Calendar of Literary Facts

• Calendar of Literary Facts

Calendar of Literary Facts

1956

• Wright Morris publishes The Field of Vision
• In his “secret speech,” Nikita Khrushchev denounces former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin before the 20th Communist Party Congress in Moscow
• Transatlantic cable telephone service is established
• The Cuban Revolution is waged; Marxist forces under Fidel Castro depose Fulgencio Batista
• Richard Wilbur publishes Things of This World: Poems
• Elie Wiesel publishes Un Di Velt Hot Geshvign (Night)
• Allen Ginsberg publishes Howl and Other Poems
• Jean Genet’s Le Balcon (The Balcony) is published
• Aime Cesaire publishes Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Return to My Native Land)
• John Ashbery publishes Some Trees
• Hungary revolts against Soviet rule; the uprising is suppressed by Soviet troops and tanks
• Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser siezes the Suez Canal from the French and British
• Theodore Sturgeon and Jean Shepherd, writing under the pseudonym Frederick R. Ewing, publish I, Libertine, a novel based upon a successful radio hoax perpetuated by Shepherd
• Sir Winston Churchill publishes A History of the English-speaking Peoples in four volumes
• Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich receive the Pulitzer Prize in drama for The Diary of Anne Frank
• MacKinlay Kantor receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Andersonville
• C. S. Lewis publishes Till We Have Faces
• Sudan, Morocco, and Tunisia become independent nations
• In response to the Suez Crisis, Israel sends in troops to occupy the Sinai Peninsula
• British and French forces bomb Egyptian airfields in response to the Suez Crisis
• Morocco, Tunisia, and Sudan win independence
• Mongo Beti publishes Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba (The Poor Christ of Bomba)
• Meyer Levin publishes Compulsion
• Paer Lagerkvist publishes Sibyllan (The Sibyl)
• Farley Mowat publishes Lost in the Barrens
• Italo Calvino publishes Fiabe italiane: Raccolte della tradizione popolare durante gli ultimi cento anni e transcritte in lingua dai vari dialetti (Italian Fables)
• Agatha Christie publishes Dead Man’s Folly
• Juan Ramón Jiménez receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
• Leonard Cohen publishes Let Us Compare Mythologies
• Mario Benedetti publishes Poemas de la oficina
• Matt Cohen publishes Korsoniloff
• Friedrich Duerrenmatt’s Der Besuch der alten Dame: Ein tragische Komoedie; mit einem Nachwort (The Visit) is produced
• John Osborne publishes Look Back in Anger
• Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night is produced
• S. J. Perelman’s screenplay Around the World in Eighty Days is adapted for a major motion picture by United Artists
• Elizabeth Bishop receives Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Poems—North & South and A Cold Spring
• Naguib Mahfouz publishes Bayn al-qasrayn Palace Walk: The Cairo Trilogy, I
• Lynda Barry is born (January 2)
• Patricia Cornwell is born (June 9)
• Leonora Speyer dies (February 10)
• Owen Davis dies (October 13)
• Bertolt Brecht dies (August 14)
• Tony Kushner is born (July 16)
• Louis Bromfield dies (March 18)
• Max Beerbohm dies (May 20)
• Carrie Fisher is born (October 21)
• Walter de la Mare dies (June 22)
• Michael Arlen dies (June 23)
• H. L. Mencken dies (January 29)
• Larry Duplechan is born (December 30)
• Pío Baroja dies (October 30)
• A. A. Milne dies (January 31)