May] von
- Web site: Virginia Woolf . The British Library . 28 March 2019 . 11 August 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230811113204/https://www.bl.uk/people/virginia-woolf . dead .
- Web site: Émile Nelligan Canadian poet . Encyclopedia Britannica . 17 April 2019 . en.