istoryworld
Events relating to literature
Saul Bellow publishes his first novel, Dangling Man, a study of an intellectual adrift as he waits to be drafted into the army
Boston writer Robert Lowell publishes his first book of poems, Land of Unlikeness
Jorge Luis Borges publishes Fictions, a collection of short stories
The separate poems forming T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets are brought together for the first time as a single volume, published in New York
English author Nancy Mitford has her first success with the novel The Pursuit of Love
Austrian philosopher Karl Popper publishes The Open Society and its Enemies
US dramatist Tennessee Williams has his first success with The Glass Menagerie
Russian-born novelist Vladimir Nabokov becomes a US citizen
Evelyn Waugh publishes Brideshead Revisited, a novel about a rich Catholic family in England between the wars
In George Orwell's fable Animal Farm a ruthless pig, Napoleon, controls the farmyard using the techniques of Stalin
Richard Wright publishes Black Boy, an account of his early life in Mississippi and then Chicago
Eudora Welty sets her novel Delta Wedding in a contemporary southern plantation
Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, set in a down-and-out bar of the kind he had known in his youth, is performed in New York
Robert Lowell's second collection, Lord Weary's Castle, contains 'The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket' and 'Mr Edwards and the Spider'
Ezra Pound, charged with treason for his wartime broadcasts, begins twelve years in a US hospital for the criminally insane
US poet Elizabeth Bishop publishes her first collection of poems, North and South
Titus Groan begins British author Mervyn Peake's trilogy of gothic novels
English author and alcoholic Malcolm Lowry publishes an autobiographical novel, Under the Volcano
Bertolt Brecht's play The Life of Galileo has its premiere in Los Angeles with Charles Laughton in the lead
Marlon Brando stars on Broadway in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar named Desire
J.B. Priestley challenges audiences with An Inspector Calls, a play in which moral guilt spreads like an infection
Norman Mailer has immediate succes with his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, based on his military service in the Pacific
US poet Theodore Roethke publishes The Lost Son, his second collection
Ezra Pound publishes Pisan Cantos, about his postwar imprisonment in an American detention centre near Pisa
US novelist and poet Jack Kerouac coins a term for his contemporaries, the Beat Generation
