The Calendar of Literary Facts contains more than 6,500 events in literary history.

Antonin Artaud publishes his manifesto Le Theatre de la cruaute

Erle Stanley Gardner introduces his fictional attorney Perry Mason, in the novel The Case of the Velvet Claws

Maxwell Anderson’s Both Your Houses is produced

André Malraux publishes La Condition humaine (Man’s Fate)

Octavio Paz publishes Luna silvestre

Maxwell Anderson receives Pulitzer Prize in drama for Both Your Houses

James Thurber publishes My Life and Hard Times

Erskine Caldwell publishes God’s Little Acre

Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels oversees the burning of approximately 20,000 books in Berlin

A severe famine decimates the population of the U.S.S.R.

U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt introduces his “New Deal,” instituting massive federal relief programs for unemployed Americans

Adolf Hitler is named Reich Chancellor in Germany, which embarks on a program of statism and rearmament

The German Reichstag burns under mysterious circumstances; the Nazis blame German Jews and Communists and then tighten their control, granting Hitler total control

The first German concentration camps are built for incarcerating perceived enemies of the state

At the urging of the German government, “non-German” books are burned publicly

Dorothy Parker publishes After Such Pleasures

T. S. Stribling receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Store

Ivan Bunin receives the Nobel Prize for Literature

Caroline Miller publishes Lamb in His Bosom

The Holocaust takes place in Europe, at the behest of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany; six million Jews die in this genocidal event

James Hilton publishes Lost Horizon

Robert Hillyer publishes his Collected Verse

John Kingsley (“Joe”) Orton is born

Explore: Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Joe Orton

Ernest J. Gaines is born

Explore: A Lesson before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines

Alden Nowlan is born

Explore: Alden Nowlan

Susan Sontag is born

Explore: The Way We Live Now, Against Interpretation and Other Essays, On Photography, Susan Sontag, What are the main points of Sontag's "Illness as Metaphor"?

John Galsworthy dies

Explore: The Japanese Quince, Justice, Loyalties, John Galsworthy

Reynolds Price is born

Explore: A Long and Happy Life, Three Gospels, Reynolds Price

Penelope Lively is born

Explore: Moon Tiger, The Road To Lichfield, Penelope Lively

Philip Roth is born

Explore: The Ghost Writer, Philip Roth

Vine Deloria Jr. is born

Explore: Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins

Germany’s Nazi government decrees a general boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses

C. P. Cavafy dies

Explore: Ithaka, C. P. Cavafy

Barbara Taylor Bradford is born

Andrei Voznesensky is born

Explore: Andrei Voznesensky

Elena Poniatowska is born

Explore: Dear Diego, Here's to You, Jesusa!, Elena Poniatowska

Max Eastman publishes “Bull in the Afternoon,” a retrospective article attacking Ernest Hemingway’s craft which enraged Hemingway and eventually led to a scuffle between critic and author

Peter Blue Cloud is born

Explore: Who was Peter Blue Cloud and what was his contribution to literature?

Jerzy Kosinski is born

Explore: The Painted Bird, Being There, Jerzy Kosinski

Donald E. Westlake is born

Explore: Donald E. Westlake

David Storey is born

Explore: This Sporting Life, David Storey

German Jews of East European birth are stripped of their citizenship by the Nazis

Yevgeny Yevtushenko is born

Explore: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, A Precocious Autobiography, Babii Yar, What are some themes in Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poem "The City of Yes and the City of No"?

Cormac McCarthy is born

Explore: The Road, Cormac McCarthy, Opinions and feelings about The Road by Cormac McCarthy

John Gardner Jr. is born

Explore: Grendel, John Gardner

Michael Frayn is born

Explore: Michael Frayn

Ring Lardner dies

Explore: Ring Lardner, The Golden Honeymoon, Haircut

Sidney Kingsley’s drama Men in White is first performed

Explore: Men in White, Sidney Kingsley

Beryl Bainbridge is born

Explore: Beryl Bainbridge, Winter Garden