Overview of the events of 1961 in literature
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1961 .
Events
January 24 – American dramatist Arthur Miller and film star Marilyn Monroe are granted a divorce in Mexico, on the grounds of incompatibility.[1]
February – Sylvia Plath suffers a miscarriage. Several of her poems, including "Parliament Hill Fields", address this event.[2]
March 15 – Hugh Wheeler 's comedy Big Fish, Little Fish opens at the ANTA Theater in New York City . Directed by Sir John Gielgud , it is one of the first Broadway plays to explore frankly the issue of male homosexuality .[3]
March 20 – Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon , becomes the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and its company the Royal Shakespeare Company (Peter Hall (director) ).[4]
May – Grove Press publishes Henry Miller 's Tropic of Cancer in the United States 27 years after its original publication in France. The book leads to one of many obscenity trials (Grove Press, Inc., v. Gerstein) that test American laws on pornography in the 1960s.
August 18 – The British magazine Tribune publishes a letter from playwright John Osborne beginning "Damn You, England."
September 8 – Publication of the science fiction novel series Perry Rhodan , der Erbe des Universums , originally authored by K. H. Scheer and Walter Ernsting , is begun by Arthur Moewig Verlag in Germany in Romanhefte (partwork) format. It is then published every week, attaining more than 2880 issues and around two billion total copies sold worldwide by the end of 2016.
September 14 – Novelist William Golding , having resigned his teaching post at Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury , sets off to spend the academic year 1961/1962 teaching at Hollins College , Virginia, United States.[5]
November 10 – Joseph Heller 's satirical novel Catch-22 , is first put on sale by Simon & Schuster in the United States, after favorable advance reviews in October. Heller has been working on the book since 1953, based on his experiences as a bombardier during World War II . Its title, which becomes a phrase referring to a no-win situation , had previously been Catch-18 .[6] [7]
Richard Booth opens a second-hand store in the future "bookshop town" of Hay-on-Wye on the English border with Wales.
First English production of Bertolt Brecht 's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui .
The British bookseller WHSmith closes the last of its in-store circulating library branches.[8]
Michael Halliday publishes his seminal paper on the systemic functional grammar model.[9]
New books
Fiction
Children and young people
Drama
Poetry
Non-fiction
Births
January 8 – Arnaldur Indriðason , Icelandic crime novelist[10]
January 11 – Jasper Fforde , English fantasy novelist
January 12 – Simon Russell Beale , Malaysian-born English actor
January 28 – Arnaldur Indridason , Icelandic writer
May 17 – Han Dong , Chinese poet and novelist
May 19 – Jennifer Armstrong , American children's author
June 9 – Aaron Sorkin , American screenwriter, producer and playwright
June 23 – David Leavitt , American novelist
June 24 – Rebecca Solnit , American writer and essayist
July 7 – Eric Jerome Dickey , American writer
July 10 – Carol Anne Davis , Scottish crime writer
July 18 – M.J. Alexander , American author and photographer
July – Richard Flanagan , Australian novelist
August 20 – Greg Egan , Australian science fiction author
September 13 – Tom Holt , English historical and comic novelist and poet
September 26 – Will Self , English novelist, political commentator and broadcaster
October 29 – Michael Gurr , Australian playwright (died 2017 )
November 9 – Jackie Kay , Scottish poet and novelist
November 14 – Jurga Ivanauskaitė , Lithuanian writer (died 2007 )
November 18 – Steven Moffat , Scottish TV writer
November 24 – Arundhati Roy , Indian writer and activist
November – Sarah Holland , English novelist, actress and singer
December 8 – Ann Coulter , American author
November 20 – David Mills , American journalist and TV writer (died 2010 )
December 23 – Ezzat el Kamhawi , Egyptian novelist and journalist
December 30 – Douglas Coupland , Canadian author
Unknown date – Winsome Pinnock , black British playwright
Deaths
January 10 – Dashiell Hammett , American crime writer and screenwriter (lung cancer, born 1894 )[11]
January 21 – Blaise Cendrars (Frédéric-Louis Sauser), Swiss novelist and poet (born 1887 )
January 30 – Dorothy Thompson , American journalist (born 1893 )
March 18 – E. Arnot Robertson , English novelist (born 1903 )
April 9 – Oliver Onions (George Oliver), English novelist and ghost story writer (born 1873 )
April 22 – Joanna Cannan , English pony book writer and detective novelist (born 1896 )
May 26 – William Troy , American writer and teacher (cancer, born 1903 )
June 2 – George S. Kaufman , American dramatist and critic (born 1889 )
July 1 – Louis-Ferdinand Céline , French novelist and pamphleteer (born 1894 )
July 2 – Ernest Hemingway , American novelist (suicide, born 1899 )
July 12 – Mazo de la Roche , Canadian novelist (born 1879 )
July 17 – Olga Forsh , Russian dramatist, novelist and memoirist (born 1873 )
September 27 – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), American poet, novelist and memoirist (born 1886 )
October 19 – Mihail Sadoveanu , Romanian novelist (born 1880 )
November 2 – James Thurber , American humorist (born 1894 )
December 7 – Roussan Camille , Haitian poet and journalist (born 1912 )
December 26 – Gertrude Minnie Faulding , English children's writer and novelist (born 1875 )
Awards
References
^ "1961: End of the road for Monroe and Miller" . On This Day . BBC . 24 January 1961. Retrieved 2013-04-18 .
^ Kirk, Connie Ann (2004). Sylvia Plath: A Biography . Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. p. 85. ISBN 0-313-33214-2 .
^ Senelick, Laurence (2013). Theatre Arts on Acting . Routledge. p. 74. ISBN 113472375X .
^ "Key Dates" . Royal Shakespeare Company. 2010. Archived from the original on 16 June 2010. Retrieved 30 June 2010 .
^ Carey, John (2009). William Golding: The Man Who Wrote 'Lord of the Flies' . London: Faber. ISBN 9780571231638 .
^ Bloom, Harold (2007). Joseph Heller's Catch-22 . Infobase Publishing.
^ "What is Catch-22? And why does the book matter?" . BBC News . 2002-03-12. Retrieved 2016-01-23 .
^ "History" . British Circulating Libraries: 1725–1966 . Retrieved 2014-10-25 .
^ Halliday, M. A. K. (1961). "Categories of the theory of grammar". WORD . International Linguistic Association . 17 (3): 241–292.
^ "Arnaldur Indriðason" . Reykjavik UNESCO City of Literature . Retrieved 29 January 2019 .
^ Hellman, Lilian, Introduction to posthumous Hammett, Dashiell, The Big Knockover: Selected Stories and Short Novels (Houghton Mifflin: 1962).