1937 In Literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1937.

Events

* January 9 – The first issue of '' Look'' magazine goes on sale in the United States.
*January 19 – BBC Television broadcasts ''The Underground Murder Mystery'' by J. Bissell Thomas from London, the first play to be written for television.
* February 6 – John Steinbeck's novella of the Great Depression, ''Of Mice and Men'', appears in the United States.
*April – The Irish writers Elizabeth Bowen and Seán Ó Faoláin first meet, in London.
*May 14 – BBC Television broadcasts a 30-minute excerpt of ''Twelfth Night'', the first known television broadcast of a Shakespeare piece. The cast includes Peggy Ashcroft and Greer Garson.
*May 21 – Penguin Books, a sixpenny paperback non-fiction imprint, with a two-volume edition of George Bernard Shaw's ''The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism''.
*June
**The British science fiction magazine '' Tales of Wonder'' first appears.
**John Cowper Powys visits Sycharth, birthplace of Owain Glyndŵr, which inspires his 1940 novel '' Owen Glendower.
*June 30 – ''The New England Quarterly'' prints poems by a colonial American pastor, Edward Taylor (died 1729), discovered by Thomas H. Johnson.
*Summer – American-born writer Thomas Quinn Curtiss meets German-born novelist Klaus Mann in Europe and they start a relationship.
*July
** Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany is established around the Goethe Oak.
** Rex Ingamells and other poets initiate the Jindyworobak Movement in Australian literature, in the magazine ''Venture''.
**The American academic librarian Randolph Greenfield Adams writes a controversial ''Library Quarterly'' essay, "Librarians as Enemies of Books", complaining of librarians downgrading books and scholarship in favor of other tasks.
*July 4 – ''The Lost Colony'' a historical drama by Paul Green, is first performed at an outdoor theater in the place where it is set: Roanoke Island, North Carolina.
* July 31 – Stephen Vincent Benét's post-apocalyptic short story '' By the Waters of Babylon'', inspired by April's Bombing of Guernica, is published in the U.S. ''The Saturday Evening Post'' as "The Place of the Gods".
*September 10 – The Soviet playwright Sergei Tretyakov commits suicide while under sentence of death at Butyrka prison in Moscow as part of the Great Purge.
*September 21 – J. R. R. Tolkien's juvenile fantasy novel '' The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is published in England by George Allen & Unwin on the recommendation of young Rayner Unwin.
*September 29 – The French playwright Antonin Artaud is expelled from Ireland.
*October 6 – The fictional Mrs. Miniver appears in a column on domestic life by Jan Struther for ''The Times'', London.
*November 11 (Armistice Day)
**BBC Television broadcasts ''Journey's End'' by R. C. Sherriff, 1928, set on the Western Front (World War I) in 1918, as the first full-length television adaptation of a stage play. Reginald Tate plays the lead, having long performed it in the theater.
**''Caesar'', Orson Welles's modern-dress bare-stage adaptation of Shakespeare's ''Julius Caesar'', premieres as the first production of the Mercury Theatre in New York City.
*December 21 – Dr. Seuss'', is published by Vanguard Press.
*''unknown dates''
**The National Library of Iran is inaugurated in Tehran.
**The future novelist Angus Wilson becomes a book cataloguer at the British Museum Library in London.

