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1938 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1938. Events *January **The John Dos Passos trilogy ''U.S.A.'' is published, containing his novels '' The 42nd Parallel'' (1930), ''1919'' (1932), and ''The Big Money'' (1936). ** Samuel Beckett is stabbed in the chest in Paris and nearly killed. *February 21 – The gay American writer and composer Paul Bowles marries the lesbian American writer Jane Auer at a Reformed Church in Manhattan. * March 7 – Samuel Beckett's first completed novel '' Murphy'' is published in London. *July 11 – The first live drama adaptation in Orson Welles' ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'' series on CBS Radio in the United States is broadcast: Bram Stoker's '' Dracula''. *August – Muslims protest in London against passages they see as disrespectful to their religion in H. G. Wells' '' A Short History of the World'' (1922). *September 13 – The first production in Britain of a play by Bertolt Brecht, '' Mrs ...
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John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos (; January 14, 1896 – September 28, 1970) was an American novelist, most notable for his ''U.S.A.'' trilogy. Born in Chicago, Dos Passos graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He traveled widely as a young man, visiting Europe and southwest Asia, where he learned about literature, art, and architecture. During World War I, he was an ambulance driver for the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in Paris and Italy, before joining the United States Army Medical Corps as a private. In 1920, his first novel, ''One Man's Initiation: 1917'', was published, and in 1925, his novel '' Manhattan Transfer'' became a commercial success. His ''U.S.A.'' trilogy, which consists of the novels ''The 42nd Parallel'' (1930), ''1919'' (1932), and ''The Big Money'' (1936), was ranked by the Modern Library in 1998 as 23rd of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Written in experimental, non-linear form, the trilogy blends elements of biography and ...
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Dracula
''Dracula'' is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, hunt Dracula and, in the end, kill him. ''Dracula'' was mostly written in the 1890s. Stoker produced over a hundred pages of notes for the novel, drawing extensively from Transylvanian folklore and history. Some scholars have suggested that the character of Dracula was inspired by historical figures like the Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler or the countess Elizabeth Báthory, but there is widespread disagreement. Stoker's notes mention neither figure. He found the name ''D ...
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Goethe's Faust
''Faust'' is a tragic play in two parts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, usually known in English as '' Faust, Part One'' and ''Faust, Part Two''. Nearly all of Part One and the majority of Part Two are written in rhymed verse. Although rarely staged in its entirety, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages. ''Faust'' is considered by many to be Goethe's ''magnum opus'' and the greatest work of German literature. The earliest forms of the work, known as the ''Urfaust'', were developed between 1772 and 1775; however, the details of that development are not entirely clear. ''Urfaust'' has twenty-two scenes, one in prose, two largely prose and the remaining 1,441 lines in rhymed verse. The manuscript is lost, but a copy was discovered in 1886. The first appearance of the work in print was ''Faust, a Fragment'', published in 1790. Goethe completed a preliminary version of what is now known as ''Part One'' in 1806. Its publication in 1808 was follow ...
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Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. He is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language, his work having a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day.. Goethe took up residence in Weimar in November 1775 following the success of his first novel, ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (1774). He was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, in 1782. Goethe was an early participant in the ''Sturm und Drang'' literary movement. During his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe became a member of the Duke's privy council (1776–1785), sat on the war and highway commissions, oversaw the reopening of silver mines ...
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Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known books, ''Ficciones'' (''Fictions'') and '' El Aleph'' (''The Aleph''), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring themes of dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges' works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and majorly influenced the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.Theo L. D'Haen (1995) "Magical Realism and Postmodernism: Decentering Privileged Centers", in: Louis P. Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, ''Magical Realism: Theory, History and Community''. Duhan and London, Duke University Press, pp. 191–208. Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied ...
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December 24
Events Pre-1600 * 502 – Chinese emperor Xiao Yan names Xiao Tong his heir designate. * 640 – Pope John IV is elected, several months after his predecessor's death. * 759 – Tang dynasty poet Du Fu departs for Chengdu, where he is hosted by fellow poet Pei Di. * 1144 – The capital of the crusader County of Edessa falls to Imad ad-Din Zengi, the atabeg of Mosul and Aleppo. *1294 – Pope Boniface VIII is elected, replacing St. Celestine V, who had resigned. *1500 – A joint Venetian–Spanish fleet captures the Castle of St. George on the island of Cephalonia. 1601–1900 * 1737 – The Marathas defeat the combined forces of the Mughal Empire, Rajputs of Jaipur, Nizam of Hyderabad, Nawab of Awadh and Nawab of Bengal in the Battle of Bhopal. *1777 – Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is discovered by James Cook. *1800 – The Plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise fails to kill Napoleon Bonaparte. *1814 – Representative ...
