1954 in literature explained
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1954.
Events
- January – Kingsley Amis's first novel, the comic campus novel Lucky Jim, is published by Victor Gollancz Ltd in London.[1]
- January 7 – The Georgetown–IBM experiment is the first public demonstration of a machine translation system, held in New York at the IBM head office.
- January 25 – Dylan Thomas's radio play Under Milk Wood is first broadcast in the U.K. on the BBC Third Programme, two months after its author's death, with Richard Burton as "First Voice".
- February – The London Magazine is revived as a literary magazine, with John Lehmann as editor.
- March 31 – A. L. Zissu is sentenced in Bucharest to life imprisonment for "conspiring against the social order". This has been a focal point in the anti-Zionist clampdown in Communist Romania.[2]
- May 29 – The rediscovered and restored early 17th-century Corral de comedias de Almagro in Spain is re-inaugurated with a play by Calderon de la Barca.[3]
- June 16 – The first public celebration of "Bloomsday" takes place in Dublin: writers Flann O'Brien, Patrick Kavanagh and Anthony Cronin travel in a horse-drawn coach, stopping at numerous bars to retrace the steps of the characters from James Joyce's novel Ulysses.
- June 22 – In the Parker–Hulme murder case, the 15-year-old Julia Hulme, a future writer of English historical detective fiction as Anne Perry, takes part in the murder of her best friend's mother in Christchurch, New Zealand.
- July 29 – The first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's epic The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring – is published in London by George Allen & Unwin. The Two Towers follows on November 11 and publication will be completed in 1955. By 2007, 150 million copies will have been sold worldwide.[4]
- September 1 – Lawrence Quincy Mumford becomes the U.S.Librarian of Congress.
- September 17 – William Golding's first novel, the allegorical dystopian Lord of the Flies, is published by Faber and Faber in London.
- September 22 – Terence Rattigan's two linked plays Separate Tables is first performed, at St James's Theatre, London.
- October 30 – John Updike's first story for The New Yorker, "Friends from Philadelphia", is published. He graduates from Harvard with a thesis on George Herbert, and begins a year's Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship to the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at England's University of Oxford.
- November 19 – Brendan Behan's first play, The Quare Fellow is premièred at the Pike Theatre, Dublin.
- unknown date – Jack Kerouac reads Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible (1932, found in San Jose library), which will influence him greatly.
New books
Fiction
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
Children and young people
Drama
Poetry
Non-fiction
Births
- January 5 – László Krasznahorkai, Hungarian novelist and screenwriter
- January 15 – Jose Dalisay, Jr., Filipino writer
- January 29 – Oprah Winfrey, American actress and talk show host
- January – Cao Wenxuan (曹文軒), Chinese children's book writer and academic
- February 2 – Moniza Alvi, Pakistani-British poet and writer
- March 4 – Irina Ratushinskaya, Russian writer
- May 6 – Nicholas Crane, English writer, geographer and broadcaster
- March 16 – S. A. Griffin, American actor and poet
- March 20
- April 14 – Bruce Sterling, American science-fiction writer
- May 5 – Hamid Ismailov, Uzbek writer
- May 23 – Anja Snellman, Finnish writer
- June 6 – Cynthia Rylant, American children's author and poet
- June 28 – A. A. Gill, British journalist and critic (died 2016)
- July 17 – J. Michael Straczynski, American author
- July 26 - Michael Grant, American young-adult fiction writer
- August 1 – James Gleick, American non-fiction author
- August 15 – Mary Jo Salter, American poet and academic
- August 17 – Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Russian-Irish writer
- September 14 – Mikey Smith, Jamaican dub poet (killed 1983)
- November 8 – Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese-born English novelist and Nobel laureate
- November 10 – Marlene van Niekerk, South African novelist
- November 11 – Mary Gaitskill, American novelist, essayist and short story writer
- November 12 – Christopher Pike (Kevin Christopher McFadden), American children's author
- December 3 – Grace Andreacchi, American author
- December 7 – Mark Hofmann, American rare book dealer, forger and murderer
- December 20 – Sandra Cisneros, American writer
- unknown dates
Deaths
- January 1 – Duff Cooper (1st Viscount Norwich), English poet, biographer and politician (born 1890)
- January 21 – E. K. Chambers, English literary scholar (born 1866)
- January 25 – M. N. Roy, Indian philosopher and politician (born 1887)
- February 2 – Hella Wuolijoki, Estonian-born Finnish writer (born 1886)
- February 6 – Maxwell Bodenheim, American poet and novelist (born 1892; murdered)
- March 28 – Francis Brett Young, English novelist and poet (born 1884)
- April 8
- April 19 – Russell Davenport, American journalist and publisher (born 1899)
- May 3 – Earnest Hooton, American writer on anthropology (born 1887)
- June 18 – Constantin Beldie, Romanian literary promoter and memoirist (born 1887)
- July 13 – Grantland Rice, American sportswriter (born 1880)
- July 14 – Jacinto Benavente, Spanish dramatist and Nobel laureate (born 1866)
- August 2 – Julián Padrón, Venezuelan novelist, journalist and lawyer (born 1910)
- August 3 – Colette, French novelist (born 1873)
- September 19 – Miles Franklin, Australian novelist (born 1879)
- September 29 – W. J. Gruffydd, Welsh-language journal editor (born 1881)
- October 22 – Oswald de Andrade, Brazilian poet and polemicist (born 1890)
- November 17 – Ludovic Dauș, Romanian novelist and dramatist (born 1873)
- December 6 – Lucien Tesnière, French grammarian (born 1893)
- December 20 – James Hilton, English novelist (born 1900)[7]
Awards
Ernest Miller Hemingway
Francisco Alcántara, La muerte sienta bien a Villalobos
Simone de Beauvoir, Les mandarins[9]
John Patrick, The Teahouse of the August Moon
no award given
Theodore Roethke: TheWaking
Ralph Hodgson
Notes and References
- Book: Zachary Leader. On Modern British Fiction. 2002. Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-924933-6. 62.
- Book: Glass, Hildrun . Rotman . Liviu . Crăciun . Camelia . Vasiliu . Ana-Gabriela . Noi perspective în istoriografia evreilor din România . Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania & Editura Hasefer . Bucharest . 2010 . 166 . Câteva note despre activitatea lui Avram L. Zissu.
- .
- News: Vit . Wagner . Tolkien proves he's still the king . . 2007-04-16 . 2014-06-04 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110309035210/http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/203389 . 2011-03-09 . dead.
- No. 41 in Le Mondes 100 Books of the Century. News: Écrivains et choix sentimentaux . Josyane . Savigneau . Josyane Savigneau . . Paris . 1999-10-15.
- Book: Leitch, Vincent B. . Cain, William E. . Finke, Laurie A. . Johnson, Barbara E. . McGowan, John . Williams, Jeffrey J. . William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley . Leitch, Vincent B. . The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism . New York . W. W. Norton & Co . 2001 . 1371–1374.
- Book: Stanley Kunitz. Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature. Supplement. 1955. H. W. Wilson. 353.
- Book: Peter Hunt. International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. 2 September 2003. Routledge. 978-1-134-87993-9. 367.
- Book: Susan Weiner. Professor Susan Weiner, MS Rdn Cde Cdn. Enfants Terribles: Youth and Femininity in the Mass Media in France, 1945-1968. 9 May 2001. JHU Press. 978-0-8018-6539-8. 215.