1964 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1964.

Events

• January 10 – Federico García Lorca's play The House of Bernarda Alba, completed just before his assassination in 1936, receives its first performance in Spain.^[1]
• January 12 – Royal Shakespeare Company Experimental Group open a 4-week Theatre of Cruelty season at the LAMDA Theatre Club, London.^[2]
• January 23 – Arthur Miller's play After the Fall opens at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre Off-Broadway in New York, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Jason Robards and Kazan's wife Barbara Loden. A semi-autobiographical work, it arouses controversy over Miller's portrayal of late ex-wife Marilyn Monroe.
• February 11 – R. v. Gold (Mayflower Books intervening): A London retailer is found guilty under section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 of stocking a 1963 edition of John Cleland's novel Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, 1748-9).
• April 23 – Shakespeare Birthplace Trust opens the Shakespeare Centre, housing its library and research facilities, in Stratford-upon-Avon (England).
• April 29 – Peter Weiss's play with music Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade ("The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade", known as Marat/Sade) premieres at the Schiller Theater in West Berlin. In August it receives its English-language premiere by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London at the Aldwych Theatre.^[3]
• May – Michael Moorcock becomes editor of the science fiction magazine New Worlds.
• May 6 – Joe Orton's black comedy Entertaining Mr Sloane premieres at the New Arts Theatre in London with Dudley Sutton in the title rôle.
• May 29 – Le Théâtre du Soleil is established as a collective avant-garde stage ensemble by Ariane Mnouchkine, Philippe Léotard and fellow students of L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, going on to present its first show, Les Petits Bourgeois (adapted from Maxim Gorky's Мещане), at Théâtre Mouffetard.^[4]
• June 22 – Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer is allowed to circulate legally in the United States by the U.S. Supreme Court three decades after its original publication in France, after the U.S. Supreme Court, in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, cites Jacobellis v. Ohio (which is decided the same day) and overrules state court findings that the book is obscene.^[5]
• August 11 – Ian Fleming walks to the Royal St George's Golf Club in Canterbury, Kent, for lunch and later dines at his hotel with friends, collapsing shortly afterwards with a heart attack.^[6] His last recorded words are an apology to the ambulance drivers for having inconvenienced them, saying "I am sorry to trouble you chaps. I don't know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the roads these days." Fleming dies next day.
• September – Everyman Theatre opens in Liverpool, England.
• September 28 – Brian Friel's play Philadelphia, Here I Come! is premièred at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin.
• October 28 – The Wednesday Play debuts on BBC1 television in the United Kingdom, presenting original one-off contemporary social drama, mostly written for television.
• Jean-Paul Sartre becomes head of the Organization to Defend Iranian Political Prisoners (ODIPP).
• W. H. Auden describes his "Vision of Agape" (June 1933) in his preface to the anthology The Protestant Mystics.

New books

Births

• January 26 – Peter Braunstein, American journalist and playwright
• February 23 – Joseph O'Neill, Irish-born writer.
• March 7 – Bret Easton Ellis, American novelist, screenwriter and short-story writer
• March 21 – Kaori Ekuni (江國 香織), Japanese novelist
• June 5 – Rick Riordan, American young-adult author
• June 7 – Petr Hruška, Czech poet
• June 11 – Dan Chaon, American novelist and short-story writer
• July 3 – Joanne Harris, English novelist
• July 7 – Karina Galvez, Ecuadorian poet
• July 16 – Anne Provoost, Flemish novelist and essayist
• September 9 – Aleksandar Hemon, Bosnian novelist and short-story writer
• September 19 – Patrick Marber, English comedian, playwright, director, puppeteer, actor and screenwriter
• September 25
  • Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Spanish novelist
  • Gareth Thompson, English children's author
• December 26 – Elizabeth Kostova, American author
• Unknown dates
  • Ge Fei (格非, real name: Liu Yong, 刘勇), Chinese novelist
  • Mai Jia (real name: Jiǎng Běnhǔ, 蒋本浒), Chinese novelist
  • Nell Zink, American novelist

Deaths

• January 17 – T. H. White, English novelist (heart condition, born 1906)
• February 3 – Clarence Irving Lewis, American philosopher (born 1883)
• February 25 – Grace Metalious (Marie Grace DeRepentigny), American novelist (cirrhosis of liver, born 1924)
• March 17 – Păstorel Teodoreanu, Romanian poet and satirist (lung cancer, born 1894)
• March 20 – Brendan Behan, Irish playwright, poet and writer (born 1923)
• April 14 – Rachel Carson, American environmentalist (breast cancer, born 1907)
• April 18 – Ben Hecht, American screenwriter (born 1894)
• April 23 – Karl Polanyi (Károly Polányi), Austro-Hungarian economic historian and social philosopher (born 1886)
• May 13 – Hamilton Basso, American novelist and journalist (born 1904)
• July 6 – Ion Vinea, Romanian poet, novelist, and journalist (cancer, born 1895)
• August 3 – Flannery O'Connor, American essayist and fiction writer (born 1925)
• August 12 – Ian Fleming, English spy thriller writer (heart attack, born 1908)
• August 17 – Mihai Ralea, Romanian critic and sociologist of literature (born 1896)
• September 14 – Vasily Grossman, Soviet novelist (cancer, born 1905)
• September 18 – Seán O'Casey, Irish dramatist and memoirist (born 1880)^[8]
• November 21 – Leah Bodine Drake, American poet, editor and critic (cancer, born 1914)
• November 29 – Anne de Vries, Dutch novelist (born 1904)
• December 9 – Dame Edith Sitwell, English poet and critic (born 1887)
• December 21 – Carl Van Vechten, American writer and photographer (born 1880)^[9]
• Unknown date – Radu D. Rosetti, Romanian poet and playwright (born 1874)

Awards

• Nobel Prize for literature – Jean-Paul Sartre (refused)

References