1937 in literature

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	In poetry 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940
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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1937.

Events

January 9 – The first issue of Look magazine goes on sale in the United States.
January 19 – BBC Television broadcasts The Underground Murder Mystery by J. Bissell Thomas from London, the first play to be written for television.^[1]
February 6 – John Steinbeck's novella of the Great Depression, Of Mice and Men, appears in the United States.
April – The Irish writers Elizabeth Bowen and Seán Ó Faoláin first meet, in London.
May 14 – BBC Television broadcasts a 30-minute excerpt of Twelfth Night, the first known television broadcast of a Shakespeare piece. The cast includes Peggy Ashcroft and Greer Garson.
May 21 – Penguin Books in the U.K. launches Pelican Books, a sixpenny paperback non-fiction imprint, with a two-volume edition of George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.^[2]
June
- The British science fiction magazine Tales of Wonder first appears.
- John Cowper Powys visits Sycharth, birthplace of Owain Glyndŵr, which inspires his 1940 novel Owen Glendower.^[3]
June 30 – The New England Quarterly prints poems by a colonial American pastor, Edward Taylor (died 1729), discovered by Thomas H. Johnson.^[4]
Summer – American-born writer Thomas Quinn Curtiss meets German-born novelist Klaus Mann in Europe and they start a relationship.
July
- Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany is established around the Goethe Oak.
- Rex Ingamells and other poets initiate the Jindyworobak Movement in Australian literature, in the magazine Venture.^[5]
- The American academic librarian Randolph Greenfield Adams writes a controversial Library Quarterly essay, "Librarians as Enemies of Books", complaining of librarians downgrading books and scholarship in favor of other tasks.^[6]^[7]
July 4 – The Lost Colony a historical drama by Paul Green, is first performed at an outdoor theater in the place where it is set: Roanoke Island, North Carolina.
July 31 – Stephen Vincent Benét's post-apocalyptic short story "By the Waters of Babylon", inspired by April's Bombing of Guernica, is published in the U.S. The Saturday Evening Post as "The Place of the Gods".
September 10 – The Soviet playwright Sergei Tretyakov commits suicide while under sentence of death at Butyrka prison in Moscow as part of the Great Purge.^[8]
September 21 – J. R. R. Tolkien's juvenile fantasy novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is published in England by George Allen & Unwin on the recommendation of young Rayner Unwin.
September 29 – The French playwright Antonin Artaud is expelled from Ireland.
October 6 – The fictional Mrs. Miniver appears in a column on domestic life by Jan Struther for The Times, London.^[9]
November 11 (Armistice Day) – BBC Television broadcasts Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff, 1928, set on the Western Front (World War I) in 1918, as the first full-length television adaptation of a stage play. Reginald Tate plays the lead, having long performed it in the theater.^[10]^[11]
unknown dates
- The National Library of Iran is inaugurated in Tehran.^[12]
- The future novelist Angus Wilson becomes a book cataloguer at the British Museum Library in London.

New books

Poetry

David Jones – In Parenthesis (part prose)
Isaac Rosenberg (killed in action 1918) – Collected Works

Non-fiction

Hilaire Belloc – The Crusades: the World's Debate
Alf K. Berle and L. Sprague de Camp – Inventions and Their Management
Robert Byron – The Road to Oxiana
Napoleon Hill – Think and Grow Rich
Carl Jung – Dream Symbols of the Individuation Process
Walter Lippmann – The Good Society
John Neal — American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood's Magazine (1824-1825) (edited by Fred Lewis Pattee)^[13]
Manuel Chaves Nogales – A sangre y fuego: Héroes, bestias y mártires de España (Fire and sword: heroes, beasts and martyrs of Spain)
George Orwell – The Road to Wigan Pier
Eric Partridge – A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

