American Literature timeline
Scott FitzGerald publishes his novel The Great Gatsby, set in a contemporary world of lavish indulgence underpinned by crime
DuBose Heyward publishes his first novel, Porgy, set in Charleston's Catfish Row
A round table at the Algonquin Hotel in New York becomes famous for its collection of wits
Soldiers Pay is the first published novel of the Mississippi author William Faulkner
Dorothy Parker has a best-seller with her first collection of verse, Enough Rope
US author Ernest Hemingway succeeds with his second novel, The Sun also Rises (also known as Fiesta)
US author Thornton Wilder achieves world-wide success with his second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy, dramatized with a new title by himself and his wife Dorothy, has a great success on Broadway and in London
Irish author Frank Harris publishes the fourth and final volume of My Life and Loves
Don Marquis publishes archy and mehitabel, the first collection of his sketches about archy the cockroach and mehitabel the alley cat
Stephen V. Benét publishes a verse narrative of the Civil War under the title John Brown's Body
The Front Page, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, has its premiere on Broadway
US anthropologist Margaret Mead makes much of trouble-free sex among natives, in Coming of Age in Samoa, but her findings are subsequently disputed
Sartoris is the first of 14 novels by William Faulkner set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County
Ernest Hemingway publishes A Farewell to Arms, closely reflecting his own wartime experiences
US author Thomas Wolfe publishes an autobiographical first novel, Look Homeward, Angel
US author Marc Connelly's play Green Pastures has its premiere on Broadway
US crime-writer Dashiell Hammett publishes The Maltese Falcon, the novel in which he introduces his sardonic private eye, Sam Spade
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
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
The trilogy Mourning becomes Electra, Eugene O'Neill's transposition to New England of the Oresteia story, is performed in New York
Ernest Hemingway, an aficionado of the sport, publishes Death in the Afternoon, a non-fiction account of bullfighting in Spain
US novelist Erskine Caldwell publishes Tobacco Road, about white sharecroppers coping with poverty and desperation in Georgia