Calendar of Literary Facts
1942
- Josephine Hart is born
- The “Manhattan Project,” a top-secret atomic-research project, begins
- William Rose Benét receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The Dust Which Is God
- Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution,” the mass-extermination of European Jews, begins
- Earle Birney publishes David and Other Poems
- Thornton Wilder publishes The Skin of Our Teeth
- In deciding the case of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, the U.S. Supreme Court declares that obscenity, libel, and “fighting words” are forms of speech unprotected by the First Amendment
- Albert Camus publishes L’Etranger (The Stranger)
- The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is established in Chicago
- C. S. Lewis publishes The Screwtape Letters
- Upton Sinclair publishes Dragon’s Teeth
- Joao Cabral de Melo Neto publishes Pedra do sono
- Ellen Glasgow receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for In This Our Life
- Scientist Enrico Fermi oversees the first controlled nuclear reaction
- Robert Frost publishes A Witness Tree
- Margaret Walker publishes For My People
- MacKinlay Kantor publishes Angleworms on Toast
- First electronic computer is developed in the U.S.
- Samuel R. Delany is born (April 1)
- Isabel Allende is born (August 2)
- John Irving is born (March 2)
- Martin Cruz Smith is born (November 3)
- Susan Hill is born (February 5)
- Peter Handke is born (December 6)
- Ariel Dorfman is born (May 6)
- Garrison Keillor is born (August 7)
- Joseph Bruchac III is born (October 16)
- Sharon Olds is born (November 19)
- Patsauq Markoosie is born (June 19)
- Pat Mora is born (January 19)
- Dave Smith is born (December 19)
- Henry Taylor is born (June 21)
- William Alexander Percy dies (January 21)
- Haki R. Madhubuti is born (February 23)
- Michael Crichton is born (October 23)
- L. M. Montgomery dies (April 24)
- Michel Tremblay is born (June 25)
- John Saul is born (February 25)
- Erica Jong is born (March 26)
- Roberto Arlt dies (July 26)
- Marilyn Hacker is born (November 27)
- Jack Miles is born (July 30)
- Matt Cohen is born (December 30)
