Calendar

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

1958 Literary Facts

Boris Pasternak is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but is forbidden by the Soviet government from accepting it

The U.S. launches the satellite Explorer I

The National Guard is sent into Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce school desegration

Syria and Egypt form the United Arab Republic

Wilhelm Roepke publishes Jenseits von Angebot und Nachfrage (A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market)

Mao Tse-tung’s Chinese forces bombard the Nationalist-held coastal islands of Quemoy and Matsu

John Kenneth Galbraith publishes The Affluent Society

Gregory Corso publishes Gasoline

Ezra Pound is released from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, where he had been confined for many years by the U.S. government

Ketti Frings receives the Pulitzer Prize in drama for Look Homeward, Angel

Salvatore Quasimodo publishes La terre impareggiabile

Robert Lewis Taylor publishes The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters

Giuseppe Tomassi di Lampedusa publishes Il gattopardo (The Leopard)

Ian Fleming publishes Doctor No

Stanley Kunitz publishes Selected Poems, 1928-1958

Yves Bonnefoy publishes Hier regnant desert

Truman Capote publishes Breakfast at Tiffany’s: A Short Novel and Three Stories

Chinua Achebe publishes Things Fall Apart

Archibald MacLeish’s J. B.: A Play is produced

Jorge Amado publishes Gabriela, cravo e canela (Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon)

James Agee is posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for A Death in the Family

Shelagh Delaney publishes A Taste of Honey

Brendan Behan publishes Borstal Boy

James Agee’s A Death in the Family is published

Charles Tomlinson publishes Seeing Is Believing

John Mortimer publishes Three Plays: The Dock Brief; What Shall We Tell Caroline?; [and] I Spy

Arthur Miller receives an Obie Award for The Crucible

Writing under the pseudonym Curt Cannon, Evan Hunter publishes I’m Cannon—For Hire

Bernard Malamud publishes The Magic Barrel

Kenzaburo Oe publishes Shiiku

James Reaney publishes A Suit of Nettles

Shelby Foote publishes The Civil War: A Narrative

Lawrence Ferlinghetti publishes A Coney Island of the Mind

Jean Genet’s Les Negres: Clownerie (The Blacks: A Clown Show) is produced

Caryl Phillips is born

Explore: Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River, A Distant Shore

George Jean Nathan dies

James Branch Cabell dies

Juan Ramón Jiménez dies

Explore: Platero and I

Angelina Weld Grimke dies

Roger Martin du Gard dies

Robert W. Service dies

Fenton Johnson dies

Zoë Akins dies