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

Eric Ambler publishes The Dark Frontier

John Dos Passos publishes The Big Money, the concluding volume in his “U.S.A.” trilogy

Jean M. Auel is born

Jacques Maritain publishes Humanisme integral: problemes temporels et spirituels d’une nouvelle chretienne (Integral Humanism: Temporal and Spiritual Problems of a New Christendom)

Dylan Thomas publishes Twenty-five Poems

Henry Miller publishes Black Spring

Arna Bontemps publishes Black Thunder

English publisher Allen Lane founds Penguin Books, instigating the “paperback revolution” in England

Ralph J. Bunche publishes A World View of Race

Karel Čapek publishes Valka s mloky (The War with the Newts)

Robert E. Sherwood’s drama Idiot’s Delight is first performed

Walter de la Mare publishes Ghost Stories

Eugene O’Neill receives the Nobel Prize for Literature

D’Arcy McNickle publishes The Surrounded

Ramón Sender publishes Mister Witt en el canton (Mr. Witt among the Rebels)

Luis Cernuda publishes La realidad y el deseo

Hitler and Mussolini agree to form the Rome-Berlin Axis

German forces occupy the Rhineland

The Spanish Civil War is fought; Nationalist forces aided by Germany and Italy defeat Loyalist forces aided by the Soviet Union

The first successful helicopter flight is conducted in a craft designed by Heinrich Focke

C. S. Lewis publishes The Allegory of Love

Harold Lenoir Davis receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Honey in the Horn

Robert P. Tristram Coffin receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Strange Holiness

Eyvind Johnson publishes Volume III of his tetralogy Romanem om Olaf, entitled Se dig inte om!

Ramón del Valle-Inclán dies

Anne Rivers Siddons is born

Frank Conroy is born

Explore: Body and Soul, Frank Conroy

Estela Portillo Trambley is born

Explore: Estela Portillo Trambley

Rudyard Kipling dies

Explore: The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling

Virginia Hamilton is born

Explore: Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush, Virginia Hamilton

Mario Vargas llosa is born

Explore: The Time of the Hero, The Challenge, The Storyteller, Mario Vargas Llosa

Judith Guest is born

Explore: Ordinary People, Judith Guest, Explain the sonnet from the opening of Judith Guest's Ordinary People.

Sharon Pollock is born

Explore: Blood Relations, Sharon Pollock, Analyze the title character in Sharon Pollock's Walsh.

Bernard DeVoto publishes a scathing review of Thomas Wolfe’s The Story of a Novel which outrages the sensitive Wolfe and leads to his leaving his longtime editor, Maxwell Perkins

Explore: Thomas Wolfe

A. E. Housman dies

Explore: A. E. Housman, Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now, To an Athlete Dying Young, A Shropshire Lad, Exploring the theme, summary, and attitude towards life in A. E. Housman's poem "Loveliest of Trees"

Paul Zindel is born

Explore: The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, The Pigman, Paul Zindel

M. Scott Peck is born

Explore: The Road Less Traveled

Larry McMurtry is born

Explore: Larry McMurtry

G. K. Chesterton dies

Explore: G. K. Chesterton, The Hammer of God, The Invisible Man

Richard Bach is born

Explore: Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach

Lucille Clifton is born

Explore: Lucille Clifton, The lost baby poem

Margaret Mitchell publishes Gone With the Wind

Explore: Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

June Jordan is born

Explore: June Jordan, Poem About My Rights

Alistair MacLeod is born

Explore: Alistair MacLeod, As Birds Bring Forth the Sun, Island: The Complete Stories

Mourning Dove dies

American athlete Jesse Owens, a black man, wins four gold medals at the summer Olympic games in Berlin—a bitter pill for Adolf Hitler, who had earlier boasted of the inherent superiority of the “Aryan race”

Explore: Adolf Hitler

Andre Dubus is born

Explore: The Fat Girl, Andre Dubus, Killings

Grazia Deledda dies

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin is born

Federico García Lorca dies

Explore: The House of Bernarda Alba, Federico García Lorca, The Poetical Works of Federico García Lorca

A. S. Byatt is born

Explore: Possession, Babel Tower, A. S. Byatt, Angels and Insects

Vaclav Havel is born

C. K. Williams is born

Don Delillo is born

Explore: The Body Artist, Don DeLillo, Falling Man

Manlio Argueta is born

Explore: One Day of Life, Manlio Argueta

Alfred Uhry is born

Explore: Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Alfred Uhry

Lewis Nkosi is born

Luigi Pirandello dies

Explore: Six Characters in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello, War

Edna O’Brien is born

Explore: Edna O'Brien

David Caute is born

Clarence Major is born

Explore: Clarence Major

Miguel de Unamuno dies

Explore: Miguel de Unamuno