istoryworld
Events relating to literature
John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joad family, sharecroppers who are forced to move west to escape the horrors of the Dust Bowl
Irish author Flann O'Brien publishes his first novel, At Swim-Two-Birds
Australian author Patrick White publishes his first novel, Happy Valley
British author Christopher Isherwood publishes his novel Goodbye to Berlin, based on his own experiences in the city
US crime-writer Raymond Chandler publishes his first novel, The Big Sleep, introducing the hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe
T.S. Eliot gives cats a poetic character in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
German novelist Thomas Mann takes US citizenship and in 1941 moves to California
US author Richard Wright publishes Native Son, his semi-autobiographical novel about racial equality
Ernest Hemingway publishes the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, set in the Spanish Civil War
Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is rejected by numerous publishers before becoming, decades later, his best-known novel
US author Carson McCullers publishes her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
In To the Finland Station Edmund Wilson discusses the development of socialism and revolution, culminating in Lenin and Trotsky
Scott FitzGerald's final and incomplete novel, The Last Tycoon, is published posthumously
Agee and Evans give a warm personal view of America in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Bertolt Brecht's play set in the Thirty Years' War, Mother Courage, has its first performance in Zurich
British author Rebecca West publishes an account of Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
US author Eudora Welty publishes her first collection of stories, A Curtain of Green
French author Albert Camus creates an early anti-hero in his novel The Outsider (L'Étranger)
French author Marguerite Duras makes her name with her partly autobiographical novel The Sea Wall
US poet Ezra Pound, in Italy during the war, broadcasts Fascist propaganda aimed at the United States
US poet Randall Jarrell publishes his first collection, Blood for a Stranger
English children's author Enid Blyton introduces the Famous Five in Five on a Treasure Island
Thornton Wilder's play The Skin of our Teeth has a mixed reception at its New Haven premiere
French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre expounds his theory of existentialism in Being and Nothingness ('L'Être et le néant')
Jean-Paul Sartre begins a new career as a dramatist with his first play, The Flies ('Les Mouches')