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Howard Koch (screenwriter)
Howard E. Koch (December 12, 1901 – August 17, 1995) was an American playwright and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood film studio bosses in the 1950s. Background Born to a Jewish family in New York City, Koch grew up in Kingston, New York, and was a graduate of St. Stephen's College (1922, later renamed Bard College) and Columbia Law School (1925). Career While practicing law in Hartsdale, New York, he began to write plays. ''Great Scott'' (1929), ''Give Us This Day'' (1933), and ''In Time to Come'' (1941) were produced on Broadway. Koch's began playwriting in the late 1920s, before he started working on radio scripts. His radio work in the 1930s as a writer for the CBS Mercury Theater of the Air included the Orson Welles radio drama ''The War of the Worlds'' (1938), which allegedly caused nationwide panic among some listeners for its documentary-like portrayal of an invasion of spaceships from Mars. Koch later wrote a play about the panic, ''Invasion from Mar ...
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The War Of The Worlds (radio Drama)
"The War of the Worlds" was a Halloween episode of the radio series ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'' directed and narrated by Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel ''The War of the Worlds'' (1898). It was performed and broadcast live at 8 pm ET on October 30, 1938 over the CBS Radio Network. The episode is famous for inciting a panic by convincing some members of the listening audience that a Martian invasion was taking place, though the scale of panic is disputed, as the program had relatively few listeners. The episode begins with an introductory monologue based closely on the opening of the original novel, after which the program takes on the format of an evening of typical radio programming being periodically interrupted by news bulletins. The first few bulletins interrupt a program of live music and are relatively calm reports of unusual explosions on Mars followed by a seemingly unrelated report of an unknown object falling on a farm in Grover's Mill, ...
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October 30
Events Pre-1600 * 637 – Arab–Byzantine wars: Antioch surrenders to the Rashidun Caliphate after the Battle of the Iron Bridge. * 758 – Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates. *1137 – Ranulf of Apulia defeats Roger II of Sicily at the Battle of Rignano, securing his position as duke until his death two years later. *1270 – The Eighth Crusade ends by an agreement between Charles I of Anjou (replacing his deceased brother King Louis IX of France) and the Hafsid dynasty of Tunis, Tunisia. *1340 – ''Reconquista'': Portugal, Portuguese and Crown of Castile, Castilian forces halt a Muslim invasion at the Battle of Río Salado. 1601–1900 *1657 – Anglo-Spanish War (1654–1660), Anglo-Spanish War: Spanish forces fail to retake Jamaica at the Battle of Ocho Rios. *1806 – War of the Fourth Coalition: Convinced that he is facing a much larger force, Prussian General Friedrich Gisbert Wilhelm von Romberg, von Romberg, commanding 5,300 me ...
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Unity Theatre, London
Unity Theatre was a theatre club formed in 1936, and initially based in St Judes Hall, Britannia Street, Somers Town, London NW1. In 1937, it moved to a former chapel in Goldington Street, also in Somers Town, an area which is part of the present day London Borough of Camden. Although the theatre was destroyed by fire in 1975, productions continued sporadically until 1994, when the site was sold for social housing."The View from stage Left"
''New York Times'' review 28 January 1990 accessed 26 June 2007
Unity Mews is today on the site and a bronze plaque commemorates the theatre. It had links to the Theatre Guild and the

Señora Carrar's Rifles
''Señora Carrar's Rifles'' (german: Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar) is a one-act play by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, written in collaboration with Margarete Steffin. It is a modern version of the Irish dramatist John Millington Synge's play ''Riders to the Sea'' (1904). The play's setting is re-located to Spain during the height of the Civil War. Teresa Carrar, the mother, wants to protect her children but ends up fighting on the side of the oppressed. Brecht wrote it in 1937 and it received its first theatrical production in the same year, opening in Paris on 16 October. This production was directed by Slatan Dudow and Helene Weigel played Señora Carrar.Willett (1959, 45-46). See also * List of German plays This is a list of German plays: A * ' (1807), by Heinrich von Kleist * '' Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui'' (1941) by Bertolt Brecht * '' Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny'' (1927–1930), by Bertolt Brecht B * ''Baal'' (1918/1923) ...
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Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote ''The Threepenny Opera'' with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic ''Lehrstücke'' and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the . During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator ...
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