1955 in literature

Events

April 16 – U.K. theatrical release of Sir Laurence Olivier's film version of Shakespeare's Richard III.

July 10 – Jorge Luis Borges is appointed Director of the National Library of the Argentine Republic.

July 14 – Director Stephen Joseph establishes Britain's first theatre in the round at Scarborough, North Yorkshire, predecessor of the Stephen Joseph Theatre.

July 30 – English poet Philip Larkin, having taken up the post of University Librarian at the University of Hull in March, makes a train journey from Hull to Grantham which inspires his poem The Whitsun Weddings. His collection The Less Deceived is published in November (dated October).

August 3 – English language premiere of Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot, directed by Peter Hall, opens at the Arts Theatre, London.

August 27 – First hardback edition of The Guinness Book of Records published in London.

September – Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is published in Paris; however, it takes until 1958 to be published in the United States.

November – Frank Herbert's first novel, The Dragon in the Sea, begins its 3-part serialization as Under Pressure in the monthly Astounding Science-Fiction.

November 28 – Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll receives its stage première by the Union Theatre Repertory Company in Melbourne with the playwright in a leading rôle; this is influential as the first authentically naturalistic modern drama in the theatre of Australia.

Jean Cocteau is elected to both the Académie française (March 3; inducted October 20) and the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (January 8; inducted October 1).

An article in the British Journal of Education criticises the novels of Enid Blyton as formula fiction.

Guru Mani Madhava Chakyar performs Koodiyattam outside the temple for the first time.

Fiction

Kingsley Amis – That Uncertain Feeling

Isaac Asimov

The End of Eternity

The Martian Way and Other Stories

Elisabeth Augustin – Labyrinth (Auswege)

Antoine Blondin – L'Humeur vagabonde

Leigh Brackett – The Long Tomorrow

Ray Bradbury – The October Country

Henry Cecil – Brothers in Law

Louis-Ferdinand Céline – Conversations with Professor Y (Entretiens avec le professeur Y)

Agatha Christie – Hickory Dickory Dock

Arthur C. Clarke – Earthlight

Ivy Compton-Burnett – Mother and Son

Thomas B. Costain – The Tontine

Marco Denevi – Rosaura a las 10 (Rosaura at 10 O'Clock)

Patrick Dennis – Auntie Mame

John Dickson Carr – Captain Cut-Throat

J. P. Donleavy – The Ginger Man

Friedrich Dürrenmatt – Once a Greek (Grieche sucht Griechin)

Ian Fleming – Moonraker

Franquin – La Corne de rhinocéros

William Gaddis – The Recognitions

David Garnett – Aspects of Love

William Golding – The Inheritors

Graham Greene

The Quiet American

Loser Takes All

Henri René Guieu

L'Agonie du Verre

Commandos de l'Espace

Univers parallèles

Robert A. Heinlein – Tunnel in the Sky

Georgette Heyer – Bath Tangle

Patricia Highsmith – The Talented Mr. Ripley

Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp – Tales of Conan

Aldous Huxley – The Genius and the Goddess

Mac Hyman – No Time for Sergeants

Dan Jacobson – The Trap

Robin Jenkins – The Cone Gatherers

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala – To Whom She Will

MacKinlay Kantor – Andersonville

Nikos Kazantzakis – The Last Temptation of Christ (O Teleutaios Peirasmos)

Yaşar Kemal – Memed, My Hawk (İnce Memed)

Józef Mackiewicz

Droga donikąd (The Road to Nowhere)

Karierowicz

Alistair Maclean – HMS Ulysses

Norman Mailer – The Deer Park

Gabriel García Márquez

The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (Relato de un náufrago)

Leaf Storm (La Hojarasca)

J. J. Marric – Gideon's Day

Brian Moore – The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita

Flannery O'Connor

Good Country People

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

John O'Hara – Ten North Frederick

Pier Paolo Pasolini – Ragazzi di vita

Anthony Powell – The Acceptance World

Marin Preda – Moromeții, Vol. 1

Barbara Pym – Less than Angels

Alain Robbe-Grillet – Le Voyeur

Robert Ruark – Something of Value

Juan Rulfo – Pedro Páramo

Françoise Sagan – Bonjour Tristesse (English translation)

'Michael Scarrott' (A. S. T. Fisher) – Ambassador of Loss

Isaac Bashevis Singer – Satan in Goray

Rex Stout – Before Midnight

Jim Thompson – After Dark, My Sweet

Morton Thompson – Not As a Stranger

J. R. R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King

Evelyn Waugh – Officers and Gentlemen

Patrick White – The Tree of Man

Leonard Wibberley – The Mouse That Roared

Sloan Wilson – The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Herman Wouk – Marjorie Morningstar

John Wyndham – The Chrysalids

Children and young people

Paul Berna – Le Cheval sans tête (Horse without a Head, translated as A Hundred Million Francs)

Crockett Johnson – Harold and the Purple Crayon

C. S. Lewis – The Magician's Nephew

William Mayne – A Swarm in May

Janet McNeill – My Friend Specs McCann

Iona and Peter Opie – The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book

Philippa Pearce – Minnow on the Say

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings – The Secret River (posthumous)

Barbara Sleigh – Carbonel: The King of the Cats

Catherine Storr – Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf

E. C. Spykman – A Lemon and a Star

Patricia Wrightson – The Crooked Snake

Eva-Lis Wuorio – Return of the Viking

Drama

Enid Bagnold – The Chalk Garden

Samuel Beckett – Waiting for Godot (English version)

