1939 in literature
|
|
See also: 1938 in literature, other events of 1939, 1940 in literature, list of years in literature.
| Contents |
Events
- December 25 - A Christmas Carol is read before a radio audience for the first time.
- Frank Herbert lies about his age to get his first job as a local newspaper reporter.
- Jean-Paul Sartre is drafted into the French army.
- Robert A. Heinlein's first story is printed in Astounding Magazine.
New books
- The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
- Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal - Aime Cesaire
- Children of God - Vardis Fisher
- Coming Up For Air - George Orwell
- The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
- Drums at Dusk - Arna Wendell Bontemps
- Files on Parade - John O'Hara
- Finnegans Wake - James Joyce
- The Gladiators - Arthur Koestler
- The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
- Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo
- Let Me Breathe Thunder - William Attaway
- Listen for the Voices - Anne Colver
- Magna - Zona Gale
- The Mask of Dimitrios - Eric Ambler
- The Mysterious Mickey Finn - Elliot Paul
- Melbourne - David Cecil
- Moses, Man Of The Mountain - Zora Neale Hurston
- The Nazarene - Sholem Asch
- Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats – T. S. Eliot
- The Outsider and Others - H. P. Lovecraft
- The Patriot - Pearl S. Buck
- The Snows of Kilimanjaro - Ernest Hemingway
- Studies in Iconology - Erwin Panofsky
- Thimble Summer - Elizabeth Enright
- The Tree of Liberty - Elizabeth Page
- If I Forget Thee Jerusalem (The Wild Palms/Old Man) - William Faulkner
Births
- Michael Moorcock, English science fiction author
- January 29 - Germaine Greer, feminist author
- April 12 - Alan Ayckbourn, dramatist
- June 5 - Margaret Drabble, novelist
- August 1 - Robert James Waller, American novelist
- October 6 - Melvyn Bragg, novelist, critic and television presenter
- October 9 - John Pilger, journalist
- October 10 - Clive James, writer, humorist and television personality
- November 17 - Auberon Waugh, journalist and son of Evelyn Waugh
- November 18 - Margaret Atwood, novelist and poet
- date unknown - Ferdinand Mount, journalist and novelist
- date unknown - Iris Gower, romantic novelist
- date unknown - Alan Coren, satirist
Deaths
- January 28 - William Butler Yeats, poet
- February 18 - Okamoto Kanoko, tanka poet
- February 22 - Antonio Machado, poet
- March 7 - Ludwig Fulda
- March 23 - Richard Halliburton, travel writer
- April 11 - S. S. Van Dine, crime writer
- May 27 - Joseph Roth, novelist
- June 26 - Ford Madox Ford, novelist
- July 8 - Havelock Ellis, sexual psychologist and controversial writer
- September - Ethel M. Dell, romantic novelist
- September 6 - Arthur Rackham, book illustrator
- October 23 - Zane Grey, popular author of westerns
- December 2 - Llewelyn Powys, biographer and autobiographer
Awards
- Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Enright, Thimble Summer
- Nobel Prize for literature: Frans Eemil Sillanpää
- Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, Abe Lincoln in Illinois
- Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: John Gould Fletcher: Selected Poems
- Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - The Yearling