Births

January 1 – John Fuller, English poet
January 7 – Ian La Frenais, English television comedy writer
January 8 – Leon Forrest, African American novelist and essayist (died 1997)
January 9 – Judith Krantz, American novelist
January 13 – Jean D'Costa, Jamaican children's novelist
January 14 – J. Bernlef, born Hendrik Jan Marsman, Dutch poet, novelist and translator (died 2012)
January 22 – Joseph Wambaugh, American mystery novelist and non-fiction writer
January 23 – Juan Radrigán, Chilean playwright (died 2016)
February 11 – Maryse Condé, Guadeloupe historical fiction writer
February 20 – George Leonardos, Greek journalist and novelist
February 21 – Jilly Cooper, English novelist and journalist
February 27 – Peter Hamm, German poet, author, journalist, editor and literary critic (died 2019)
March 14 – Jan Karon (Janice Wilson), American novelist and children's writer
March 15 – Valentin Rasputin, Russian writer (died 2015)
April 10 – Bella Akhmadulina, Russian poet (died 2010)
April 29 – Jill Paton Walsh (Gillian Bliss), English novelist (died 2020)
May 8 – Thomas Pynchon, American novelist
May 13
- Roch Carrier, Canadian novelist and short-story writer
- Roger Zelazny, American writer of fantasy and science fiction (died 1995)
June 1 – Colleen McCullough, Australian novelist (died 2015)
June 16 – Erich Segal, American novelist (died 2010)
July 3 – Tom Stoppard (Tomáš Straussler), Czech-born English dramatist^[14]
July 6 – Bessie Head, South African-born Botswanan fiction writer (died 1986)
August 3 – Peter van Gestel, Dutch writer (died 2019)
August 5 – Carla Lane (Romana Barrack), English comedy writer (died 2016)
August 19
- Richard Ingrams, English editor
- Alexander Vampilov, Russian dramatist (drowned 1972)
September 5 – Dick Clement, English television comedy writer
October 4 – Jackie Collins, English-born romance novelist (died 2015)
October 7 – Christopher Booker, English journalist and editor (died 2019)
November 9
- Roger McGough, English poet^[15]
- S. Abdul Rahman, Tamil poet (died 2017)
November 17 – Peter Cook, English comedian, satirist and writer (died 1995)
December 3 – Binod Bihari Verma, Maithili man of letters (died 2003)
December 11 – Jim Harrison, American novelist and poet (died 2016)
December 22
- David F. Case, American novelist and short story writer
- Charlotte Lamb (Sheila Holland, Sheila Coates, etc.), English romantic novelist (died 2000)
unknown date – Parijat (Bishnu Kumari Waiba), Nepalese novelist and poet (died 1993)

Deaths

February 19
- Edward Garnett, English critic (born 1868)
- Horacio Quiroga, Uruguayan short story writer (suicide, born 1878)
March 7 – Tomas O'Crohan, Irish Gaelic writer and fisherman (born 1856)
March 8 – Albert Verwey, Dutch poet (born 1865)
March 15 – H. P. Lovecraft, American horror writer (intestinal cancer, born 1890)
March 25 – John Drinkwater, English poet and dramatist (born 1882)
May 20 – Frederic Taber Cooper, American editor and writer (born 1864)
June 4 – W. F. Harvey, English horror-story writer (born 1885)
June 13 – William F. Lloyd, English-born Newfoundland journalist and prime minister (born 1864)
June 19 – J. M. Barrie, Scottish novelist and dramatist (born 1860)
June 22 – Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Malagasy poet (suicide, born 1901 or 1903)
July 18 – Julian Bell, English poet (killed in Spanish Civil War, born 1908)
August 11 – Edith Wharton (Edith Newbold Jones), American novelist and short-story writer (born 1862)
August 14 – H. C. McNeile (Sapper), English novelist and soldier (born 1888)
September 13 – Ellis Parker Butler, American humorist, novelist and essayist (born 1869)
October 16 – Jean de Brunhoff, French children's author and illustrator (born 1899)
October 17 – Florence Dugdale, English children's writer, widow of Thomas Hardy (cancer, born 1879)^[16]
October 22 – Chūya Nakahara (中原中也), Japanese poet (meningitis, born 1907)
October 31 – Ralph Connor, Canadian novelist (born 1860)
December 24 – Elizabeth Haldane, Scottish author, philosopher and suffragist (born 1862)
December 26 – Ivor Gurney, English war poet and composer (tuberculosis, born 1890)^[17]
December 29 – Don Marquis, American poet (stroke, born 1878)

