1937 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 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 London, the first play to be written for television.
February 6 – John Steinbeck's novella of the Great Depression, Of Mice and Men, appears in the United States.
April – The 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 television broadcast of a Shakespeare piece. The cast includes Peggy Ashcroft and Greer Garson.
May 21 – Penguin Books in the U.K. launches Pelican Books, a sixpenny paperback non-fiction imprint, with a two-volume edition of George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.
June
*The British science fiction magazine Tales of Wonder first appears.
*John Cowper Powys visits Sycharth, birthplace of Owain Glyndŵr, which inspires his 1940 novel Owen Glendower.
June 30 – The New England Quarterly prints poems by a colonial American pastor, Edward Taylor, discovered by Thomas H. Johnson.
Summer – American-born writer Thomas Quinn Curtiss meets German-born novelist Klaus Mann in Europe and they start a relationship.
July
*Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany is established around the Goethe Oak.
*Rex Ingamells and other poets initiate the Jindyworobak Movement in Australian literature, in the magazine Venture.
*The American academic librarian Randolph Greenfield Adams writes a controversial Library Quarterly essay, "Librarians as Enemies of Books", complaining of librarians downgrading books and scholarship in favor of other tasks.
July 4 – The Lost Colony a historical drama by Paul Green, is first performed at an outdoor theater in the place 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 U.S. The Saturday Evening Post as "The Place of the Gods".
September 10 – The Soviet playwright Sergei Tretyakov commits suicide while under sentence of death at Butyrka prison in Moscow as part of the Great Purge.
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 – The French playwright Antonin Artaud is expelled from Ireland.
October 6 – The fictional Mrs. Miniver appears in a column on domestic life by Jan Struther for The Times, London.
November 11
*BBC Television broadcasts Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff, 1928, set on the Western Front (World War I) in 1918, as the first full-length television adaptation of a stage play. Reginald Tate plays the lead, having long performed it in the theatre.
*Caesar, Orson Welles's modern-dress bare-stage adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, premieres as the first production of the Mercury Theatre in New York City.
December 21 – Dr. Seuss's first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, is published by Vanguard Press.
unknown dates
*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

Births

January 1 – John Fuller, English poet
January 7 – Ian La Frenais, English television 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 14 – J. Bernlef, born Hendrik Jan Marsman, Dutch poet, novelist and translator
January 22 – Joseph Wambaugh, American mystery novelist and non-fiction writer
January 23 – Juan Radrigán, Chilean playwright
February 7 – Doris Gercke, German writer
February 11 – Maryse Condé, Guadeloupe historical fiction writer
February 20 – George Leonardos, Greek journalist and novelist
February 21 – Jilly Cooper, English author and journalist
February 24 – Sonallah Ibrahim, Egyptian writer
February 27 – Peter Hamm, German poet, author, journalist, editor and literary critic
March 14 – Jan Karon, American novelist and children's writer
March 15 – Valentin Rasputin, Russian writer
March 20 – Lois Lowry, American children's and young-adult writer
April 10 – Bella Akhmadulina, Russian poet
April 29 – Jill Paton Walsh, English novelist
May 8 – Thomas Pynchon, American novelist
May 13
*Roch Carrier, Canadian novelist and short-story writer
*Roger Zelazny, American writer of fantasy and science fiction
May 20 – Maria Teresa Horta, Portuguese feminist poet, novelist, journalist and activist
June 1 – Colleen McCullough, Australian novelist
June 16 – Erich Segal, American novelist
July 3 – Tom Stoppard, Czech-born English dramatist
July 6 – Bessie Head, South African-born Botswanan fiction writer
August 3 – Peter van Gestel, Dutch writer
August 5 – Carla Lane, English comedy writer
August 19
*Richard Ingrams, English editor
*Alexander Vampilov, Russian dramatist
September 5 – Dick Clement, English television comedy writer
September 23 – Jacques Poulin, Canadian novelist
September 26 – Marina Colasanti, Brazilian writer
October 4 – Jackie Collins, English-born romance novelist
October 7 – Christopher Booker, English journalist and editor
November 9
*Roger McGough, English poet
*S. Abdul Rahman, Tamil poet
November 17 – Peter Cook, English comedian, satirist and writer
December 11 – Jim Harrison, American novelist and poet
December 22
*David F. Case, American novelist and short story writer
*Charlotte Lamb, English romantic novelist
unknown date – Parijat, Nepalese novelist and poet

Deaths

January 5 – Alberto de Oliveira, Brazilian poet
January 11 – Emma A. Cranmer, American author, reformer, suffragist
February 19
*Edward Garnett, English critic
*Horacio Quiroga, Uruguayan short story writer
March 7 – Tomas O'Crohan, Irish Gaelic writer and fisherman
March 8 – Albert Verwey, Dutch poet
March 15 – H. P. Lovecraft, American horror writer
March 25 – John Drinkwater, English poet and dramatist
May 20 – Frederic Taber Cooper, American editor and writer
June 4 – W. F. Harvey, English horror-story writer
June 13 – William F. Lloyd, English-born Newfoundland journalist and prime minister
June 19 – J. M. Barrie, Scottish novelist and dramatist
June 22 – Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Malagasy poet
July 18 – Julian Bell, English poet
July 29 — Ella Maria Ballou, American writer
August 11 – Edith Wharton, American novelist and short-story writer
August 14 – H. C. McNeile, English novelist and soldier
September 13 – Ellis Parker Butler, American humorist, novelist and essayist
October 13 – Dmitrii Milev, Soviet Moldovan shorty story writer and critic
October 15 – Samuil Lehtțir, Soviet Moldovan poet, critic and literary theorist
October 16 – Jean de Brunhoff, French children's author and illustrator
November 3 – Mykola Kulish, Ukrainian writer
November 3 – Mykola Zerov, Ukrainian poet, translator, classical and literary scholar and critic
November 3 – Valerian Pidmohylny, Ukrainian writer,
November 3 – Hryhorii Epik, Ukrainian writer and journalist
November 3 – Myroslav Irchan, Ukrainian storywriter and playwright
October 17 – Florence Dugdale, English children's writer, widow of Thomas Hardy
October 22 – Chūya Nakahara, Japanese poet
October 31 – Ralph Connor, Canadian novelist
c. December – Filimon Săteanu, Soviet Moldovan poet
December 9 – Frances Nimmo Greene, American novelist, short story writer, children's writer, playwright
December 24 – Elizabeth Haldane, Scottish author, philosopher and suffragist
December 26
December 29 – Don Marquis, American poet
unknown date — Clara H. Hazelrigg, American author, educator and reformer

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 in 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

1937 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards