Login
Login

1946 in literature

{{Short description|none}}

{{Year nav topic5|1946|literature|poetry}}

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1946.

Events

  • January – The Penguin Classics imprint is launched in the U.K. under the editorship of E. V. Rieu, whose translation of the Odyssey is the first of the books published,{{Cite web |title=Penguin Classics in translation |url=http://www.bristol.ac.uk/penguinarchiveproject/research/classics/ |work=Penguin Archive Project |publisher=University of Bristol |date=2009-08-17 |access-date=2011-08-21}} and will be the country's best-selling book over the next decade.{{Cite news |first=John |last=Sutherland |author-link=John Sutherland (author) |title=Pick up a Penguin? |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London |date=24 January 2005 |page=5}}
  • January 5 – The Estonian writer Jaan Kross is arrested and imprisoned by the occupying Soviet authorities.
  • February – The poet Ezra Pound, brought back to the United States on treason charges, is found unfit to face trial due to insanity and sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C., where he remains for 12 years.
  • May 20 – The English poet W. H. Auden becomes a United States citizen.{{Cite web |title=May 20, 1946: W. H. Auden becomes a U.S. citizen |work=This Day In History |url=http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wh-auden-becomes-a-us-citizen |publisher=History |access-date=2013-09-03}}
  • May 22 – George Orwell leaves London to spend much of the next 18 months on the Scottish island of Jura, working on his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (known at an earlier stage of composition as The Last Man in Europe). This year his Animal Farm becomes book of the year in the United States.
  • August 18 – The Assamese poet Amulya Barua is killed aged 24 in communal violence while studying at the University of Calcutta. His only collection of poems, Achina (The Stranger), is published posthumously.
  • October 1 – The English première of J. B. Priestley's drama An Inspector Calls (set in 1912) shows at the New Theatre, London. It stars Ralph Richardson.{{Cite news |first=Samantha |last=Ellis |title=JB Priestley's An Inspector Calls, October 1946 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/may/07/theatre.samanthaellis |work=The Guardian |location=London |date=7 May 2003 |access-date=2011-07-18}}
  • October 9 – The Broadway première of Eugene O'Neill's drama The Iceman Cometh, set in 1912, is held at the Martin Beck Theatre, New York City.
  • October 10 – Die Chinesische Mauer by Swiss writer Max Frisch, receives its stage première.{{cite book|title=A Companion to the Works of Max Frisch|author=Max Berwald|publisher=Camden House|year=2013|page=11}}
  • November 7 – Walker Percy, a U.S. writer of philosophical novels, marries Mary Bernice Townsend.
  • November 8 – The English novelist and diarist Christopher Isherwood becomes a U.S. citizen.
  • December 18
  • Brendan Behan is released from internment in the Republic of Ireland under an amnesty.
  • Damon Runyon's ashes are scattered over New York City from an airplane piloted by Eddie Rickenbacker.
  • December 23 – Giovannino Guareschi publishes the first story about the priest Don Camillo in his magazine Candido.
  • December 26 – David Lean's film of Great Expectations is released in England.
  • unknown dates
  • The publisher August Aimé Balkema produces his first book in South Africa, Vyjtig Gedigte by the poet C. Louis Leipoldt.{{Cite web |url=http://v1.sahistory.org.za/pages//people/bios/balkema_aa.html |title="August Aime Balkema", South African History Online; extracted from Human, K. (1999) "August Aime Balkema", They Shaped our Century: The Most Influential South Africans of the Twentieth Century, Human & Rousseau, pp. 442–445. |access-date=2013-10-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150724211017/http://v1.sahistory.org.za/pages//people/bios/balkema_aa.html |archive-date=2015-07-24 |url-status=dead }}
  • The American writer and theologian Frederick Buechner resumes his B.A. degree course at Princeton University after war service.

