1933 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1933.

Events

• February 17 – The magazine News-Week is published for the first time in New York.
• March 8 – Première of Federico García Lorca's play Blood Wedding (Bodas de Sangre) at the Teatro Beatriz in Madrid.
• May – Nazi book burnings in Germany by the German Student Union, principally of works by Jewish intellectuals, leading to an Exilliteratur. Although his novels are spared (unlike those of his brother Heinrich Mann), Thomas Mann settles in Switzerland. Lion Feuchtwanger, on a lecture tour of the United States in January, has decided not to return to Germany; Bertolt Brecht has moved to Prague in February; and Alfred Döblin to Switzerland in March.
• May 16–May 17 – In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin orders the NKVD to "preserve but isolate" Osip Mandelstam, after having been informed of the "Stalin Epigram"; Mandelstam is then arrested. A protest by literary figures, including Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak, prompts Stalin to declare that he might "review the case" (he never will). His admiration for Pasternak as a poetic genius is strengthened when the latter asks for a private meeting to discuss "life and death"—although he never grants it, he instructs the NKVD to "leave that cloud-dweller [Pasternak] alone".^[1]
• June – W. H. Auden has his "Vision of Agape".^[2]
• July – Poedjangga Baroe, the Indonesian avant-garde literary magazine, is first published, by Armijn Pane, Amir Hamzah and Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana.
• October 8 – The General Union of Roma in Romania is set up by writer G. A. Lăzăreanu-Lăzurică, with Grigoraș Dinicu as honorary president; by 1934, it publishes the Romani-language newspaper O Ròm, and books of Romani mythology, edited by Constantin S. Nicolăescu-Plopșor.^[3]
• December
  • Codex Sinaiticus sold by the Soviet Union to the British Museum Library through the agency of Maggs Bros Ltd at a price of £100,000, the highest ever paid for a book at this time.
  • Raymond Chandler's first short story, the hardboiled detective fiction "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", is published in the magazine Black Mask in the United States.
• December 6 – In United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey rules that James Joyce's novel Ulysses is not as a whole pornographic and therefore cannot not be obscene.^[4]
• The name Inklings is taken by an informal literary discussion group at Oxford.

New books

Fiction

• Hervey Allen – Anthony Adverse
• Jorge Amado – Cacau (Cacao)
• Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie – When Worlds Collide
• Marjorie Bowen – The Last Bouquet: Some Twilight Tales
• Pearl S. Buck
  • All Men Are Brothers (translation of Water Margin)
  • Sons
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan and the City of Gold
• Dino Buzzati – Bàrnabo delle montagne
• Erskine Caldwell – God's Little Acre
• John Dickson Carr – The Mad Hatter Mystery
• Leslie Charteris – Once More the Saint (also The Saint and Mr. Teal)
• Agatha Christie
  • The Hound of Death
  • Lord Edgware Dies
• A. J. Cronin – Grand Canary
• Warwick Deeping – Two Black Sheep
• Guy Endore – The Werewolf of Paris
• Susan Ertz – The Proselyte
• Miles Franklin – Bring the Monkey
• Zona Gale – Papa La Fleur
• Erle Stanley Gardner – The Case of the Sulky Girl
• Matila Ghyka – Pluie d'étoiles
• Walter Greenwood – Love on the Dole
• Dashiell Hammett
  • The Thin Man
  • Woman In The Dark
• Robert Hichens – The Paradine Case^[5]
• James Hilton
  • Knight Without Armour
  • Lost Horizon
• Volter Kilpi – Alastalon salissa (In the Parlour at Alastalo)
• Pär Lagerkvist – Bödeln (The Hangman; novella)
• Arthur Machen – The Green Round
• Claude McKay – Banana Bottom
• André Malraux – Man's Fate (La Condition humaine)
• Ellery Queen
  • The American Gun Mystery
  • The Siamese Twin Mystery
• Raymond Queneau – Le Chiendent
• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings – South Moon Under
• E. Arnot Robertson – Ordinary Families
• Dorothy L. Sayers
  • Hangman's Holiday (short stories)
  • Murder Must Advertise
• Bruno Schulz – The Street of Crocodiles (short stories, published as Sklepy cynamonowe, "Cinnamon Shops", in December, dated 1934)
• Nan Shepherd – A Pass in the Grampians
• Gertrude Stein – The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
• Phoebe Atwood Taylor – The Mystery of the Cape Cod Players
• Angela Thirkell – High Rising
• Thomas F. Tweed – Rinehard: a melodrama of the nineteen-thirties
• S. S. Van Dine – The Kennel Murder Case
• Helen Waddell – Peter Abelard
• Hugh Walpole – Vanessa
• H. G. Wells – The Shape of Things to Come
• Franz Werfel – The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh)
• Dennis Wheatley – The Forbidden Territory
• Antonia White – Frost in May
• Virginia Woolf – Flush: A Biography

Children and young people

• Marjorie Flack – The Story about Ping
• Norman Hunter – The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm (first in Professor Branestawm series)
• Elizabeth Foreman Lewis – Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze
• Arthur Ransome – Winter Holiday
• Dorothy Wall – Blinky Bill: the Quaint Little Australian (first in the Blinky Bill series of three books)

Drama

• Tawfiq al-Hakim – Ahl el-Kahf (The People of the Cave)
• Jean Anouilh – Mandarine
• Ferdinand Bruckner – Die Rassen
• Gordon Daviot (Josephine Tey) – Richard of Bordeaux
• Selli Engler – Heil Hitler
• Sidney Kingsley – Men in White
• Federico García Lorca – Blood Wedding
• Eugene O'Neill – Ah, Wilderness!
• J. B. Priestley – Laburnum Grove
• Lennox Robinson – Drama at Inish
• Mordaunt Shairp – The Green Bay Tree

