Calendar of Literary Facts
1954
- Vicente Aleixandre publishes Historia del corazon
- J. R. R. Tolkien publishes The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, volumes one and two of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, are published
- Viet-Minh forces besiege and defeat the French at Dien Bien Phu, ending French rule in Vietnam
- John Betjeman publishes A Few Late Chrysanthemums: New Poems
- Dannie Abse publishes Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve
- Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons is produced
- Kingsley Amis publishes Lucky Jim
- Wallace Stevens publishes The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
- William Golding publishes Lord of the Flies
- William Faulkner publishes A Fable
- Juan Goytisolo publishes Juegos de manos
- Max Frisch publishes Stiller: Roman (I’m Not Stiller)
- Gore Vidal publishes Messiah
- The U.S. Supreme Court declares racial segregation unconstitutional, in Brown v. Board of Education
- John Patrick receives the Pulitzer Prize in drama for The Teahouse of the August Moon
- Jaroslav Seifert publishes Maminka
- Simone de Beauvoir publishes Les Mandarins (The Mandarins)
- Camara Laye publishes Le Regard du roi (The Radiance of the King)
- Ernest Hemingway receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
- Robinson Jeffers publishes Hungerfield and Other Poems
- Paul Horgan publishes Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History
- Françoise Sagan publishes Bonjour tristesse
- Robinson Jeffers receives the Pulitzer Prize for Hungerfield and Other Poems
- Harriette Simpson Arnow publishes The Dollmaker
- Peter De Vries publishes The Tunnel of Love
- Yukio Mishima publishes Shiosai (The Sound of Waves)
- Theodore Roethke receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The Waking: Poems 1933-53
- P. K. Page publishes The Metal and the Flower
- Rosemary Sutcliff publishes The Eagle of the Ninth
- Leonard Bacon dies (January 1)
- Donald Margulies is born (September 2)
- Colette dies (August 3)
- Harvey Fierstein is born (June 6)
- Louise Erdrich is born (June 7)
- Kazuo Ishiguro is born (November 8)
- Jacinto Benavente dies (July 14)
- John Patrick Shanley is born (April 18)
- James Hilton dies (December 20)
- Sandra Cisneros is born (December 20)
- Lynn Riggs dies (June 30)
