1954 in literature

Events

January – Kingsley Amis's first novel, the comic campus novel Lucky Jim, is published by Victor Gollancz Ltd in London.

January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: the first public demonstration of a machine translation system held in New York at the head office of IBM.

January 25 – First broadcast of Dylan Thomas's radio play Under Milk Wood, two months after its author's death, with Richard Burton as 'First Voice', on the BBC Third Programme in the United Kingdom.

February – The title The London Magazine is revived under the editorship of John Lehmann as a literary magazine.

March 31 – In Bucharest, A. L. Zissu is sentenced to life imprisonment for "conspiring against the social order"; a focal point of the anti-Zionist clampdown in Communist Romania.

May 29 – The newly rediscovered and restored early 17th century Corral de comedias de Almagro in Spain is reinaugurated with the performance of a play by Calderon de la Barca.

June 16 – The first public celebration of "Bloomsday" takes place in Dublin: writers Flann O'Brien, Patrick Kavanagh and Anthony Cronin travel in a horse-drawn coach stopping at numerous bars to retrace the steps of the characters from James Joyce's novel Ulysses.

June 22 – Parker–Hulme murder case: 15-year-old Julia Hulme, the future writer of English historical detective fiction Anne Perry, participates in the murder of her best friend's mother in Christchurch, New Zealand.

July – Publication of the first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's epic high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, by George Allen & Unwin in London. The Two Towers follows on November 11 and publication is completed in 1955. By 2007, 150 million copies will have been sold worldwide.

September 1 – Lawrence Quincy Mumford takes up the post of Librarian of Congress in the United States.

September 17 – William Golding's first published novel, the allegorical dystopian fiction Lord of the Flies, is published by Faber and Faber in London.

September 22 – Terence Rattigan's two linked one-act plays Separate Tables have their première at St James's Theatre, London.

November 19 – Brendan Behan's first play, The Quare Fellow, premières at the Pike Theatre, Dublin.

Jack Kerouac reads Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible (1932, found in San Jose library) which will influence him greatly.

John Updike graduates from Harvard with a thesis on George Herbert. This summer he travels on a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship to spend a year at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in the University of Oxford (England). His first short story for The New Yorker, "Friends from Philadelphia", is published on October 30.

Fiction

Kingsley Amis – Lucky Jim

Poul Anderson – The Broken Sword

Isaac Asimov – The Caves of Steel

James Baldwin – Go Tell It on the Mountain

Hamilton Basso – The View from Pompey's Head

Simone de Beauvoir – The Mandarins

Lucy M. Boston – Yew Hall

Pierre Boulle – The Bridge on the River Kwai (Le Pont de la rivière Kwai)

Taylor Caldwell – Never Victorious, Never Defeated

John Dickson Carr

The Third Bullet and Other Stories

The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (with Adrian Conan Doyle)

Agatha Christie – Destination Unknown

Robertson Davies – Leaven of Malice

Simone de Beauvoir – The Mandarins (Les Mandarins)

Daphne du Maurier – Mary Anne

Ian Fleming – Live and Let Die

Max Frisch – I'm Not Stiller (Stiller)

William Golding – Lord of the Flies

Hergé – Explorers on the Moon (On a marché sur la Lune)

Hwang Sun-won – The Descendants of Cain (카인의 후예)

Mac Hyman – No Time for Sergeants

Randall Jarrell – Pictures from an Institution: a comedy

Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成) – The Sound of the Mountain (Yama no Oto; serialization concludes)

Frances Parkinson Keyes – The Royal Box

Kalki Krishnamurthy

Amara Thara

Ponniyin Selvan (பொன்னியின் செல்வன், "The Son of Ponni"; publication concludes)

Manuel Mujica Láinez – La casa (The House)

Camara Laye – Le Regard du roi

Ira Levin – A Kiss Before Dying

Astrid Lindgren – Mio, My Son

Kamala Markandaya – Nectar in a Sieve

John Masters – Bhowani Junction

Richard Matheson – I Am Legend

John Metcalfe – The Feasting Dead

James A. Michener – Sayonara

Paul Morand – Hecate and Her Dogs

Alberto Moravia – Il disprezzo (A Ghost at Noon)

Iris Murdoch – Under the Net

Louis Pauwels – L'Amour monstre

J. B. Priestley – The Magicians

Marcel Proust – Jean Sauteuil (posthumously published)

Ellery Queen – The Glass Village

Pauline Réage – Story of O (Histoire d'O)

Mordecai Richler – The Acrobats

Lillian Roth – I'll Cry Tomorrow

Françoise Sagan – Bonjour Tristesse

Ahmed Sefrioui – La Boîte à merveilles

Anya Seton – Katherine

John Steinbeck – Sweet Thursday

Irving Stone – Love Is Eternal

Rex Stout

The Black Mountain

Three Men Out

Edward Streeter – Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar – Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü (The Time Regulation Institute)

Morton Thompson – Not as a Stranger

J. R. R. Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Amos Tutuola – My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

Tarjei Vesaas – Spring Night

Gore Vidal – Messiah

Douglass Wallop – The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant

Monique Watteau – La Colère végétale

Frank Yerby – Benton's Row

Children and young people

Viola Bayley – Paris Adventure (first in the Adventure series of 16 books)

Lucy M. Boston – The Children of Green Knowe (first in the Green Knowe series of six books)

Eleanor Cameron – The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet

Rumer Godden – Impunity Jane: The Story of a Pocket Doll

Joseph Krumgold – ...And Now Miguel

C. S. Lewis – The Horse and His Boy

Dr. Seuss – Horton Hears a Who!

