Calendar

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

1956 Literary Facts

Friedrich Duerrenmatt’s Der Besuch der alten Dame: Ein tragische Komoedie; mit einem Nachwort (The Visit) is produced

Matt Cohen publishes Korsoniloff

Leonard Cohen publishes Let Us Compare Mythologies

Juan Ramón Jiménez receives the Nobel Prize for Literature

Farley Mowat publishes Lost in the Barrens

Naguib Mahfouz publishes Bayn al-qasrayn Palace Walk: The Cairo Trilogy, I

Meyer Levin publishes Compulsion

Paer Lagerkvist publishes Sibyllan (The Sibyl)

Italo Calvino publishes Fiabe italiane: Raccolte della tradizione popolare durante gli ultimi cento anni e transcritte in lingua dai vari dialetti (Italian Fables)

Agatha Christie publishes Dead Man’s Folly

Mario Benedetti publishes Poemas de la oficina

John Osborne publishes Look Back in Anger

Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night is produced

S. J. Perelman’s screenplay Around the World in Eighty Days is adapted for a major motion picture by United Artists

Elizabeth Bishop receives Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Poems—North & South and A Cold Spring

Mongo Beti publishes Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba (The Poor Christ of Bomba)

John Ashbery publishes Some Trees

Aime Cesaire publishes Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Return to My Native Land)

Jean Genet’s Le Balcon (The Balcony) is published

Allen Ginsberg publishes Howl and Other Poems

Elie Wiesel publishes Un Di Velt Hot Geshvign (Night)

Richard Wilbur publishes Things of This World: Poems

The Cuban Revolution is waged; Marxist forces under Fidel Castro depose Fulgencio Batista

Transatlantic cable telephone service is established

In his “secret speech,” Nikita Khrushchev denounces former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin before the 20th Communist Party Congress in Moscow

Hungary revolts against Soviet rule; the uprising is suppressed by Soviet troops and tanks

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser siezes the Suez Canal from the French and British

Morocco, Tunisia, and Sudan win independence

British and French forces bomb Egyptian airfields in response to the Suez Crisis

In response to the Suez Crisis, Israel sends in troops to occupy the Sinai Peninsula

Sudan, Morocco, and Tunisia become independent nations

C. S. Lewis publishes Till We Have Faces

MacKinlay Kantor receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Andersonville

Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich receive the Pulitzer Prize in drama for The Diary of Anne Frank

Sir Winston Churchill publishes A History of the English-speaking Peoples in four volumes

Theodore Sturgeon and Jean Shepherd, writing under the pseudonym Frederick R. Ewing, publish I, Libertine, a novel based upon a successful radio hoax perpetuated by Shepherd

Wright Morris publishes The Field of Vision

Lynda Barry is born

A. A. Milne dies

Explore: A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Leonora Speyer dies

Louis Bromfield dies

Max Beerbohm dies

Explore: Max Beerbohm

Patricia Cornwell is born

Explore: Black Notice, Patricia Cornwell

Walter de la Mare dies

Explore: Walter de la Mare, The Listeners, Collected Poems

Michael Arlen dies

Tony Kushner is born

Explore: Angels in America, Homebody/Kabul, Tony Kushner

Owen Davis dies

Carrie Fisher is born

Pío Baroja dies

Explore: Pío Baroja

Larry Duplechan is born