1937 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1937.

Events

• January 9 – The first issue of Look magazine goes on sale in the United States.
• January 19 – BBC Television broadcasts The Underground Murder Mystery by J. Bissell Thomas from its London station, the first play written for television.^[1]
• April – Irish writers Elizabeth Bowen and Seán Ó Faoláin first meet, in London.
• May 14 – BBC Television broadcasts a 30-minute excerpt of Twelfth Night, the first known instance of a Shakespeare play televised. Among the cast are Peggy Ashcroft and Greer Garson.
• May 21 – Penguin Books launches its Pelican Books sixpenny paperback non-fiction imprint in the U.K. with a 2-volume edition of Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.^[2]
• June – John Cowper Powys visits Sycharth, birthplace of Owain Glyndŵr, which becomes the inspiration for his 1940 novel Owen Glendower.^[3]
• June 30 – Poems of colonial American pastor Edward Taylor (d. 1729), discovered by Thomas H Johnson, are published in The New England Quarterly.^[4]
• Summer – American-born writer Thomas Quinn Curtiss meets German-born novelist Klaus Mann in Europe and they form a relationship.
• July
  • Establishment of Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany around the Goethe Oak.
  • American academic librarian Randolph Greenfield Adams, in a controversial Library Quarterly essay "Librarians as Enemies of Books", complains about librarians de-emphasizing books and scholarship in favor of other responsibilities.^[5][6]
• July 4 – The Lost Colony historical drama by Paul Green is first performed at an outdoor theater in the location where it is set, Roanoke Island, North Carolina.
• July 31 – Stephen Vincent Benét's post-apocalyptic short story "By the Waters of Babylon", inspired by April's Bombing of Guernica, is published in The Saturday Evening Post (U.S.) as "The Place of the Gods".
• September 10 – Soviet playwright Sergei Tretyakov commits suicide while under sentence of death at Butyrka prison in Moscow as part of the Great Purge.^[7]
• September 21 – J. R. R. Tolkien's juvenile fantasy novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is published in England by George Allen & Unwin on the recommendation of young Rayner Unwin.
• September 29 – French playwright Antonin Artaud is expelled from Ireland.
• October 6 – The fictional character 'Mrs. Miniver' first appears in the column on domestic life written by 'Jan Struther' for The Times (London).^[8]
• November 11 (Armistice Day) – BBC Television broadcasts Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff (1928, set on the Western Front (World War I) in 1918), the first full-length television adaptation of a stage play. Reginald Tate plays the lead, a rôle he has performed extensively in the theatre.^[9][10]
• Undated
  • The National Library of Iran is inaugurated in Tehran.
  • The future novelist Angus Wilson becomes a book cataloguer at the British Museum Library in London.

