istoryworld
Events relating to literature
Italian writer Alberto Moravia wins success with his first novel, The Time of Indifference
Erich Maria Remarque publishes All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel based on his wartime experiences in the German army
Blind Fireworks is Ulster writer Louis MacNeice's first collection of poems
US author Thomas Wolfe publishes an autobiographical first novel, Look Homeward, Angel
English author J.B. Priestley has an immediate success with his first novel, The Good Companions
English poet Robert Graves puts behind him an England he dislikes in his autobiography, Goodbye to All That
US author Marc Connelly's play Green Pastures has its premiere on Broadway
English author W.H. Auden's first collection of poetry is published with the simple title Poems
Swallows and Amazons is the first of Arthur Ransome's adventure stories for children
US crime-writer Dashiell Hammett publishes The Maltese Falcon, the novel in which he introduces his sardonic private eye, Sam Spade
Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence star in the West End in Private Lives, Coward's comedy of marital complications
Agatha Christie's Miss Marple makes her first appearance, in Murder at the Vicarage
In his novel As I Lay Dying William Faulkner follows the journey of a coffin in a mule-drawn wagon
US author John Dos Passos publishes the first novel of his trilogy The 42nd Parallel
A spoof history text book, 1066 and all that, is justifiably described by its authors, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, as a Memorable History of England
US critic Edmund Wilson publishes Axel's Castle, a collection of essays about writers in the symbolist tradition
The US poet Ogden Nash has an immediate success with his first volume of poems, Hard Lines
Virginia Woolf publishes the most fluid of her novels, The Waves, in which she tells the story through six interior monologues
In Pietr-Le-Letton, the first novel published under his own name, the Belgian writer Georges Simenon introduces Inspector Maigret
The trilogy Mourning becomes Electra, Eugene O'Neill's transposition to New England of the Oresteia story, is performed in New York
US poet Archibald MacLeish publishes a narrative epic, Conquistador, about the conquest of Mexico
British author C.S. Lewis publishes a moral parable, The Screwtape Letters, about the problems confronting a trainee devil
French playwright Jean Anouilh has his first play, L'Hermine, produced and published
Ernest Hemingway, an aficionado of the sport, publishes Death in the Afternoon, a non-fiction account of bullfighting in Spain
British author Aldous Huxley gives a bleak view of a science-based future in his novel Brave New World
