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)