New books

Fiction

• Felix Aderca – Orașele înecate
• Eric Ambler – Uncommon Danger
• Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay – Chander Pahar (চাঁদের পাহড়, Mountain of the Moon)
• Vicki Baum – Love and Death in Bali (Liebe und Tod auf Bali)
• Georges Bernanos – Mouchette
• Morley Callaghan – More Joy in Heaven
• John Dickson Carr (as Carter Dickson) – The Ten Teacups
• Agatha Christie
  • Dumb Witness
  • Death on the Nile
  • Murder in the Mews
• Stuart Cloete – Turning Wheels
• Murray Constantine – Swastika Night
• A. J. Cronin – The Citadel
• James Curtis – There Ain't No Justice
• Isak Dinesen – Out of Africa
• Pierre Drieu La Rochelle – Rêveuse bourgeoisie
• Lawrence Durrell writing as Charles Norden – Panic Spring
• Hans Fallada – Wolf Among Wolves (Wolf unter Wölfen)
• Max Frisch – An Answer from the Silence (Antwort aus der Stille)
• Zona Gale – Light Woman
• Witold Gombrowicz – Ferdydurke
• Ernest Hemingway – To Have and Have Not
• Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitlock – The Far-Distant Oxus
• Zora Neale Hurston – Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Michael Innes – Hamlet, Revenge!
• Franz Kafka (posthumously translated by Willa and Edwin Muir) – The Trial (first English translation of Der Process)
• Irmgard Keun – After Midnight (Nach Mitternacht)
• Kalki Krishnamurthy – Kalvaninn Kaadhali
• Halldór Laxness – Ljós heimsins (The Light of the World) — Part I, Heimsljós (World Light)
• Alexander Lernet-Holenia
  • Der Mann im Hut
  • Mona Lisa
• Meyer Levin – The Old Bunch
• A.E.W. Mason – The Drum
• Cameron McCabe – The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor
• Compton Mackenzie – The East Wind of Love (first in The Four Winds of Love series of six books)
• R. K. Narayan – The Bachelor of Arts
• Elliot Paul – Life and Death of a Spanish Town
• Robert Prechtl – Titanic
• Ellery Queen – The Door Between
• "Kurban Said" – Ali und Nino
• Ruth Sawyer – Roller Skates
• Dorothy L. Sayers – Busman's Honeymoon
• Bruno Schulz – Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą)
• Naoya Shiga (志賀 直哉) – A Dark Night's Passing (暗夜行路, An'ya Kōro)
• Olaf Stapledon – Star Maker
• John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
• Rex Stout – The Red Box
• Antal Szerb – Journey by Moonlight (Utas és holdvilág)
• Phoebe Atwood Taylor
  • Figure Away
  • Octagon House
  • Beginning with a Bash (as by Alice Tilton)
• Mika Waltari – A Stranger Came to the Farm (Vieras mies tuli taloon)
• Winifred Watson – Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
• Charles Williams – Descent into Hell
• Virginia Woolf – The Years

Children and young people

• Enid Blyton – The Adventures of the Wishing-Chair
• C. S. Forester – The Happy Return (also as Beat to Quarters)
• Eve Garnett – The Family from One End Street
• Kornel Makuszyński – Awantura o Basię (Argument about Basia)
• Carola Oman – Robin Hood
• Arthur Ransome – We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea
• Kate Seredy – The White Stag
• J. R. R. Tolkien – The Hobbit
• Henry Winterfeld (as Manfred Michael) – Timpetill – Die Stadt ohne Eltern (Timpetill – Parentless City, translated 1963 as Trouble at Timpetill)
• Laura Ingalls Wilder – On the Banks of Plum Creek

Drama

• Bertolt Brecht with Margarete Steffin – Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar(adapted from J. M. Synge's Señora Carrar's Rifles)
• Karel Čapek – The White Disease (Bílá nemoc)
• Paul Vincent Carroll – Shadow and Substance
• Arthur Kober – "Having Wonderful Time"
• Robert McLellan – Jamie the Saxt
• Robert Morley – Goodness, How Sad
• J. B. Priestley – Time and the Conways
• Hella Wuolijoki writing as Juhani Tervapää – Juurakon Hulda
• John Ferguson, editor – Seven Famous One-Act Plays (published)

Non-fiction

• Oscar Bagnall – The Origin and Properties of the Human Aura
• Hilaire Belloc – The Crusades: the World's Debate
• Alf K. Berle and L. Sprague de Camp – Inventions and Their Management
• Robert Byron – The Road to Oxiana
• Manuel Chaves Nogales – A sangre y fuego: Héroes, bestias y mártires de España (Fire and sword: heroes, beasts and martyrs of Spain)
• Napoleon Hill – Think and Grow Rich
• Walter Lippmann – The Good Society
• George Orwell – The Road to Wigan Pier
• Eric Partridge – A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