Awards

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Eve Garnett, The Family From One End Street
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Neil M. Gunn, Highland River
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Lord Eustace Percy, John Knox
Newbery Medal for children's literature: Ruth Sawyer, Roller Skates
Nobel Prize in literature: Roger Martin du Gard
Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, You Can't Take It with You
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Frost, A Further Range
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
King's Gold Medal for Poetry: W. H. Auden

References

^ Fisher, David (2011-12-30). "1937". Chronomedia. Terra Media. Retrieved 2014-01-13.
^ "Pelican Books". Penguin First Editions. 2013. Retrieved 2015-07-16.
^ Keith, W. J. (July 2007), Owen Glendower: a Reader's Companion (PDF), p. 40
^ Library of Congress, Catalog of Copyright Entries: Periodicals, Part 2. Accessed 23 February 2015.
^ John Tregenza (1964). Australian Little Magazines, 1923-1954. Libraries Board of South Australia.
^ Kaser, David (1978). "Adams, Randolph Greenfield". In Wynar, Bohdan S. (ed.). Dictionary of American Library Biography. Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited. pp. 2–3.
^ "Randolph Greenfield Adams". Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1977.
^ Leach, Robert (1995). "Introduction". In Tretyakov, Sergei Mikhailovich (ed.). I Want a Baby. Studies in drama and dance. University of Birmingham. ISBN 0704416204.
^ "Mrs. Miniver (1942)". Reel Classics. Archived from the original on 2 May 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-28.
^ "Televised Drama – Journey's End". The Times. London. 1937-11-12. p. 14.
^ Vahimagi, Tise (1994). British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford University Press; British Film Institute. p. 8. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.
^ Sant Ram Bhatia (1978). Indian Librarian. Indian Librarian. p. 15.
^ Sears, Donald A. (1978). John Neal. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. p. 147. ISBN 080-5-7723-08.
^ Bloom, Harold (2009). Tom Stoppard. Infobase Publishing. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-4381-1652-5.
^ The Book of Golden Discs. Barrie & Jenkins. 1978. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-214-20480-7.
^ Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy. p. xxiii. Retrieved 2015-02-23.
^ Ivor Gurney; Edmund Blunden; Leonard Clark (1973). Poems of Ivor Gurney, 1890-1937. Chatto and Windus. p. 21.

[1] Fisher, David (2011-12-30). "1937". Chronomedia. Terra Media. Retrieved 2014-01-13.

[2] "Pelican Books". Penguin First Editions. 2013. Retrieved 2015-07-16.

[3] Keith, W. J. (July 2007), Owen Glendower: a Reader's Companion (PDF), p. 40

[4] Library of Congress, Catalog of Copyright Entries: Periodicals, Part 2. Accessed 23 February 2015.

[5] John Tregenza (1964). Australian Little Magazines, 1923-1954. Libraries Board of South Australia.

[6] Kaser, David (1978). "Adams, Randolph Greenfield". In Wynar, Bohdan S. (ed.). Dictionary of American Library Biography. Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited. pp. 2–3.

[7] "Randolph Greenfield Adams". Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1977.

[8] Leach, Robert (1995). "Introduction". In Tretyakov, Sergei Mikhailovich (ed.). I Want a Baby. Studies in drama and dance. University of Birmingham. ISBN 0704416204.

[9] "Mrs. Miniver (1942)". Reel Classics. Archived from the original on 2 May 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-28.

[10] "Televised Drama – Journey's End". The Times. London. 1937-11-12. p. 14.

[11] Vahimagi, Tise (1994). British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford University Press; British Film Institute. p. 8. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.

[12] Sant Ram Bhatia (1978). Indian Librarian. Indian Librarian. p. 15.

[13] Sears, Donald A. (1978). John Neal. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. p. 147. ISBN 080-5-7723-08.

[14] Bloom, Harold (2009). Tom Stoppard. Infobase Publishing. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-4381-1652-5.

[15] The Book of Golden Discs. Barrie & Jenkins. 1978. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-214-20480-7.

[16] Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy. p. xxiii. Retrieved 2015-02-23.

[17] Ivor Gurney; Edmund Blunden; Leonard Clark (1973). Poems of Ivor Gurney, 1890-1937. Chatto and Windus. p. 21.

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Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards

References