New books

Fiction

* Felix Aderca – ''Orașele înecate'' (Sunken Cities)
*Eric Ambler – '' Uncommon Danger''
*Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay – ''Chander Pahar'' (চাঁদের পাহড়, Mountain of the Moon)
*Vicki Baum – '' Love and Death in Bali (Liebe und Tod auf Bali)''
* Anthony Berkeley – ''Trial and Error''
*Georges Bernanos – ''Mouchette''
* Phyllis Bottome – ''The Mortal Storm''
* John Bude – ''The Cheltenham Square Murder''
*Morley Callaghan – ''More Joy in Heaven''
*John Dickson Carr (as Carter Dickson) – '' The Ten Teacups''
* Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot stories
**''Death on the Nile''
**''Dumb Witness''
**''Murder in the Mews''
* Stuart Cloete – ''Turning Wheels''
* Murray Constantine – '' Swastika Night''
* Freeman Wills Crofts – ''Found Floating''
*A. J. Cronin – ''The Citadel''
* James Curtis – ''There Ain't No Justice''
* Ludovic Dauș – ''O jumătate de om'' (Half a Man)
* Cecil Day-Lewis – '' There's Trouble Brewing''
*Isak Dinesen – ''Out of Africa''
*Pierre Drieu La Rochelle – '' Rêveuse bourgeoisie''
*Lawrence Durrell (as Charles Norden) – ''Panic Spring''
*Hans Fallada – '' Wolf Among Wolves (Wolf unter Wölfen)''
*Max Frisch – '' An Answer from the Silence (Antwort aus der Stille)''
*Zona Gale – ''Light Woman''
* Anthony Gilbert
** '' The Man Who Wasn't There''
** '' Murder Has No Tongue''
*Witold Gombrowicz – '' Ferdydurke''
* Sadegh Hedayat – '' The Blind Owl'' (بوف کور, ''Boof-e koor'')
*Ernest Hemingway – ''To Have and Have Not''
* Robert Hichens – '' Daniel Airlie''
*Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitlock – '' The Far-Distant Oxus''
* Zora Neale Hurston – ''Their Eyes Were Watching God''
* Michael Innes – ''Hamlet, Revenge!''
* Margaret Irwin – '' The Stranger Prince''
*Franz Kafka (posthumously translated by Willa and Edwin Muir) – ''The Trial'' (first English translation of ''Der Process'')
*Irmgard Keun – '' After Midnight'' (''Nach Mitternacht'')
*Kalki Krishnamurthy – ''Kalvaninn Kaadhali''
* Halldór Laxness – ''Ljós heimsins (The Light of the World)'' – Part I, ''Heimsljós (World Light)''
*Alexander Lernet-Holenia
**''Der Mann im Hut''
**''Mona Lisa''
*Meyer Levin – ''The Old Bunch''
* E. C. R. Lorac
**'' Bats in the Belfry''
**''These Names Make Clues''
* Ngaio Marsh – '' Vintage Murder''
* A. E. W. Mason – '' The Drum''
*Cameron McCabe – ''The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor''
*Compton Mackenzie – ''The East Wind of Love'' (first in ''The Four Winds of Love'' series of six books)
*W. Somerset Maugham – ''Theatre''
* Oscar Millard – '' Uncensored''
*Gladys Mitchell – '' Come Away, Death''
* R. K. Narayan – ''The Bachelor of Arts''
* Elliot Paul – '' Life and Death of a Spanish Town''
*Robert Prechtl – ''Titanic''
*Ellery Queen – '' The Door Between''
*"Kurban Said" – '' Ali and Nino (Ali und Nino)''
*Ruth Sawyer – '' Roller Skates''
*Dorothy L. Sayers – ''Busman's Honeymoon''
* Margery Sharp – '' The Nutmeg Tree''
*Bruno Schulz – ''Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą)''
*Naoya Shiga (志賀 直哉) – '' A Dark Night's Passing (暗夜行路, An'ya Kōro)''
*"Siburapha" – ''Behind the Painting (ข้างหลังภาพ, Khang Lang Phap)''
*Olaf Stapledon – '' Star Maker''
* John Steinbeck – ''Of Mice and Men''
*Rex Stout – '' The Red Box''
*Cecil Street
** '' Death at the Club''
** ''Death in the Hopfields''
** ''Death on the Board''
** ''Murder in Crown Passage''
** ''Proceed with Caution''
* Antal Szerb – '' Journey by Moonlight (Utas és holdvilág)''
*Phoebe Atwood Taylor
**'' Figure Away''
**''Octagon House''
**''Beginning with a Bash'' (as by Alice Tilton)
* Henry Wade – '' The High Sheriff''
*Mika Waltari – '' A Stranger Came to the Farm (Vieras mies tuli taloon)''
* Charles Williams – ''Descent into Hell''
*Virginia Woolf – '' The Years''
*Francis Brett Young
** '' Portrait of a Village''
** '' They Seek a Country''

