1957 in literature

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The year 1957 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Lawrence Durrell publishes the first volume of The Alexandria Quartet. The final of the four volumes will be published in 1960.
• Dorothy Parker begins writing book reviews for Esquire.
• E. E. Cummings receives a special citation from the National Book Award Committee for his Poems, 1923-1954.
• Italo Calvino resigns from the Communist Party. His famous letter of resignation is published in L'Unità.
• John Updike moves to Ipswich, Massachusetts, the model for the fictional New England town of Tarbox in his novel, Couples.
• The Last Days of Sodom, a novel jointly written by Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, is rejected. As a result they give up working in partnership.
• Malcolm Muggeridge is replaced by Bernard Hollowood as editor of Punch magazine.
• Copies of Howl are seized by customs officials. Later in the year, the publishers are acquitted of obscenity charges stemming from the incident.

New books

• Caridad Bravo Adams - Corazón salvaje
• Isaac Asimov
  • Earth is Room Enough
  • The Naked Sun
• John Braine - Room at the Top
• Fredric Brown - Rogue in Space
• Pearl S. Buck - Letter from Peking
• Michel Butor - La Modification
• John Dickson Carr - Fire, Burn!
• John Cheever - The Wapshot Chronicle
• Agatha Christie - 4.50 from Paddington
• Mark Clifton & Frank Riley - They'd Rather Be Right
• Thomas B. Costain - Below the Salt
• James Gould Cozzens - By Love Possessed
• L. Sprague de Camp - Solomon's Stone
• Daphne du Maurier - The Scapegoat
• Lawrence Durrell - Justine
• Ian Fleming
  • The Diamond Smugglers
  • From Russia with Love
• Aldous Huxley - Collected Short Stories
• James Jones - Some Came Running
• Anna Kavan - Eagle's Nest
• Jack Kerouac - On the Road
• Frances Parkinson Keyes - Blue Camellia
• Christopher Landon - Ice Cold in Alex
• Meyer Levin - Compulsion
• H. P. Lovecraft & August Derleth - The Survivor and Others
• Alistair MacLean
  • The Guns of Navarone
  • South by Java Head
• Naguib Mahfouz - Sugar Street
• Bernard Malamud - The Assistant
• Richard Mason - The World of Suzie Wong
• James A. Michener - Rascals in Paradise
• Nancy Mitford - Voltaire in Love
• C. L. Moore - Doomsday Morning
• Elsa Morante - L'isola di Arturo
• Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle
• Vladimir Nabokov - Pnin
• Björn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp - The Return of Conan
• Marcel Pagnol - Le Château de ma mère
• Boris Pasternak - Doctor Zhivago
• Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's
• Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged
• Robert Randall (pseudonym of Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett) - The Shrouded Planet
• Dr. Seuss - The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• Nevil Shute - On the Beach
• Robert Paul Smith - Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing
• Muriel Spark - The Comforters
• John Steinbeck - The Short Reign of Pippin IV
• Rex Stout
  • Three for the Chair
  • If Death Ever Slept
• Kay Thompson - Eloise in Paris
• Roger Vailland - La Loi
• Jack Vance - Big Planet
• Evelyn Waugh - The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold
• Patrick White - Voss
• Angus Wilson - A Bit Off the Map
• John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos
• Ivan Yefremov - Andromeda Nebula

New drama

• Samuel Beckett - Endgame and Act Without Words I (first performed); All That Fall and From an Abandoned Work (first broadcast of both)
• Christopher Fry - The Dark is Light Enough
• Jean Genet - The Balcony
• Graham Greene - The Potting Shed
• William Inge - The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
• Heiner Müller - The Correction
• John Osborne - The Entertainer and Epitaph for George Dillon
• Harold Pinter - The Dumb Waiter (written)
• N. F. Simpson - The Resounding Tinkle
• Tennessee Williams - Baby Doll and Orpheus Descending

Poetry

• Robert E. Howard - Always Comes Evening

Non-fiction

• Elisabeth Elliot — Through Gates of Splendor
• Northrop Frye — Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays
• Richard Hoggart — The Uses of Literacy
• Eric John Holmyard - Alchemy
• Primo Levi — If This Is a Man (Se Questo è un Uomo)
• Art Linkletter — Kids Say the Darndest Things
• Mary McCarthy — Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
• Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley — The Untouchables
• Jean-Paul Sartre — Existentialism and Human Emotions
• Rodolfo Walsh — Operación Masacre

Births

• March 26 - Paul Morley, music journalist
• May 17 - Peter Høeg, novelist
• May 23 - Craig Brown, satirist
• June 8 - Scott Adams, satirist
• August 24 - Stephen Fry, actor, comedian, television presenter and novelist
• September 22 - Nick Cave, musician and author
• December 11 - William Joyce, children's author
• date unknown
  • John Doyle, critic
  • Rainer Karlsch, historian
  • Mitchell Symons, journalist
  • Melanie Rae Thon, author
  • William S. Field, patent researcher

Deaths

• January 10 - Gabriela Mistral, poet (born 1889)
• February 10 - Laura Ingalls Wilder, author
• March 12 - John Middleton Murry, critic
• March 28 - Christopher Morley, journalist, novelist and poet
• March 29 - Joyce Cary, author
• April 22 - Roy Campbell, poet
• June 17 - Dorothy Richardson, novelist
• June 27 - Malcolm Lowry, author
• July 21 - Kenneth Roberts, novelist
• July 23 - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, novelist (born 1896)
• September 2 - William Craigie, lexicographer
• December 17 - Dorothy L. Sayers, crime novelist

Awards

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: William Mayne, A Grass Rope
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Maurice Cranston, Life of John Locke
• Miles Franklin Award: Patrick White, Voss
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Virginia Sorenson, Miracles on Maple Hill
• Nobel Prize for literature: Albert Camus
• Premio Nadal: Carmen Martín Gaite, Entre visillos
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey Into Night
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Richard Wilbur: Things of This World
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Siegfried Sassoon

See also

1956 in literature, other events of 1957, 1958 in literature, list of years in literature.