American Literature timeline

  • 'Islands In the Stream' Is Published

    The first act, "Bimini", begins with an introduction to the character of Thomas Hudson, a classic Hemingway stoic male figure. Hudson is a renowned... Read more

  • 'Gravity's Rainbow' is Published

    And now Gravity's Rainbow, which is V. squared and 49 cubed. It is a funny, disturbing, exhausting and massive novel, mind-fogging in its range and... Read more

  • Jack Henry Abbott is Captured in Louisiana

    Telling prison officials that Abbott had a promising career as a writer, Mailer offered to employ him as a researcher. On June 5, 1981, Abbott was... Read more

  • 'The Color Purple' is Published

    "The Color Purple" is foremost the story of Celie, a poor, barely literate Southern black woman who struggles to escape the brutality and... Read more

  • 'White Noise' is Published

    Gladney's hustle works in reverse; instead of enhancing trivialities with phony significance, he reduces the century's paramount expression of evil... Read more

  • 'Beloved' is Published

    ''I was amazed by this story I came across about a woman called Margaret Garner who had escaped from Kentucky, I think, into Cincinnati with four... Read more

  • Howard Zinn Dies

    Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as... Read more

  • J. D. Salinger Dies

    American novelist JD Salinger, author of classic 20th Century book The Catcher In The Rye, has died aged 91. The reclusive writer died of... Read more