Children and young people

*Enid Blyton – '' The Adventures of the Wishing-Chair''
* C. S. Forester – ''The Happy Return'' (also as ''Beat to Quarters'')
* Eve Garnett – ''The Family from One End Street''
*Hergé – ''The Broken Ear (L'Oreille cassée)''
*Kornel Makuszyński – '' Argument About Basia (Awantura o Basię)''
*Carola Oman – ''Robin Hood''
* Arthur Ransome – ''We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea''
*Kate Seredy – '' The White Stag''
*Dr. Seuss''
*J. R. R. Tolkien – ''The Hobbit''
*Laura Ingalls Wilder – ''On the Banks of Plum Creek''
* Henry Winterfeld (as Manfred Michael) – ''Timpetill – Die Stadt ohne Eltern'' (Timpetill – Parentless City, translated 1963 as ''Trouble at Timpetill'')

Drama

* Bertolt Brecht with Margarete Steffin – ''Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar'' (adapted from J. M. Synge's ''Señora Carrar's Rifles'')
*Karel Čapek – ''The White Disease (Bílá nemoc)''
* Paul Vincent Carroll – ''Shadow and Substance''
*Jeffrey Dell – '' Blondie White''
* Reginald Denham and Edward Percy Smith – '' The Last Straw''
*Ian Hay – ''The Gusher''
*Margaret Kennedy – '' Autumn''
* Arthur Kober – ''"Having Wonderful Time"''
* Richard Llewellyn – ''Poison Pen''
*Robert McLellan – ''Jamie the Saxt''
*Robert Morley – ''Goodness, How Sad''
*J. B. Priestley – ''Time and the Conways''
*Walter Charles Roberts – '' Red Harvest''
*Gerald Savory – ''George and Margaret''
*Dodie Smith – '' Bonnet Over the Windmill''
*John Van Druten – '' Gertie Maude''
* Louis Verneuil – '' The Train for Venice''
* Hella Wuolijoki writing as Juhani Tervapää – ''Juurakon Hulda''
*John Ferguson, editor – ''Seven Famous One-Act Plays'' (published)

Poetry

* David Jones – ''In Parenthesis'' (part prose)
*Isaac Rosenberg (killed in action 1918) – ''Collected Works''

Non-fiction

*Hilaire Belloc – ''The Crusades: the World's Debate''
*Alf K. Berle and L. Sprague de Camp – '' Inventions and Their Management''
*Robert Byron – ''The Road to Oxiana''
*Napoleon Hill – ''Think and Grow Rich''
*Carl Jung – ''Dream Symbols of the Individuation Process''
*Walter Lippmann – '' The Good Society''
* John Neal — ''American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood's Magazine (1824-1825)'' (edited by Fred Lewis Pattee)
*Manuel Chaves Nogales – '' A sangre y fuego: Héroes, bestias y mártires de España'' (Fire and sword: heroes, beasts and martyrs of Spain)
* George Orwell – ''The Road to Wigan Pier''
*Eric Partridge – ''A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English''

Births

*January 1 – John Fuller, English poet
* January 7 – Ian La Frenais, English television comedy writer
* January 8 – Leon Forrest, African-American novelist and essayist (died 1997)
* January 9 – Judith Krantz, American novelist (died 2019)
* January 13 – Jean D'Costa, Jamaican children's novelist
* January 14 – J. Bernlef, born Hendrik Jan Marsman, Dutch poet, novelist and translator (died 2012)
* January 22 – Joseph Wambaugh, American mystery novelist and non-fiction writer
*January 23 – Juan Radrigán, Chilean playwright (died 2016)
* February 11 – Maryse Condé, Guadeloupe historical fiction writer
* February 20 – George Leonardos, Greek journalist and novelist
*February 21 – Jilly Cooper, English novelist and journalist
* February 27 – Peter Hamm, German poet, author, journalist, editor and literary critic (died 2019)
* March 14 – Jan Karon (Janice Wilson), American novelist and children's writer
*March 15 – Valentin Rasputin, Russian writer (died 2015)
*March 20 - Lois Lowry, American children's and young-adult writer
*April 10 – Bella Akhmadulina, Russian poet (died 2010)
*April 29 – Jill Paton Walsh (Gillian Bliss), English novelist (died 2020)
* May 8 – Thomas Pynchon, American novelist
*May 13
** Roch Carrier, Canadian novelist and short-story writer
**Roger Zelazny, American writer of fantasy and science fiction (died 1995)
*June 1 – Colleen McCullough, Australian novelist (died 2015)
*June 16 – Erich Segal, American novelist (died 2010)
*July 3 – Tom Stoppard (Tomáš Straussler), Czech-born English dramatist
*July 6 – Bessie Head, South African-born Botswanan fiction writer (died 1986)
*August 3 – Peter van Gestel, Dutch writer (died 2019)
*August 5 – Carla Lane (Romana Barrack), English comedy writer (died 2016)
*August 19
**Richard Ingrams, English editor
**Alexander Vampilov, Russian dramatist (drowned 1972)
*September 5 – Dick Clement, English television comedy writer
*October 4 – Jackie Collins, English-born romance novelist (died 2015)
*October 7 – Christopher Booker, English journalist and editor (died 2019)
* November 9
**Roger McGough, English poet
** S. Abdul Rahman, Tamil poet (died 2017)
*November 17 – Peter Cook, English comedian, satirist and writer (died 1995)
*December 3 – Binod Bihari Verma, Maithili man of letters (died 2003)
*December 11 – Jim Harrison, American novelist and poet (died 2016)
*December 22
** David F. Case, American novelist and short story writer
** Charlotte Lamb (Sheila Holland, Sheila Coates, etc.), English romantic novelist (died 2000)
*''unknown date'' – Parijat (Bishnu Kumari Waiba), Nepalese novelist and poet (died 1993)

