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

Stevie Smith publishes Not Waving but Drowning

Giuseppe Tomassi di Lampedusa dies

Ian Fleming publishes From Russia, with Love

Jack Kerouac publishes On the Road

Evan S. Connell Jr. publishes The Anatomy Lesson, and Other Stories

Ted Hughes publishes The Hawk in the Rain

Denise Levertov publishes Here and Now

Albert Camus receives Nobel Prize for Literature

Boris Pasternak publishes Il Dottor Zivago (Doctor Zhivago)

Eugene O’Neill is posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in drama for Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Ayn Rand publishes Atlas Shrugged

Leon Uris publishes Exodus

William Gibson publishes The Miracle Worker

John D. Voelker publishes Anatomy of a Murder

Robert Penn Warren publishes Promises: Poems, 1954-1956

In the case of Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court introduces the “prurient interest” test for obscenity in publications

Russian scientists launch Sputnik into orbit, initiating the “Space Race” between the U.S. and Russia

Andrew Lytle publishes The Velvet Horn

Owen Barfield publishes Saving the Appearances

The Common Market is founded

For the second time in five years, the Mau-Mau revolt in Kenya

Whittaker Chambers’s harsh review of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in William F. Buckley’s National Review enrages Rand, who thereafter refuses to acknowledge Buckley

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. publishes The Age of Roosevelt in three volumes

Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) gains its independence

Eugenio Montale publishes Volume III of his Poesie, entitled Le bufera e altro

Nicholson Baker is born

Explore: Nicholson Baker

Laura Ingalls Wilder dies

Explore: Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder

Martin Luther King Jr. forms the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Explore: Martin Luther King Jr.

Wyndham Lewis dies

Explore: Wyndham Lewis

Tama Janowitz is born

Explore: Tama Janowitz

Roy Campbell dies

Explore: Autumn, Can you explain the poem "Autumn" by Roy Campbell?

Sholem Asch dies

David Henry Hwang is born

Explore: M. Butterfly, The Sound of a Voice, David Henry Hwang

Ketti Frings produces the drama Look Homeward, Angel

Explore: Look Homeward, Angel

Dorothy L. Sayers dies

Explore: Suspicion, The Nine Tailors, Dorothy L. Sayers