1937 in literature
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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1937.
Events[]
- January 9 – The first issue of Look magazine goes on sale in the United States.
- January 19 – BBC Television broadcasts The Underground Murder Mystery by J. Bissell Thomas from London, the first play to be written for television.[1]
- February 6 – John Steinbeck's novella of the Great Depression, Of Mice and Men, appears in the United States.
- April – The Irish writers Elizabeth Bowen and Seán Ó Faoláin first meet, in London.
- May 14 – BBC Television broadcasts a 30-minute excerpt of Twelfth Night, the first known television broadcast of a Shakespeare piece. The cast includes Peggy Ashcroft and Greer Garson.
- May 21 – Penguin Books in the U.K. launches Pelican Books, a sixpenny paperback non-fiction imprint, with a two-volume edition of George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.[2]
- June
- The British science fiction magazine Tales of Wonder first appears.
- John Cowper Powys visits Sycharth, birthplace of Owain Glyndŵr, which inspires his 1940 novel Owen Glendower.[3]
- June 30 – The New England Quarterly prints poems by a colonial American pastor, Edward Taylor (died 1729), discovered by Thomas H. Johnson.[4]
- Summer – American-born writer Thomas Quinn Curtiss meets German-born novelist Klaus Mann in Europe and they start a relationship.
- July
- Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany is established around the Goethe Oak.
- Rex Ingamells and other poets initiate the Jindyworobak Movement in Australian literature, in the magazine Venture.[5]
- The American academic librarian Randolph Greenfield Adams writes a controversial Library Quarterly essay, "Librarians as Enemies of Books", complaining of librarians downgrading books and scholarship in favor of other tasks.[6][7]
- July 4 – The Lost Colony a historical drama by Paul Green, is first performed at an outdoor theater in the place where it is set: Roanoke Island, North Carolina.
- July 31 – Stephen Vincent Benét's post-apocalyptic short story "By the Waters of Babylon", inspired by April's Bombing of Guernica, is published in the U.S. The Saturday Evening Post as "The Place of the Gods".
- September 10 – The Soviet playwright Sergei Tretyakov commits suicide while under sentence of death at Butyrka prison in Moscow as part of the Great Purge.[8]
- September 21 – J. R. R. Tolkien's juvenile fantasy novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is published in England by George Allen & Unwin on the recommendation of young Rayner Unwin.
- September 29 – The French playwright Antonin Artaud is expelled from Ireland.
- October 6 – The fictional Mrs. Miniver appears in a column on domestic life by Jan Struther for The Times, London.[9]
- November 11 (Armistice Day)
- BBC Television broadcasts Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff, 1928, set on the Western Front (World War I) in 1918, as the first full-length television adaptation of a stage play. Reginald Tate plays the lead, having long performed it in the theater.[10][11]
- Caesar, Orson Welles's modern-dress bare-stage adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, premieres as the first production of the Mercury Theatre in New York City.
- unknown dates
- The National Library of Iran is inaugurated in Tehran.[12]
- The future novelist Angus Wilson becomes a book cataloguer at the British Museum Library in London.
New books[]
Fiction[]
- Felix Aderca – Orașele înecate (Sunken Cities)
- Eric Ambler – Uncommon Danger
- Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay – Chander Pahar (চাঁদের পাহড়, Mountain of the Moon)
- Vicki Baum – Love and Death in Bali (Liebe und Tod auf Bali)
- Anthony Berkeley – Trial and Error
- Georges Bernanos – Mouchette
- Phyllis Bottome – The Mortal Storm
- Morley Callaghan – More Joy in Heaven
- John Dickson Carr (as Carter Dickson) – The Ten Teacups
- Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot stories
- Stuart Cloete – Turning Wheels
- Murray Constantine – Swastika Night
- Freeman Wills Crofts – Found Floating
- A. J. Cronin – The Citadel
- James Curtis – There Ain't No Justice
- Ludovic Dauș – O jumătate de om (Half a Man)
- Cecil Day-Lewis – There's Trouble Brewing
- Isak Dinesen – Out of Africa
- Pierre Drieu La Rochelle – Rêveuse bourgeoisie
- Lawrence Durrell (as Charles Norden) – Panic Spring
- Hans Fallada – Wolf Among Wolves (Wolf unter Wölfen)
- Max Frisch – An Answer from the Silence (Antwort aus der Stille)
- Zona Gale – Light Woman
- Anthony Gilbert
- Witold Gombrowicz – Ferdydurke
- Sadegh Hedayat – The Blind Owl (بوف کور, Boof-e koor)
- Ernest Hemingway – To Have and Have Not
- Robert Hichens – Daniel Airlie
- Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitlock – The Far-Distant Oxus
- Zora Neale Hurston – Their Eyes Were Watching God
- Michael Innes – Hamlet, Revenge!
- Margaret Irwin – The Stranger Prince
- Franz Kafka (posthumously translated by Willa and Edwin Muir) – The Trial (first English translation of Der Process)
- Irmgard Keun – After Midnight (Nach Mitternacht)
- Kalki Krishnamurthy – Kalvaninn Kaadhali
- Halldór Laxness – Ljós heimsins (The Light of the World) – Part I, Heimsljós (World Light)
- Alexander Lernet-Holenia
- Der Mann im Hut
- Mona Lisa
- Meyer Levin – The Old Bunch
- E.C.R. Lorac
- Ngaio Marsh – Vintage Murder
- A. E. W. Mason – The Drum
- Cameron McCabe – The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor
- Compton Mackenzie – The East Wind of Love (first in The Four Winds of Love series of six books)
- W. Somerset Maugham – Theatre
- Oscar Millard – Uncensored
- Gladys Mitchell – Come Away, Death
- R. K. Narayan – The Bachelor of Arts
- Elliot Paul – Life and Death of a Spanish Town
- Robert Prechtl – Titanic
- Ellery Queen – The Door Between
- "Kurban Said" – Ali and Nino (Ali und Nino)
- Ruth Sawyer – Roller Skates
- Dorothy L. Sayers – Busman's Honeymoon
- Bruno Schulz – Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą)
- Naoya Shiga (志賀 直哉) – A Dark Night's Passing (暗夜行路, An'ya Kōro)
- "Siburapha" – Behind the Painting (ข้างหลังภาพ, Khang Lang Phap)
- Olaf Stapledon – Star Maker
- John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
- Rex Stout – The Red Box
- Cecil Street
- Death at the Club
- Death in the Hopfields
- Death on the Board
- Murder in Crown Passage
- Proceed with Caution
- Antal Szerb – Journey by Moonlight (Utas és holdvilág)
- Phoebe Atwood Taylor
- Figure Away
- Octagon House
- Beginning with a Bash (as by Alice Tilton)
- Henry Wade – The High Sheriff
- Mika Waltari – A Stranger Came to the Farm (Vieras mies tuli taloon)
- Charles Williams – Descent into Hell
- Virginia Woolf – The Years
- Francis Brett Young
Children and young people[]
- Enid Blyton – The Adventures of the Wishing-Chair
- C. S. Forester – The Happy Return (also as Beat to Quarters)
- Eve Garnett – The Family from One End Street
- Hergé – The Broken Ear (L'Oreille cassée)
- Kornel Makuszyński – Argument About Basia (Awantura o Basię)
- Carola Oman – Robin Hood
- Arthur Ransome – We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea
- Kate Seredy – The White Stag
- Dr. Seuss – And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (verse)
- J. R. R. Tolkien – The Hobbit
- Laura Ingalls Wilder – On the Banks of Plum Creek
- Henry Winterfeld (as Manfred Michael) – Timpetill – Die Stadt ohne Eltern (Timpetill – Parentless City, translated 1963 as Trouble at Timpetill)
Drama[]
- Bertolt Brecht with Margarete Steffin – Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar (adapted from J. M. Synge's Señora Carrar's Rifles)
- Karel Čapek – The White Disease (Bílá nemoc)
- Paul Vincent Carroll – Shadow and Substance
- Jeffrey Dell – Blondie White
- Reginald Denham and Edward Percy Smith – The Last Straw
- Ian Hay – The Gusher
- Margaret Kennedy – Autumn
- Arthur Kober – "Having Wonderful Time"
- Richard Llewellyn – Poison Pen
- Robert McLellan – Jamie the Saxt
- Robert Morley – Goodness, How Sad
- J. B. Priestley – Time and the Conways
- Walter Charles Roberts – Red Harvest[13][14]
- Gerald Savory – George and Margaret
- Dodie Smith – Bonnet Over the Windmill
- John Van Druten – Gertie Maude
- Louis Verneuil – The Train for Venice
- Hella Wuolijoki writing as Juhani Tervapää – Juurakon Hulda
- John Ferguson, editor – Seven Famous One-Act Plays (published)
Poetry[]
- David Jones – In Parenthesis (part prose)
- Isaac Rosenberg (killed in action 1918) – Collected Works
Non-fiction[]
- Hilaire Belloc – The Crusades: the World's Debate
- Alf K. Berle and L. Sprague de Camp – Inventions and Their Management
- Robert Byron – The Road to Oxiana
- Napoleon Hill – Think and Grow Rich
- Carl Jung – Dream Symbols of the Individuation Process
- Walter Lippmann – The Good Society
- John Neal — American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood's Magazine (1824-1825) (edited by Fred Lewis Pattee)[15]
- Manuel Chaves Nogales – A sangre y fuego: Héroes, bestias y mártires de España (Fire and sword: heroes, beasts and martyrs of Spain)
- George Orwell – The Road to Wigan Pier
- Eric Partridge – A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English
Births[]
- January 1 – John Fuller, English poet
- January 7 – Ian La Frenais, English television comedy writer
- January 8 – Leon Forrest, African-American novelist and essayist (died 1997)
- January 9 – Judith Krantz, American novelist (died 2019)
- January 13 – Jean D'Costa, Jamaican children's novelist
- January 14 – J. Bernlef, born Hendrik Jan Marsman, Dutch poet, novelist and translator (died 2012)
- January 22 – Joseph Wambaugh, American mystery novelist and non-fiction writer
- January 23 – Juan Radrigán, Chilean playwright (died 2016)
- February 11 – Maryse Condé, Guadeloupe historical fiction writer
- February 20 – George Leonardos, Greek journalist and novelist
- February 21 – Jilly Cooper, English novelist and journalist
- February 27 – Peter Hamm, German poet, author, journalist, editor and literary critic (died 2019)
- March 14 – Jan Karon (Janice Wilson), American novelist and children's writer
- March 15 – Valentin Rasputin, Russian writer (died 2015)
- April 10 – Bella Akhmadulina, Russian poet (died 2010)
- April 29 – Jill Paton Walsh (Gillian Bliss), English novelist (died 2020)
- May 8 – Thomas Pynchon, American novelist
- May 13
- Roch Carrier, Canadian novelist and short-story writer
- Roger Zelazny, American writer of fantasy and science fiction (died 1995)
- June 1 – Colleen McCullough, Australian novelist (died 2015)
- June 16 – Erich Segal, American novelist (died 2010)
- July 3 – Tom Stoppard (Tomáš Straussler), Czech-born English dramatist[16]
- July 6 – Bessie Head, South African-born Botswanan fiction writer (died 1986)
- August 3 – Peter van Gestel, Dutch writer (died 2019)
- August 5 – Carla Lane (Romana Barrack), English comedy writer (died 2016)
- August 19
- Richard Ingrams, English editor
- Alexander Vampilov, Russian dramatist (drowned 1972)
- September 5 – Dick Clement, English television comedy writer
- October 4 – Jackie Collins, English-born romance novelist (died 2015)
- October 7 – Christopher Booker, English journalist and editor (died 2019)
- November 9
- November 17 – Peter Cook, English comedian, satirist and writer (died 1995)
- December 3 – Binod Bihari Verma, Maithili man of letters (died 2003)
- December 11 – Jim Harrison, American novelist and poet (died 2016)
- December 22
- David F. Case, American novelist and short story writer
- Charlotte Lamb (Sheila Holland, Sheila Coates, etc.), English romantic novelist (died 2000)
- unknown date – Parijat (Bishnu Kumari Waiba), Nepalese novelist and poet (died 1993)
Deaths[]
- February 19
- March 7 – Tomas O'Crohan, Irish Gaelic writer and fisherman (born 1856)[20]
- March 8 – Albert Verwey, Dutch poet (born 1865)[21]
- March 15 – H. P. Lovecraft, American horror writer (intestinal cancer, born 1890)[22]
- March 25 – John Drinkwater, English poet and dramatist (born 1882)[23]
- May 20 – Frederic Taber Cooper, American editor and writer (born 1864)[24]
- June 4 – W. F. Harvey, English horror-story writer (born 1885)
- June 13 – William F. Lloyd, English-born Newfoundland journalist and prime minister (born 1864)
- June 19 – J. M. Barrie, Scottish novelist and dramatist (born 1860)
- June 22 – Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Malagasy poet (suicide, born 1901 or 1903)
- July 18 – Julian Bell, English poet (killed in Spanish Civil War, born 1908)
- August 11 – Edith Wharton (Edith Newbold Jones), American novelist and short-story writer (born 1862)
- August 14 – H. C. McNeile (Sapper), English novelist and soldier (born 1888)
- September 13 – Ellis Parker Butler, American humorist, novelist and essayist (born 1869)
- October 16 – Jean de Brunhoff, French children's author and illustrator (born 1899)
- October 17 – Florence Dugdale, English children's writer, widow of Thomas Hardy (cancer, born 1879)[25]
- October 22 – Chūya Nakahara (中原 中也), Japanese poet (meningitis, born 1907)
- October 31 – Ralph Connor, Canadian novelist (born 1860)
- December 24 – Elizabeth Haldane, Scottish author, philosopher and suffragist (born 1862)
- December 26 – Ivor Gurney, English war poet and composer (tuberculosis, born 1890)[26]
- December 29 – Don Marquis, American poet (stroke, born 1878)
Awards[]
- Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Eve Garnett, The Family From One End Street
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Neil M. Gunn, Highland River
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Lord Eustace Percy, John Knox
- Newbery Medal for children's literature: Ruth Sawyer, Roller Skates
- Nobel Prize in literature: Roger Martin du Gard
- Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, You Can't Take It with You
- Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Frost, A Further Range
- Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
- King's Gold Medal for Poetry: W. H. Auden
References[]
- ^ Fisher, David (2011-12-30). "1937". Chronomedia. Terra Media. Retrieved 2014-01-13.
- ^ "Pelican Books". Penguin First Editions. 2013. Retrieved 2015-07-16.
- ^ Keith, W. J. (July 2007), Owen Glendower: a Reader's Companion (PDF), p. 40
- ^ Office, Library of Congress Copyright (April 29, 1937). "Catalog of Copyright Entries: Periodicals" – via Google Books.
- ^ John Tregenza (1964). Australian Little Magazines, 1923-1954. Libraries Board of South Australia.
- ^ Kaser, David (1978). "Adams, Randolph Greenfield". In Wynar, Bohdan S. (ed.). Dictionary of American Library Biography. Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited. pp. 2–3.
- ^ "Randolph Greenfield Adams". Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1977.
- ^ Leach, Robert (1995). "Introduction". In Tretyakov, Sergei Mikhailovich (ed.). I Want a Baby. Studies in drama and dance. University of Birmingham. ISBN 0704416204.
- ^ "Mrs. Miniver (1942)". Reel Classics. Archived from the original on 2 May 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-28.
- ^ "Televised Drama – Journey's End". The Times. London. 1937-11-12. p. 14.
- ^ Vahimagi, Tise (1994). British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford University Press; British Film Institute. p. 8. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.
- ^ Sant Ram Bhatia (1978). Indian Librarian. Indian Librarian. p. 15.
- ^ Atkinson, Brooks (March 31, 1937). "THE PLAY; ' Red Harvest,' From a Diary of the Red Cross at the Front During the War" – via NYTimes.com.
- ^ "THE PLAY; ' Red Harvest,' From a Diary of the Red Cross at the Front During the War". timesmachine.nytimes.com.
- ^ Sears, Donald A. (1978). John Neal. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. p. 147. ISBN 080-5-7723-08.
- ^ Bloom, Harold (2009). Tom Stoppard. Infobase Publishing. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-4381-1652-5.
- ^ The Book of Golden Discs. Barrie & Jenkins. 1978. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-214-20480-7.
- ^ T. H. White (May 1984). Letters to a Friend. Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-425-06816-8.
- ^ Pan American Union (1937). Bulletin of the Pan American Union. The Union. p. 588.
- ^ Seán Ó Criomhthain (1993). A Day in Our Life. Oxford University Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-19-283119-4.
- ^ Lansing Bartlett Bloom; Paul A. F. Walter (1979). New Mexico Historical Review. University of New Mexico. p. 127-128.
- ^ S. T. Joshi (1996). H.P. Lovecraft: A Life. Necronomicon Press. p. 631. ISBN 978-0-940884-88-5.
- ^ Frank Northen Magill (1985). Critical Survey of Drama: Authors A-Z. Salem Press. p. 506. ISBN 978-0-89356-377-6.
- ^ "Frederic T. Cooper; Writer Educator." New York Times. 21 May 1937: 21.
- ^ Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy. p. xxiii. Retrieved 2015-02-23.
- ^ Ivor Gurney; Edmund Blunden; Leonard Clark (1973). Poems of Ivor Gurney, 1890-1937. Chatto and Windus. p. 21. ISBN 9780701119003.
External link[]
Media related to 1937 in literature at Wikimedia Commons
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