Deaths

*January 5 – Alberto de Oliveira, Brazilian poet (born 1857)
*January 11 – Emma A. Cranmer, American author, reformer, suffragist (born 1858)
* February 19
**Edward Garnett, English critic (born 1868)
**Horacio Quiroga, Uruguayan short story writer (suicide, born 1878)
* March 7 – Tomas O'Crohan, Irish Gaelic writer and fisherman (born 1856)
*March 8 – Albert Verwey, Dutch poet (born 1865)
*March 15 – H. P. Lovecraft, American horror writer (intestinal cancer, born 1890)
* March 25 – John Drinkwater, English poet and dramatist (born 1882)
*May 20 – Frederic Taber Cooper, American editor and writer (born 1864)
*June 4 – W. F. Harvey, English horror-story writer (born 1885)
*June 13 – William F. Lloyd, English-born Newfoundland journalist and prime minister (born 1864)
*June 19 – J. M. Barrie, Scottish novelist and dramatist (born 1860)
*June 22 – Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Malagasy poet (suicide, born 1901 or 1903)
*July 18 – Julian Bell, English poet (killed in Spanish Civil War, born 1908)
*July 29 — Ella Maria Ballou, American writer (born 1852)
* August 11 – Edith Wharton (Edith Newbold Jones), American novelist and short-story writer (born 1862)
* August 14 – H. C. McNeile (Sapper), English novelist and soldier (born 1888)
*September 13 – Ellis Parker Butler, American humorist, novelist and essayist (born 1869)
* October 15 – Samuil Lehtțir, Soviet Moldovan poet, critic and literary theorist (shot, born 1901)
*October 16 – Jean de Brunhoff, French children's author and illustrator (born 1899)
*October 17 – Florence Dugdale, English children's writer, widow of Thomas Hardy (cancer, born 1879)
*October 22 – Chūya Nakahara (中原 中也), Japanese poet (meningitis, born 1907)
*October 31 – Ralph Connor, Canadian novelist (born 1860)
*c. December – Filimon Săteanu, Soviet Moldovan poet (shot, born 1907)
*December 9 – Frances Nimmo Greene, American novelist, short story writer, children's writer, playwright (born 1867)
*December 24 – Elizabeth Haldane, Scottish author, philosopher and suffragist (born 1862)
*December 26
:*Ivor Gurney, English war poet and composer (tuberculosis, born 1890)
:* Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller, American novelist (born 1850)
*December 29 – Don Marquis, American poet (stroke, born 1878)
*''unknown date'' — Clara H. Hazelrigg, American author, educator and reformer (born 1859)

Awards

* Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Eve Garnett, ''The Family From One End Street''
*James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Neil M. Gunn, ''Highland River''
*James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Lord Eustace Percy, '' John Knox''
*Newbery Medal for children's literature: Ruth Sawyer, '' Roller Skates''
* Nobel Prize in literature: Roger Martin du Gard
*Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, '' You Can't Take It with You''
*Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Frost, ''A Further Range''
*Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Margaret Mitchell, ''Gone with the Wind''
* King's Gold Medal for Poetry: W. H. Auden

References

External link

*

Years of the 20th century in literature

{{DEFAULTSORT:1937 In Literature