American Literature timeline
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'Go Tell it on the Mountain' is Published
Go Tell It on the Mountain is filled with biblical references that evoke the spirit of the black church and a realism that brings to life the... Read more
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Ernest Hemingway Wins the Pulitzer Prize for Literature
Ernest Hemingway completes his short novel The Old Man and the Sea. He wrote his publisher the same day, saying he had finished the book and that... Read more
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Ernest Hemingway's Plane Crashes
In Africa he was seriously injured in two successive plane crashes: he sprained his right shoulder, arm, and left leg; had a concussion;... Read more
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'A Fable' Is Published
A Fable is a novel written in 1954 by the American author William Faulkner, which won him both the Pulitzer prize and the National Book Award in... Read more
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Ernest Hemingway Is Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
Stockholm, Sweden, Oct. 28--The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded today to Ernest Hemingway. The Swedish Academy, which presents this laurel,... Read more
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William Faulkner Is Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 'A Fable'
A Fable was conceived in 1943 during a discussion in wartime Hollywood among Faulkner, producer William Bacher, and director Henry Hathaway about a... Read more
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Lolita is Published in Paris
The novel's scandal-tinted history and its subject--the affair between a middle-aged sexual pervert and a twelve-year-old girl--inevitably conjure... Read more
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'The Town' Is Published
The Town (1957) is the second novel in the Snopes trilogy that began with The Hamlet (included in Novels 1936–1940). Here the rise of the rapacious... Read more
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'On The Road' is Published
The story is set in the late 1940s. told in the first person by Sal Paradise, a budding writer given to ecstasies about America, hot jazz, the... Read more
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'Atlas Shrugged' is Published
Atlas Shrugged (1957) is a mystery story, Ayn Rand once commented, "not about the murder of man’s body, but about the murder—and rebirth—of man’s... Read more
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Lolita is Published in the United States
Due to its subject matter, Nabokov was unable to find an American publisher for Lolita after finishing it in 1953. After four refusals, he finally... Read more
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'The Mansion' Is Published
The Mansion is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, written in 1959. It is the last in a trilogy of books about the fictional Snopes... Read more
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Ernest Hemingway Moves to Ketchum, Idaho
When he left Spain, Hemingway travelled straight to Idaho; but was worried about money and his safety. His paranoia became acute and he believed... Read more
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'To Kill A Mockingbird' is Published
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is the rare American novel that can be discovered with excitement in adolescence and reread into adulthood... Read more
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Life Magazine Publishes 'The Dangerous Summer'
The book charts the rise of Antonio Ordóñez (the son of Cayetano Ordóñez, whose exploits in the bull ring and fighting technique Hemingway had... Read more
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Ernest Hemingway Is Admitted to the Mayo Clinic
But even the beautiful landscapes of Idaho couldn’t hide the fact that something was seriously wrong with Hemingway. In the fall of 1960 Hemingway... Read more
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'Tropic of Cancer' is Published in the United States
In Tropic of Cancer he deals primarily with matters which, while not exactly left out of modern books, are usually slurred over, and in his pages... Read more
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Ernest Hemingway Commits Suicide
Three months later, at home in Ketchum, Mary "found Hemingway holding a shotgun". When his personal physician Dr. Saviers arrived, he was sedated... Read more
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'Catch-22' is Published
Like all superlative works of comedy - and I am ready to argue that this is one of the most bitterly funny works in the language - Catch-22 is... Read more
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'The Reivers' Is Published
The Reivers, published in 1962, is the last novel by the American author William Faulkner. The bestselling novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for... Read more
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William Faulkner Dies
Faulkner died on July 6, 1962, of a heart attack in Byhalia, Mississippi. He willed the major manuscripts and personal papers in his possession to... Read more
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William Faulkner Is Posthumously Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 'The Reivers'
William Faulkner's fictional chronicle of Yoknapatawpha County draws to a close in this Library of America edition of his last three novels, rich... Read more
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'A Moveable Feast' Is Published
Three years later the manuscript was published as "A Moveable Feast." The title apparently was chosen by Hemingway's widow, Mary, who recalled... Read more
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'Slaughterhouse-Five' is Published
For those who have never slipped down any of the special rabbit holes Kurt Vonnegut has been boring into the decaying flesh of the American Novel,... Read more
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'Portnoy's Complaint' is Published
Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933- )] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring... Read more