Bertolt Brecht – Trumpets and Drums (Pauken und Trompeten; adaptation of Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer (1706))

Alice Childress – Trouble in Mind

William Inge – Bus Stop

Eugène Ionesco

Jack, or The Submission (Jacques ou la soumission)

The New Tenant (Le Nouveau locataire)

Kol Jakova – Toka jonë (Our Land)

Ray Lawler – Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee – Inherit the Wind

Arthur Miller

A View from the Bridge (one-act verse version)

A Memory of Two Mondays

Reginald Rose – Twelve Angry Men (stage version)

Jean-Paul Sartre – Nekrassov

Ariano Suassuna – O Auto da Compadecida (The Compassionate Self)

Thornton Wilder

The Matchmaker

A Life in the Sun

Tennessee Williams – Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Carl Zuckmayer – The Cold Light (Das kalte Licht)

Poetry

Philip Larkin – The Less Deceived

R.S. Thomas – Song at the Year's Turning

Non-fiction

Richard Aldington – Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry

James Baldwin – Notes of a Native Son

Ivan Bunin – About Chekhov

Thomas E. Gaddis – Birdman of Alcatraz

Robert Graves – The Greek Myths

The Guinness Book of Records, 1st edition

T. E. Lawrence (352087 A/c Ross; died 1935) – The Mint: A day-book of the R.A.F. Depot between August and December 1922, with later notes (written 1928; 1st trade edition)

C. S. Lewis – Surprised by Joy

Walter Lippmann – Essays in the Public Philosophy

Walter Lord – A Night to Remember

Herbert Marcuse – Eros and Civilization

Alan Marshall – I Can Jump Puddles

Garrett Mattingly – Renaissance Diplomacy

Meher Baba – God Speaks

J. H. Plumb – Studies in Social History

RAND – A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates

Births

January 11 – Max Lucado, American religious writer

January 12 – Rockne S. O'Bannon, American writer and producer

January 13 – Jay McInerney, American novelist

January 27 – Alexander Stuart, English-born American novelist and screenwriter

February 2 – Leszek Engelking, Polish poet, fiction writer and translator

February 8 – John Grisham, American novelist

February 17 – Mo Yan, Chinese fiction writer

March 19 – John Burnside, Scottish poet and fiction writer

March 23 – Lloyd Jones, New Zealand novelist

March 27 – Patrick McCabe, Irish novelist

April 8 – Barbara Kingsolver, American novelist, essayist and poet

May 30 – Colm Tóibín, Irish novelist, playwright and poet

June 4 – Val McDermid, Scottish crime novelist

June 16 – J. Jill Robinson, Canadian fiction writer

June 20 – Tor Nørretranders, Danish science author

July 1

Candia McWilliam, Scottish fiction writer

Lisa Scottoline, American writer of legal thrillers

July 5 – Mia Couto (António Emílio Leite Couto), Mozambican writer

July 6

Michael Boyd, British theatre director

William Wall, Irish author and poet

August 2 – Caleb Carr, American writer

August 7 – Vladimir Sorokin, Russian writer

September 6 – Raymond Benson, American novelist

September 13 – Hiromi Itō (伊藤 比呂美), Japanese poet, essayist and translator

October 19 – Jason Shinder, American poet and editor (died 2008)

November 12 – Katharine Weber, American author and academic

November 23 – Steven Brust, American fantasy author

December 28 – Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波), Chinese critic, writer and activist

Unknown date – Wang Xiaoni (王小妮), Chinese poet

Deaths

January 20 – Robert P. Tristram Coffin, American poet, essayist and novelist (born 1892)

February 23 – Paul Claudel, French poet, dramatist and diplomat (born 1868)

April 10 – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French philosopher and essayist (born 1881)

May 16 – James Agee, American writer (born 1909)

June 6 – Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, English crime writer (born 1883)

June 17 – Constance Holme, English novelist and dramatist (born 1880)

June 19 – Adrienne Monnier, French poet and publisher (born 1892)

June 21 – Roger Mais, Jamaican novelist (born 1905)

June 30 – Gilbert Cannan, British writer (born 1884)

July 3 – Beatrice Chase, English writer (born 1874)

August 1 – Charles Shaw, Australian writer (born 1900)

August 2 – Wallace Stevens, American poet (born 1879)

August 12 – Thomas Mann, German novelist (born 1875)

August 14 – Herbert Putnam, American Librarian of Congress (born 1861)

August 29 – Hong Shen (洪深), Chinese dramatist (born 1894)

September 20 – Robert Riskin, American dramatist and screenwriter (born 1897)

October 18 – José Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher (born 1883)

November 1 – Dale Carnegie, American writer (born 1888)

November 12 – Tin Ujević, Croatian poet (born 1891)

November 14

Ruby M. Ayres, English romance novelist (born 1881)

Robert E. Sherwood, American playwright (born 1896)

December – Al. T. Stamatiad, Romanian poet (born 1885)

Awards

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Eleanor Farjeon, The Little Bookroom

Frost Medal: Leona Speyer

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Ivy Compton-Burnett, Mother and Son

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: R. W. Ketton-Cremer, Thomas Gray

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Meindert DeJong, The Wheel on the School

Nobel Prize for Literature: Halldór Kiljan Laxness

Premio Nadal: Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, El Jarama

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: William Faulkner, A Fable

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems

Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Ruth Pitter

In literature

Ian McEwan's novel The Innocent (1990)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel Cancer Ward (1967)

Colin Wilson's novel Adrift in Soho (1961)

Richard Yates's novel Revolutionary Road (1961)