1946 in literature explained
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,[1] and will be the country's best-selling book over the next decade.[2]
- 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.[3]
- 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.[4]
- 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.[5]
- 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
- 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
New books
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
- Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo – Los que aman, odian (Those Who Love, Hate)
- Vera Caspary – Stranger Than Truth
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Tugelbay Sydykbekov – Bizdin zamandyn kišileri (People of our time)
- Phoebe Atwood Taylor
- Gore Vidal – Williwaw
- A. E. van Vogt – Slan
- Boris Vian
- 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»,, At the edge of infinity)
- Seishi Yokomizo – The Honjin Murders (本陣殺人事件, Honjin satsujin jiken)
Children and young people
Drama
Poetry
Non-fiction
Births
- January 4 – Lisa Appignanesi, Polish-born author and academic
- January 19 – Julian Barnes, English writer
- 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[7]
- 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
Deaths
- January 6 – Dion Fortune, British occultist, Christian Qabalist, ceremonial magician and novelist (born 1890)[8]
- February 11 – John Langalibalele Dube, South African Zulu writer (born 1871)[9]
- 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)[10]
- May 20 – Jane Findlater, Scottish novelist (born 1866)
- May 25 – Ernest Rhys, English writer and book series editor of Welsh extraction (born 1859)[11]
- 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)[12]
- 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)[13]
- July 30 – Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov, Russian poet and revolutionary (born 1854)
- August 13 – H. G. Wells, English novelist (born 1866)[14]
- 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)[15]
- November 14 – May Sinclair, English novelist (born 1863)[16]
- December 10 – Damon Runyon, American short-story writer (born 1880)[17]
- December 17 – Constance Garnett, English translator (born 1861)
- December 23 – Ellen Marriage, English translator (born 1865)
Awards
Hermann Hesse
José María Gironella, Un hombre
Jean-Jacques Gautier, Histoire d'un fait divers
Russel Crouse, Howard Lindsay, State of the Union
no award given
no award given
Notes and References
- Web site: Penguin Classics in translation . Penguin Archive Project . . 2009-08-17 . 2011-08-21.
- News: John . Sutherland . John Sutherland (author) . Pick up a Penguin? . . London . 24 January 2005 . 5.
- Web site: May 20, 1946: W. H. Auden becomes a U.S. citizen . This Day In History . . 2013-09-03.
- News: Samantha . Ellis . JB Priestley's An Inspector Calls, October 1946 . . London . 7 May 2003 . 2011-07-18.
- Book: A Companion to the Works of Max Frisch. Max Berwald. Camden House. 2013. 11.
- Web site: "August Aime Balkema", South African History Online; extracted from Human, K. (1999) "August Aime Balkema", They Shaped our Century: The Most Influential South Africans of the Twentieth Century, Human & Rousseau, pp. 442–445. . 2013-10-23 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150724211017/http://v1.sahistory.org.za/pages//people/bios/balkema_aa.html . 2015-07-24 . dead .
- News: From Trump to Ranieri: Is this the era of the older man?. The Telegraph. 10 May 2016. Lyndon. Neil.
- Book: Knight, Gareth . Dion Fortune and the Inner Light . 2000 . Thoth Publications . Loughborough . 978-1-870450-45-4 . 293.
- Book: Lorenzo S. Togni. The Struggle for Human Rights: An International and South African Perspective. 1994. Juta. 978-0-7021-3072-4. 183.
- Book: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Literature Lover's Companion: The Essential Reference to the World's Greatest Writers--past and Present, Popular and Classical. 2001. Prentice Hall Press. 978-0-7352-0229-0. 607.
- Book: Terry Seymour. A Printing History of Everyman's Library 1906-1982. 2011. 978-1-4678-7014-6. 263.
- Book: Who's who in the Theatre. 1947. Pitman. 1878.
- Book: Maureen R. Liston. Gertrude Stein: an annotated critical bibliography. 1979. Kent State University Press. 978-0-87338-221-2. 39.
- Book: H. G. Wells. 1989. Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Victoriennes et Edouardiennes de l'Univ. Paul Valéry. 978-0-333-27416-3. 119.
- Book: Charles Kidd. Christine Shaw. Debrett's Peerage & Baronetage 2008. 24 June 2008. Debrett's. 978-1-870520-80-5. 344.
- Book: Theophilus Ernest Martin Boll. Miss May Sinclair: Novelist: A Biographical and Critical Introduction. 1973. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. 978-0-8386-1156-2. 155.
- Book: ((United States Congress. House Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare, and Related Agencies Appropriations)). Departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare for 1962: Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee. 1961. U.S. Government Printing Office. 764.
