Calendar of Literary Facts
1957
- Eugenio Montale publishes Volume III of his Poesie, entitled Le bufera e altro
- Ayn Rand publishes Atlas Shrugged
- Leon Uris publishes Exodus
- William Gibson publishes The Miracle Worker
- John D. Voelker publishes Anatomy of a Murder
- Robert Penn Warren publishes Promises: Poems, 1954-1956
- In the case of Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court introduces the “prurient interest” test for obscenity in publications
- Russian scientists launch Sputnik into orbit, initiating the “Space Race” between the U.S. and Russia
- Andrew Lytle publishes The Velvet Horn
- Owen Barfield publishes Saving the Appearances
- The Common Market is founded
- For the second time in five years, the Mau-Mau revolt in Kenya
- Whittaker Chambers’s harsh review of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in William F. Buckley’s National Review enrages Rand, who thereafter refuses to acknowledge Buckley
- Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. publishes The Age of Roosevelt in three volumes
- Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) gains its independence
- Eugene O’Neill is posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in drama for Long Day’s Journey Into Night
- Boris Pasternak publishes Il Dottor Zivago (Doctor Zhivago)
- Stevie Smith publishes Not Waving but Drowning
- Giuseppe Tomassi di Lampedusa dies
- Ian Fleming publishes From Russia, with Love
- Jack Kerouac publishes On the Road
- Evan S. Connell Jr. publishes The Anatomy Lesson, and Other Stories
- Ted Hughes publishes The Hawk in the Rain
- Albert Camus receives Nobel Prize for Literature
- Denise Levertov publishes Here and Now
- Sholem Asch dies (August 1)
- Wyndham Lewis dies (March 7)
- Nicholson Baker is born (January 7)
- David Henry Hwang is born (August 11)
- Tama Janowitz is born (April 12)
- Martin Luther King Jr. forms the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) (February 14)
- Dorothy L. Sayers dies (December 17)
- Roy Campbell dies (April 22)
- Ketti Frings produces the drama Look Homeward, Angel (November 28)