1940 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1940.

Events

• January – English literary magazine Horizon is first published in London by Cyril Connolly, Peter Watson and Stephen Spender.
• February – Canadian writer Robertson Davies leaves the Old Vic repertory company in the U.K.
• April – Máirtín Ó Cadhain is interned by the Irish government at Curragh Camp as a member of the Irish Republican Army.
• May 14 – Battle of the Netherlands concludes with the surrender of the main Dutch forces to invading Nazi German troops. This evening, the gay Dutch Jewish writer Jacob Hiegentlich takes poison, dying four days later aged 33.
• June 5 – English novelist J. B. Priestley broadcasts his first Sunday evening radio Postscript, "An excursion to hell", on the BBC Home Service in the U.K., marking the role of the pleasure steamers in the Dunkirk evacuation concluded the day before.
• July
  • Jean-Paul Sartre is taken prisoner by the Germans.^[1] Léopold Sédar Senghor also becomes a prisoner of war this year. P. G. Wodehouse is interned as an enemy alien.
  • American science fiction and fantasy pulp magazine Fantastic Novels begins its first run.
• July 26 – Release of the movie adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with Aldous Huxley as a screenwriter.
• September – In Uriage-les-Bains, Vichy France, Emmanuel Mounier and the Esprit circle establish a school of government and philosophy, attuned to Catholic social teaching. Initially endorsing the Révolution nationale, Uriage is put off by Vichy's collaboration with Germany, and blends into the Christian left.^[2]
• September 10 – Virginia Woolf's London house at 37 Mecklenburgh Square is destroyed by bombing. On October 18 she sees the ruins of her previous home, 52 Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, also destroyed in The Blitz.^[3]
• October
  • Grahame Greene's London house on Clapham Common Northside is destroyed by bombing, an event reflected in his novels The Ministry of Fear (1943) and The End of the Affair (1951).
  • Philip Larkin enters St John's College, Oxford.^[4]
• October 4 – Brian O'Nolan's first "Cruiskeen Lawn" humorous column is published in The Irish Times (Dublin); from the second column he uses the pseudonym 'Myles na gCopaleen'. The original columns are composed in the Irish language. He continues writing the column until the year of his death, 1966.
• December – Penguin Books launches its Puffin Books children's imprint in the United Kingdom with publication of "Puffin Picture Book No. 1", War on Land, by James Holland.^[5]
• December 21 – F. Scott Fitzgerald dies of a heart attack aged 44 in the apartment of Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham leaving his novel The Last Tycoon unfinished.
• December 29 – Heavy bombing causes the Second Great Fire of London, destroying the premises of Simpkin, Marshall, the U.K.'s largest book wholesaler, and of many publishers also in the Paternoster Row area of the city, including Longman, together with around 25,000 volumes in the Guildhall Library's stores and a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in a jewelled binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe (1939); altogether Britain's worst book burning.^[6] On dawn patrol, Douglas Blackwood, a fighter pilot at this time, is able to see his family's publishing business, William Blackwood, burning.^[7]
• Russian poet Anna Akhmatova's collection From Six Books is published in the Soviet Union but publication is suspended shortly after release, copies pulped and remaining issues prohibited.^[8]
• Wills & Hepworth of Loughborough launch their classic Ladybird Books format in the United Kingdom with publication of Bunnykin's Picnic Party: a story in verse for children with illustrations in colour.^[9]

New books

Births

• January 4 – Gao Xingjian (高行健), Chinese novelist
• January 15 – Ted Lewis, English novelist (died 1982)
• February 9 – J. M. Coetzee, South African novelist
• March 16 – Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian writer and film director
• March 23 – Ama Ata Aidoo, Ghanaian playwright
• March 28 – Russell Banks, American novelist
• April 13 – J. M. G. Le Clézio, French novelist
• April 15 – Jeffrey Archer, English novelist, politician and perjurer
• April 24 – Sue Grafton, American detective novelist (died 2017)
• May 1 – Bobbie Ann Mason, American novelist, short story writer, essayist and literary critic
• May 7 – Angela Carter, English novelist (died 1992)
• May 8 – Peter Benchley, American novelist (died 2006)
• May 13 – Bruce Chatwin, English novelist and travel writer (died 1989)
• May 24 – Joseph Brodsky, Russian-born American poet and essayist (died 1996)
• May 28 – Maeve Binchy, Irish novelist (died 2012)
• July 17 – Tim Brooke-Taylor, English comedy writer and actor
• July 31 – Fleur Jaeggy, Swiss-Italian fiction writer
• September 3 – Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist (died 2015)
• October 15 – Fanny Howe, American poet, novelist and short story writer
• October 20 – Robert Pinsky, American poet
• November 15 – René Avilés Fabila, Mexican writer (died 2016)
• November 20 – Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, American Indologist and translator
• December 5 – Peter Pohl, Swedish novelist

Deaths

• January 1 – Panuganti Lakshminarasimha Rao, Indian writer (born 1865)
• January 5 – Humbert Wolfe, British poet and epigrammist (born 1885)
• January 27 – Isaak Babel, Russian journalist and dramatist (executed, born 1894)
• February 11 – John Buchan, Scottish novelist (born 1875)
• February 29 – E. F. Benson, English novelist, biographer, memoirist and short-story writer (born 1867)
• March 7 – Edwin Markham, American poet (born 1852)
• March 10 – Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian novelist and playwright (born 1891)
• March 12 – Florence White, English food writer (born 1863
• March 16
  • Sir Thomas Little Heath, English classicist and translator (born 1861)
  • Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish children's writer and Nobel laureate (born 1858)
• April 13 – Mary Bathurst Deane, English novelist (born 1843)
• June 10 – Marcus Garvey, Jamaican journalist and publisher (born 1887)
• June 20 – Charley Chase, American screenwriter (born 1893)
• August 4 – Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Russian-born Zionist leader, novelist and poet (heart attack, born 1880)
• August 7 – T. O'Conor Sloane, American editor (born 1851)
• September 8 – Constantin Banu, Romanian politician, journalist, cultural promoter and aphorist (born 1873)
• September 26 – W. H. Davies, Welsh poet (born 1871)
• November 27 – Nicolae Iorga, Romanian historian, politician, culture critic, poet and playwright (assassinated, born 1871)
• December 21 – F. Scott Fitzgerald, American novelist (born 1896)
• December 22 – Nathanael West, American screenwriter and satirist (born 1903)

Awards

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Kitty Barne, Visitors from London
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Charles Morgan, The Voyage
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Hilda F. M. Prescott, Spanish Tudor: Mary I of England
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: James Daugherty, Daniel Boone
• Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Mark Van Doren: Collected Poems
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
• King's Gold Medal for Poetry: Michael Thwaites

In literature

• January – H. G. Wells' novel The Shape of Things to Come (1933) describes a clash between Germany and Poland this month initiating a 10-year world war.
• c. April–May – Jill Paton Walsh's novel A Presumption of Death (2002) is set around this time.
• May
  • Michael Dobbs' novel Never Surrender (2004) is set at this time.
  • Penelope Fitzgerald's novel Human Voices (1979) opens around this time.
  • Alan Judd's novel The Kaiser's Last Kiss (2003) opens around the time of the Battle of the Netherlands.
• Summer – H. E. Bates' novel A Moment in Time (1964) is set during the Battle of Britain.
• July – Jerrard Tickell's novel Appointment with Venus (1951) is set during the German occupation of the Channel Islands.
• October – Edmund Crispin's novel The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944) is set this month.

References