Calendar

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

1950 Literary Facts

William Demby publishes Beetlecreek

S. E. Hinton is born

L. Ron Hubbard publishes Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

Gwendolyn Brooks receives Pulitzer Prize in poetry

Heinrich Boell publishes Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa (Traveller, If You Come to Spa)

James Boswell’s Boswell’s London Journal, 1762-1763 is published

Ray Bradbury publishes The Martian Chronicles

Ralph J. Bunche receives Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the 1949 armistice between Arab and Israeli states

C. S. Lewis publishes The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (first in the “Chronicles of Narnia” series)

Paer Lagerkvist publishes Barabbas

Kenneth Millar publishes The Drowning Pool

Carl Sandburg publishes Complete Poems

Sidney Sheldon’s Annie Get Your Gun is produced

Doris Lessing publishes The Grass Is Singing

Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy conducts hearings intended to detect communist penetration of American government and academia; for his recklessness, he is censured by the U.S. Senate in 1954

South African opponents of apartheid are banned from attending schools, universities, and public meetings

Theater of the Absurd flourishes in Western drama

Chinese forces invade and occupy Tibet

A. B. Guthrie Jr. receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Way West

Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Joshua Logan receive the Pulitzer Prize in drama for South Pacific

Gwendolyn Brooks receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Annie Allen

Bertrand Russell receives the Nobel Prize for Literature

S. Y. Agnon publishes Edo ve-Enam (Two Tales: Betrothes [and] Edo and Enam)

Conrad Richter publishes The Town

Lionel Trilling publishes his first essay collection, The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society

Ray A. Young Bear is born

Damon Knight publishes two of his best-known stories, “To Serve Man” and “Not with a Bang”

Ernest Poole dies

George Orwell dies

Explore: Animal Farm, 1984, Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell

A jury finds Alger Hiss, accused by Whittaker Chambers of spying for the Soviets, guilty of perjury

Irving Bacheller dies

Edgar Lee Masters dies

Explore: Spoon River Anthology, Edgar Lee Masters, Butch Weldy

Edgar Rice Burroughs dies

Explore: Tarzan of the Apes, At the Earth's Core, Edgar Rice Burroughs

William Rose Benét dies

John Gould Fletcher dies

David Adams Richards is born

Eileen Goudge is born

Black Elk dies

Explore: Black Elk Speaks

David Bradley Jr. is born

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is born

Explore: The Signifying Monkey, Colored People

Ralph J. Bunche, a black American, wins the Nobel Peace Prize

Wendy Wasserstein is born

Explore: The Heidi Chronicles, Wendy Wasserstein

Edna St. Vincent Millay dies

Explore: Wild Swans, An Ancient Gesture, Edna St. Vincent Millay

Bernard Shaw dies

Explore: Arms and the Man, George Bernard Shaw, Candida

Johannes V. Jensen dies

Explore: The Long Journey