1935 - Literature

Literature

The French government sponsors publication of an Encyclopédie française to rival government-sponsored German, Italian, and Soviet encyclopedias. Historian Lucien Febvre has initiated the project; it will produce 21 volumes in the next 31 years.

Nonfiction: My Country and My People by Chinese scholar Lin Yutang, 40; North to the Orient by writer Ann Morrow Lindbergh, now 29, who married pilot Charles A. Lindbergh in 1929 and has joined him on many flights; The Achievement of T. S. Eliot: An Essay on the Nature of Poetry by Pasadena, Calif.-born Harvard English professor F. O. (Francis Otto) Matthiessen, 33; Strafford, 1593-1641 by English historian C. V. (Cicely Veronica) Wedgwood, 25; An Almanac for Moderns by Chicago-born naturalist-author Donald Culross Peattie, 37, who has combined scientific fact and poetic language in 365 brief essays; Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies by Margaret Mead is about three New Guinea tribes. Critics will later question Mead's good fortune in finding three tribes that illustrated the points she wanted to make about the cultural determination of sex roles.

Wade-Giles Chinese romanization pioneer H. A. Giles dies at Cambridge February 13 at age 89; Charlotte Perkins Gilman by her own hand at Pasadena, Calif., August 17 at age 75 (she had terminal cancer); the late Friedrich Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche dies at Weimar November 8 at age 89, having secured all rights to his manuscripts after his death in 1900, edited them without understanding, forged letters, rewritten passages, and distorted her brother's views to fit her own anti-Semitic views; historian James H. Breasted dies at New York December 2 at age 70.

Fiction: Auto-da-fe (Die Blendung, or The Deception) by Bulgarian-born Swiss novelist-playwright Elias Canetti, 30, who will move to England in 1939 to escape anti-Semitism in Europe; It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis projects a fascist takeover of America, warning against complacency about the totalitarian governments that are tightening their grip on Japan and much of Europe; Wheel of Fortune (Le ambizoni sbagliate) by Alberto Moravia, whose second novel is ignored by reviewers under pressure from Fascist authorities; The Secret of the Old Wood (Il segreto del boco vecchio) by Dino Buzzati; Independent People (Sjálfstoett Fólk) by Icelandic novelist Halldór Laxness (Halldór Guojónsson), 33; Historia universal de la infamia by Argentine writer-poet-critic Jorge Luis Borges, 36; Gyakko (Dokenohana) by Japanese novelist Osamu Dazai (Shoji Tsushima), 26; Before the Dawn (Yoake mae) by Shimasaki Toson is about the Meiji Restoration of the 1860s as reflected in a rural community; Confessions of Love (Ai No Kokuhaku) by Japanese novelist Chiyo Uno, 37, who defied tradition by refusing an arranged marriage (and subjection to a domineering mother-in-law), married a cousin at age 19, deserted him 5 years later, sold stories to magazines, married a writer, split with him in 1929, married a well-known Cubist painter, and is notorious for her Westernized profligacy; The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen; Holy Ireland by Norah Hoult; A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell; Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood; The Stars Look Down by A. J. Cronin; The Poacher by English novelist-short story writer H. E. (Herbert Ernest) Bates, 30; The African Queen by C. S. Forester; The Last Puritan by philosopher George Santayana; Tortilla Flat by California novelist John (Ernst) Steinbeck, 33, is about the Spanish-speaking "paisanos" of Monterey; Of Time and the River and From Death to Morning (stories) by Thomas Wolfe; Flowering Judas and Other Stories by Indian Creek, Texas-born writer Katherine Ann Porter, 45; Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather; The Asiatics by Wisconsin-born novelist Frederic Prokosch, 27, whose critically-acclaimed work will be translated into 17 languages; I Met a Gypsy and White Hell of Pity by Irish novelist Norah Lofts (née Robinson), 31; This Bed Thy Centre by English novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson, 23; Regency Buck and Death in the Stocks by English novelist Georgette Heyer, 34; A Vein of Iron by Ellen Glasgow; The Scandal of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton; Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.

Novelist Henri Barbusse dies at Moscow August 30 at age 62.

Poetry: Monologue (Alleenspraak) by Afrikaans poet N. P. van Wyk Louw, 29; Poems by English poet William Empson, 29; Theory of Flight by New York poet Muriel Rukeyser, 21, includes her poem "The Trial," based on her reporting of the 1931 Scottsboro trial in Alabama for the Vassar Student Review; The Golden Chalice by Canadian poet Ralph B. (Barker) Gustafson, 24.

Poet Edwin Arlington Robinson dies at New York April 6 at age 65; poet-editor-painter A. E. (George William Russell) at Bournemouth, England, July 17 at age 68; Sir William Watson at Ditchling, Sussex, August 11 at age 77.

Juvenile: National Velvet by Enid Bagnold, whose book is illustrated by her daughter Laurian, 13; Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.