Poetry

• Edwin James Brady – Wardens of the Seas
• Benjamin Fondane – Ulysse
• Osip Mandelstam – "Stalin Epigram"
• Vita Sackville-West – Collected Poems
• Filip Shiroka – Zâni i zêmrës
• J. Slauerhoff – Soleares
• William Butler Yeats – The Winding Stair and Other Poems

Non-fiction

• Vera Brittain – Testament of Youth
• Benjamin Fondane – Rimbaud le voyou
• Carl Jung – Modern Man in Search of a Soul
• Agnes Mure Mackenzie – An Historical Survey of Scottish Literature to 1714
• George Orwell – Down and Out in Paris and London
• Muiris Ó Súilleabháin (Maurice O'Sullivan) – Fiche Bliain ag Fás (Twenty Years a-Growing)
• Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎) – In Praise of Shadows (陰翳礼讃, essay on aesthetics)

Births

• January 1 – Joe Orton, English playwright (murdered 1967)
• January 9 – Wilbur Smith, South African novelist
• January 16 – Susan Sontag (Susan Rosenblatt), American novelist (died 2004)
• February 1 – Reynolds Price, American novelist and literary scholar (died 2011)
• February 5 – B. S. Johnson, English novelist (died 1973)
• February 12 – Costa-Gavras (Konstantinos Gavras), Greek-French film director and writer
• February 22 – Christopher Ondaatje, Ceylonese-born English travel writer, biographer and philanthropist
• February 27 – Edward Lucie-Smith, Jamaican-born English writer, critic and broadcaster
• March 17 – Penelope Lively (Penelope Low), Egyptian-born English novelist
• March 19 – Philip Roth, American novelist
• April 14 – Boris Strugatsky, Russian sci-fi writer
• April 24 – Patricia Bosworth, American writer/biographer
• May 9 – Jessica Steele, English romance novelist
• May 10 – Barbara Taylor Bradford (Barbara Taylor), English-born American novelist
• May 29 – Edward Whittemore, American novelist (died 1995)
• June 20 – Claire Tomalin (Claire Delavenay), English journalist and biographer
• July 2 – John Antrobus, English playwright and scriptwriter
• July 4 – David Littman, English historian (died 2012)
• July 10 – Kevin Gilbert, Australian writer and artist (died 1993)
• July 14 – Solange Fasquelle, French novelist (died 2016)
• July 20 – Cormac McCarthy, American author
• July 21 – John Gardner, American writer (died 1982)
• August – Ko Un (Ko Untae), South Korean poet
• August 13 – Madhur Jaffrey, Indian actress and food writer
• August 16 – Tom Maschler, Austrian-born English literary publisher
• September 9 – Michael Novak, American philosopher and author
• September 19 – Gilles Archambault, French Canadian novelist
• October 11 – David Daniels, American visual poet (died 2008)
• October 24 – Norman Rush, American writer
• November 13 – Peter Härtling, German novelist and poet
• December 2 – Kent Andersson, Swedish dramatist (died 2005)
• December 31 – Edward Bunker, American crime novelist (died 2005)
• Unknown date – Jim Barnes, Native American poet and translator

Deaths

• January 21 – George Moore, Irish poet and novelist (born 1852)
• January 29 – Sara Teasdale, American poet (born 1884; suicide)^[6]
• January 31 – John Galsworthy, English novelist and dramatist (born 1867)
• February 20 – Takiji Kobayashi (小林多喜二), Japanese writer (born 1903)
• April 5 – Earl Derr Biggers, American novelist and playwright (heart attack, born 1884)
• April 19 – E. W. Hobson, English writer on mathematics (born 1856)
• April 29 – Constantine Cavafy, Greek Alexandrine poet (born 1863)
• April 30 – Anna de Noailles, French writer (born 1876)
• May 26 – Horatio Bottomley, English journalist and fraudster (born 1860)
• June 7 – Dragutin Domjanić, Croatian poet (born 1875)
• July 8 – Anthony Hope (Anthony Hope Hawkins), English adventure novelist (born 1863)
• August 12 – Alexandru Philippide, Romanian linguist and polemicist (atherosclerosis, born 1859)
• September 20 – Annie Besant, English Theosophist writer (born 1847)
• September 23 – György Almásy, Hungarian travel writer (born 1867)
• September 25
  • Ring Lardner, American writer (born 1885)
  • Pascal Poirier, Canadian historian (born 1852)
• October 30 – Herminie Templeton Kavanagh, Anglo-Irish-American short story writer (born 1861?)
• November 12 – F. Holland Day, American publisher (born 1864)
• November 20 – Augustine Birrell, English politician and author (born 1850)
• November 28 – Minnie Earl Sears, American librarian (born 1873)
• December 4 – Stefan George, German poet and translator (born 1868)
• Unknown dates
  • Annie Armitt, English novelist and poet (born 1850)
  • Janet Milne Rae, Scottish novelist (born 1844)
  • Hugo Zöller, German explorer and journalist (born 1852)

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: A. G. Macdonell, England, Their England
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Violet Clifton, The Book of Talbot
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Foreman Lewis, Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze
• Nobel Prize for literature: Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Maxwell Anderson, Both Your Houses
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Archibald MacLeish: Conquistador
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: T. S. Stribling – The Store

References