Births

• January 1 – John Fuller, English poet
• January 7 – Ian La Frenais, English TV comedy writer
• January 8 – Leon Forrest, African American novelist and essayist
• January 9 – Judith Krantz, American novelist
• January 13 – Jean D'Costa, Jamaican children's novelist
• January 22 – Joseph Wambaugh, American mystery novelist and non-fiction writer
• January 23 – Juan Radrigán, Chilean playwright (died 2016)
• February 11 – Maryse Condé, Guadeloupe historical fiction writer
• February 21 – Jilly Cooper, English novelist and journalist
• March 15 – Valentin Rasputin, Russian writer (died 2015)
• April 10 – Bella Akhmadulina, Russian poet (died 2010)
• April 29 – Jill Paton Walsh (Gillian Bliss), English novelist
• May 8 – Thomas Pynchon, American novelist
• May 13
  • Roger Zelazny, American writer of fantasy and science fiction
  • Roch Carrier, Canadian novelist and short-story writer
• June 1 – Colleen McCullough, Australian novelist (died 2015)
• June 16 – Erich Segal, American novelist (died 2010)
• July 3 – Tom Stoppard (Tomáš Straussler), Czech-born English dramatist
• August 5 – Carla Lane (Romana Barrack), English comedy writer
• August 19
  • Richard Ingrams, English editor
  • Alexander Vampilov, Russian dramatist (drowned 1972)
• September 5 – Dick Clement, English TV comedy writer
• October 4 – Jackie Collins, English-born romance novelist (died 2015)
• October 7 – Christopher Booker, English journalist and editor
• November 9 – Roger McGough, English poet
• November 17 – Peter Cook, English comedian, satirist and writer (died 1995)
• December 3 – Binod Bihari Verma, Maithili man of letters
• December 11 – Jim Harrison, American novelist and poet
• December 22
  • David F. Case, American novelist and short story writer
  • Charlotte Lamb (Sheila Holland, Sheila Coates, etc.), English romantic novelist (died 2000)
• Unknown dates
  • Jan Karon (Janice Wilson), American novelist and children's writer
  • Parijat (Bishnu Kumari Waiba), Nepalese novelist and poet (died 1993)

Deaths

• February 19
  • Edward Garnett, English critic (born 1868)
  • Horacio Quiroga, Uruguayan short story writer (suicide, born 1878)
• March 7 – Tomas O'Crohan, Irish Gaelic writer and fisherman (born 1856)
• March 8 – Albert Verwey, Dutch poet (born 1865)
• March 15 – H. P. Lovecraft, American horror writer (intestinal cancer, born 1890)
• March 25 – John Drinkwater, poet and dramatist (born 1882)
• May 20 – Frederic Taber Cooper, American editor and writer (born 1864)
• June 13 – William F. Lloyd, English-born Newfoundland journalist and prime minister (born 1864)
• June 19 – J. M. Barrie, Scottish novelist and dramatist (born 1860)
• June 22 – Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Malagasy poet (suicide, born 1901 or 1903)
• July 18 – Julian Bell, English poet (killed in Spanish Civil War, born 1908)
• August 11 – Edith Wharton (Edith Newbold Jones), American novelist and short-story writer (born 1862)
• August 14 – H. C. McNeile (Sapper), English novelist and soldier (born 1888)
• September 13 – Ellis Parker Butler, American novelist and essayist (born 1869)
• October 16 – Jean de Brunhoff, French children's author and illustrator (born 1899)
• October 17 – Florence Dugdale, English children's writer, widow of Thomas Hardy (cancer, born 1879)^[11]
• October 22 – Chūya Nakahara (中原 中也), Japanese poet (meningitis, born 1907)
• October 31 – Ralph Connor, Canadian novelist (born 1860)
• December 24 – Elizabeth Haldane, Scottish author, philosopher and suffragist (born 1862)
• December 26 – Ivor Gurney, English war poet and composer (tuberculosis, born 1890)
• December 29 – Don Marquis, American poet (stroke, born 1878)
• Unknown date – W. F. Harvey, English short-story writer (born 1885)

Awards

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Eve Garnett, The Family From One End Street
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Neil M. Gunn, Highland River
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Lord Eustace Percy, John Knox
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Ruth Sawyer, Roller Skates
• Nobel Prize for literature: Roger Martin du Gard
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, You Can't Take It with You
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Frost: A Further Range
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Margaret Mitchell – Gone with the Wind
• King's Gold Medal for Poetry: W. H. Auden

References