Overview of the events of 1954 in literature
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
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
References
- ^ a b Zachary Leader (2002). On Modern British Fiction. Oxford University Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-19-924933-6.
- ^ Glass, Hildrun (2010). "Câteva note despre activitatea lui Avram L. Zissu". In Rotman, Liviu; Crăciun, Camelia; Vasiliu, Ana-Gabriela (eds.). Noi perspective în istoriografia evreilor din România. Bucharest: Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania & Editura Hasefer. p. 166.
- ^ Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia (in Spanish), vol. CXCVIII, Madrid, 2001, pp. 352–546, OCLC 1460620
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link). - ^ Wagner, Vit (2007-04-16). "Tolkien proves he's still the king". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on 2011-03-09. Retrieved 2014-06-04.
- ^ No. 41 in Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century. Savigneau, Josyane (1999-10-15). "Écrivains et choix sentimentaux". Le Monde. Paris.
- ^ Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie A.; Johnson, Barbara E.; McGowan, John; Williams, Jeffrey J. (2001). "William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley". In Leitch, Vincent B. (ed.). The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. pp. 1371–1374.
- ^ Stanley Kunitz (1955). Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature. Supplement. H. W. Wilson. p. 353.
- ^ Peter Hunt (2 September 2003). International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. Routledge. p. 367. ISBN 978-1-134-87993-9.
- ^ Susan Weiner; Professor Susan Weiner, MS Rdn Cde Cdn (9 May 2001). Enfants Terribles: Youth and Femininity in the Mass Media in France, 1945-1968. JHU Press. p. 215. ISBN 978-0-8018-6539-8.