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

Louis Aragon publishes Les beaux quartiers (Residential Quarter)

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is produced

Jean-Paul Sartre publishes La Nausee (Nausea)

Daphne Du Maurier publishes Rebecca

Elizabeth Bowen publishes The Death of the Heart

Emlyn Williams publishes The Corn Is Green

Pearl S. Buck receives the Nobel Prize for Literature

Antonin Artaud’s Le Theatre et son double is produced

Germany unites with Austria: the Anschluss

Neville Chamberlain appeases Adolf Hitler at the Munich Conference, allowing Germany to occupy Sudetenland unopposed; Chamberelain announces he has achieved “peace in our time”

Southern Slovakia is annexed by Hungary

P. G. Wodehouse publishes The Code of the Woosters

Allen Tate publishes The Fathers

Marya Zaturenska receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Cold Morning Sky

John Gould Fletcher publishes Selected Poems

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings publishes The Yearling

Ngugi wa Thiong’o is born

Robert Lipsyte is born

Explore: The Contender, Robert Lipsyte

Bernice Zamora is born

Explore: Bernice Zamora

Gertrude Bonnin dies

John Guare is born

Explore: The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare

Judy Blume is born

Explore: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Forever …, Judy Blume, Are You There, God? It's Me Margaret

Ishmael Scott Reed is born

César Vallejo dies

Explore: César Vallejo

Larry Niven is born

Explore: All the Myriad Ways, The Borderland of Sol, The Hole Man, Ringworld

Charles Simic is born

Explore: Charles Simic, Butcher Shop

Raymond Carver is born

Explore: Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Where I'm Calling From, Raymond Carver

Ron Milner is born

Colleen McCullough is born

Explore: The First Man in Rome, Colleen McCullough

Joyce Carol Oates is born

Explore: Joyce Carol Oates, Why does Joyce Carol Oates use violence in her stories?

Lawrence Block is born

Explore: The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza, Eight Million Ways to Die

James Weldon Johnson dies

Explore: The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, James Weldon Johnson, The Creation

D. L. Coburn is born

Explore: The Gin Game, D. L. Coburn

Frederick Forsyth is born

Explore: Frederick Forsyth

Thomas Wolfe dies

Explore: Look Homeward, Angel, The Far and the Near, Thomas Wolfe

Les A. Murray is born

Explore: Les A. Murray

Renata Adler is born

Explore: Renata Adler

Alfonsina Storni dies

Explore: Alfonsina Storni, Explain the poem "Peso Ancestral" by Alfonsina Storni.

Orson Welles’s Halloween Eve radio broadcast describing in realistic fashion a Martian invasion of the Earth, based upon H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds, terrifies many radio listeners throughout the United States

Explore: The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells, Orson Welles

Nicholasa Mohr is born

Explore: The English Lesson

Kristallnacht (“night of broken glass”) begins a compaign of government-approved anti-Jewish violence in Germany, Austria, and Sudetenland

26,000 German Jews are arrested and sent by the Nazis to concentration camps

Luisa Valenzuela is born

Explore: Luisa Valenzuela, I'm Your Horse in the Night

Compulsory expropriation of Jewish businesses, shops, and industries becomes lawful in Germany, after the enactment of a decree on “Aryanization”

Leonardo Boff is born

Karel Čapek dies

Explore: R.U.R., War with the Newts, Karel Čapek, The Last Judgment, What is the structure of Karel Capek's short story "The Last Judgment"?

Zona Gale dies

Explore: Miss Lulu Bett, Zona Gale