New books

=Fiction=

=Children and young people=

=Drama=

=Poetry=

=Non-fiction=

Births

Uncertain date

Deaths

  • January 6 – Dion Fortune, British occultist, Christian Qabalist, ceremonial magician and novelist (born 1890){{cite book |title=Dion Fortune and the Inner Light |last=Knight |first=Gareth |year=2000 |publisher=Thoth Publications |location=Loughborough |isbn=978-1-870450-45-4 |page=293}}
  • February 11 – John Langalibalele Dube, South African Zulu writer (born 1871){{cite book|author=Lorenzo S. Togni|title=The Struggle for Human Rights: An International and South African Perspective|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b6gqAAAAYAAJ|year=1994|publisher=Juta|isbn=978-0-7021-3072-4|page=183}}
  • March 19 – Catherine Carswell, Scottish novelist and biographer (born 1879)
  • March 20 – Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson), Australian novelist (born 1870)
  • April 1 – Edward Sheldon, American dramatist (born 1886)
  • April 11 – Dem. Theodorescu, Romanian novelist and journalist (born 1888)
  • May 19 – Booth Tarkington, American novelist and dramatist (born 1869){{cite book|author=Prentice-Hall, Inc|title=Literature Lover's Companion: The Essential Reference to the World's Greatest Writers--past and Present, Popular and Classical|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gqkjAQAAIAAJ|year=2001|publisher=Prentice Hall Press|isbn=978-0-7352-0229-0|page=607}}
  • May 20 – Jane Findlater, Scottish novelist (born 1866)
  • May 25 – Ernest Rhys, English writer and book series editor of Welsh extraction (born 1859){{cite book|author=Terry Seymour|title=A Printing History of Everyman's Library 1906-1982|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DbUp4qfbE_sC&pg=PA263|year=2011|isbn=978-1-4678-7014-6|pages=263}}
  • Summer – Ștefan Foriș, Hungarian and Romanian journalist and communist activist (murdered, born 1892)
  • June 6 – Gerhart Hauptmann, German dramatist, novelist and poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (born 1862){{cite book|title=Who's who in the Theatre|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NRi1AAAAIAAJ|year=1947|publisher=Pitman|page=1878}}
  • July 8 – Orrick Glenday Johns, American poet and playwright (born 1887)
  • July 22 – Edward Sperling, Russian-born American humorist (killed by bomb, born 1889)
  • July 27 – Gertrude Stein, American novelist, poet and dramatist (born 1874){{cite book|author=Maureen R. Liston|title=Gertrude Stein: an annotated critical bibliography|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L7YKAQAAMAAJ|year=1979|publisher=Kent State University Press|isbn=978-0-87338-221-2|page=39}}
  • July 30 – Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov, Russian poet and revolutionary (born 1854)
  • August 13 – H. G. Wells, English novelist (born 1866){{cite book|title=H. G. Wells|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=chZuAAAAIAAJ|year=1989|publisher=Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Victoriennes et Edouardiennes de l'Univ. Paul Valéry|isbn=978-0-333-27416-3|page=119}}
  • August 18 – Marion Angus, Scottish poet (born 1865)
  • August 31 – Harley Granville-Barker, English actor, dramatist and critic (born 1877)
  • September 9 – Violet Jacob, Scottish historical novelist and poet (born 1863)
  • September 21 – Lydia J. Newcomb Comings, American author, educator, lecturer (born 1850)
  • September 26 – William Strunk, Jr., American professor of English (born 1869)
  • November 5 – Thomas Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard de Walden, English author and patron of the arts(born 1880){{cite book|author1=Charles Kidd|author2=Christine Shaw|title=Debrett's Peerage & Baronetage 2008|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BDIZAQAAIAAJ|date=24 June 2008|publisher=Debrett's|isbn=978-1-870520-80-5|page=344}}
  • November 14 – May Sinclair, English novelist (born 1863){{cite book|author=Theophilus Ernest Martin Boll|title=Miss May Sinclair: Novelist: A Biographical and Critical Introduction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xkT2o5Q7hOsC&pg=PA155|year=1973|publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press|isbn=978-0-8386-1156-2|pages=155}}
  • December 10 – Damon Runyon, American short-story writer (born 1880){{cite book|author=((United States Congress. House Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare, and Related Agencies Appropriations))|title=Departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare for 1962: Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yv9QcvjJv7AC&pg=PA764|year=1961|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|pages=764}}
  • December 17 – Constance Garnett, English translator (born 1861)
  • December 23 – Ellen Marriage, English translator (born 1865)

Awards

References

{{reflist|30em}}

{{Year in literature article categories}}