Rosemary Sutcliff – The Eagle of the Ninth

Henry Treece

Legions of the Eagle

The Eagles Have Flown

Ronald Welch – Knight Crusader

Drama

Tawfiq al-Hakim – El Aydi El Na'mah (Soft Hands)

Brendan Behan – The Quare Fellow

Dharamvir Bharati – Andha Yug (The Blind Age)

Saunders Lewis – Siwan

Terence Rattigan – Separate Tables

Reginald Rose – Twelve Angry Men (original version as live teleplay)

Dylan Thomas – Under Milk Wood (radio play)

Thornton Wilder – The Matchmaker

Poetry

Tomas Tranströmer – 17 dikter (17 Poems)

Non-fiction

L. Sprague de Camp – Lost Continents

Rodney Collin – The Theory of Celestial Influence

Albert Einstein – Ideas and Opinions

Gerald Gardner – Witchcraft Today

Aldous Huxley – The Doors of Perception

Arthur Koestler – The Invisible Writing: The Second Volume Of An Autobiography, 1932–40

Mervyn Peake – Figures of Speech

Alice B. Toklas – The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook

William Kurtz Wimsatt, Jr. – Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (collected essays including "The Intentional Fallacy" and "The Affective Fallacy", cowritten with Monroe Beardsley)

Births

January 5 – László Krasznahorkai, Hungarian novelist and screenwriter

January 15 – Jose Dalisay, Jr., Filipino writer

January 29 – Oprah Winfrey, American actress and talk show host

January – Cao Wenxuan (曹文軒), Chinese children's book writer and academic

February 2 – Moniza Alvi, Pakistani-British poet and writer

March 4 – Irina Ratushinskaya, Russian writer

March 16 – S. A. Griffin, American actor and poet

March 20 – Louis Sachar, American children's author

April 14 – Bruce Sterling, American science-fiction writer

May 5 – Hamid Ismailov, Uzbek writer

May 23 – Anja Snellman, Finnish writer

June 6 – Cynthia Rylant, American children's author and poet

June 28 – A. A. Gill, British journalist and critic

July 17 – J. Michael Straczynski, American author

August 1 – James Gleick, American non-fiction author

August 17 – Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Russian-Irish writer

September 14 – Mikey Smith, Jamaican dub poet (killed 1983)

November 10 – Marlene van Niekerk, South African novelist

November 11 – Mary Gaitskill, American novelist, essayist and short story writer

November 12 – Christopher Pike (Kevin Christopher McFadden), American children's author

November 8 – Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese-born English novelist

December 3 – Grace Andreacchi, American author

December 7 – Mark Hofmann, American rare book dealer, forger and murderer

December 20 – Sandra Cisneros, American writer

Unknown dates

Esther Delisle, French Canadian author and historian

Ibrahim Nasrallah, Jordanian/Palestinian poet and novelist

Roma Tearne (Roma Chrysostom), Sri Lankan novelist and artist

Deaths

January 1 – Duff Cooper (1st Viscount Norwich), English poet, biographer and politician (born 1890)

January 21 – E. K. Chambers, English literary scholar (born 1866)

January 25 – M. N. Roy, Indian philosopher and politician (born 1887)

February 2 – Hella Wuolijoki, Estonian-born Finnish writer (born 1886)

February 6 – Maxwell Bodenheim, American poet and novelist (born 1892; murdered)

March 28 – Francis Brett Young, English novelist and poet (born 1884)

April 8

Juan Álvarez, Argentinian historian (born 1878)

Winnifred Eaton, Canadian author (born 1875)

Cicely Fox Smith, English poet and nautical writer (born 1882)

April 19 – Russell Davenport, American journalist and publisher (born 1899)

May 3 – Earnest Hooton, American writer on anthropology (born 1887)

June 18 – Constantin Beldie, Romanian literary promoter and memoirist (born 1887)

July 13 – Grantland Rice, American sportswriter (born 1880)

July 14 – Jacinto Benavente, Spanish dramatist and Nobel laureate (born 1866)

August 2 – Julián Padrón, Venezuelan novelist, journalist and lawyer (born 1910)

August 3 – Colette, French novelist (born 1873)

September 19 – Miles Franklin, Australian novelist (born 1879)

September 29 – W. J. Gruffydd, Welsh-language journal editor (born 1881)

October 22 – Oswald de Andrade, Brazilian poet and polemicist (born 1890)

December 6 – Lucien Tesnière, French grammarian (born 1893)

December 20 – James Hilton, English novelist (born 1900)

Awards

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Ronald Welch, Knight Crusader

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: C. P. Snow, The New Men and The Masters

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Keith Feiling, Warren Hastings

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Joseph Krumgold, ...And Now Miguel

Nobel Prize for Literature: Ernest Miller Hemingway

Premio Nadal: Francisco Alcántara, La muerte sienta bien a Villalobos

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: John Patrick, The Teahouse of the August Moon

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: no award given

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Theodore Roethke: TheWaking

Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Ralph Hodgson