1954 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1954.

Events

• January – Kingsley Amis's first novel, the comic campus novel Lucky Jim, is published by Victor Gollancz Ltd in London.
• January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: the first public demonstration of a machine translation system held in New York at the head office of IBM.
• January 25 – First broadcast of Dylan Thomas's radio play Under Milk Wood, two months after its author's death, with Richard Burton as "First Voice", on the BBC Third Programme in the United Kingdom.
• February – The title The London Magazine is revived under the editorship of John Lehmann as a literary magazine.
• March 31 – In Bucharest, A. L. Zissu is sentenced to life imprisonment for "conspiring against the social order"; a focal point of the anti-Zionist clampdown in Communist Romania.^[1]
• May 29 – The newly rediscovered and restored early 17th century Corral de comedias de Almagro in Spain is reinaugurated with the performance of a play by Calderon de la Barca.^[2]
• 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 – Parker–Hulme murder case: 15-year-old Julia Hulme, the future writer of English historical detective fiction Anne Perry, participates in the murder of her best friend's mother in Christchurch, New Zealand.
• July – Publication of the first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's epic high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, by George Allen & Unwin in London. The Two Towers follows on November 11 and publication is completed in 1955. By 2007, 150 million copies will have been sold worldwide.^[3]
• September 1 – Lawrence Quincy Mumford takes up the post of Librarian of Congress in the United States.
• September 17 – William Golding's first published novel, the allegorical dystopian fiction Lord of the Flies, is published by Faber and Faber in London.
• September 22 – Terence Rattigan's two linked one-act plays Separate Tables have their première at St James's Theatre, London.
• November 19 – Brendan Behan's first play, The Quare Fellow, premières at the Pike Theatre, Dublin.
• Jack Kerouac reads Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible (1932, found in San Jose library) which will influence him greatly.
• John Updike graduates from Harvard with a thesis on George Herbert. This summer he travels on a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship to spend a year at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in the University of Oxford (England). His first short story for The New Yorker, "Friends from Philadelphia", is published on October 30.

New books

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 – Louis Sachar, American children's author
• 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
• 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
  • Esther Delisle, French Canadian author and historian
  • Ibrahim Nasrallah, Jordanian/Palestinian poet and novelist
  • Roma Tearne (Roma Chrysostom), Sri Lankan novelist and artist

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
  • Juan Álvarez, Argentinian historian (born 1878)
  • Winnifred Eaton, Canadian author (born 1875)
  • Cicely Fox Smith, English poet and nautical writer (born 1882)
• 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)

Awards

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Ronald Welch, Knight Crusader
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: C. P. Snow, The New Men and The Masters
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Keith Feiling, Warren Hastings
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Joseph Krumgold, ...And Now Miguel
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Ernest Miller Hemingway
• Premio Nadal: Francisco Alcántara, La muerte sienta bien a Villalobos
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: John Patrick, The Teahouse of the August Moon
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Theodore Roethke: TheWaking
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Ralph Hodgson

References