1977 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1977.

Events

• February 20 – An episode of Doctor on the Go, co-written by Douglas Adams and Graham Chapman, marks the beginning of Adams' career writing for BBC radio.
• March 4 – Andrés Caicedo's novel ¡Que viva la música! ("Let Music Live!", translated as Liveforever) is published in his hometown of Cali, Colombia. This afternoon he commits suicide by overdose, age 25.
• July 11 – The English magazine Gay News is found guilty of blasphemous libel for publishing a homoerotic poem, "The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name" by James Kirkup, in a case (Whitehouse v Lemon) brought on behalf of Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers and Listeners Association at the Old Bailey in London. John Mortimer appears for the defence. This is the first time a prosecution for this offence has been brought since 1921, and will be the last before the offence is abolished in 2008.^[1][2]
• September 15 – Christopher Tolkien, with Guy Gavriel Kay, completes and publishes his late father's work, The Silmarillion.
• Fall – Philosophy and Literature, an academic journal that explores the connections between literary and philosophical studies by presenting ideas on the aesthetics of literature, critical theory, and the philosophical interpretation of literature, is founded at Johns Hopkins University.
• V. S. Naipaul declines the offer of a CBE.

New books

Fiction

• Ales Adamovich, Janka Bryl and Uladzimir Kalesnik – Я из огненной деревни (Belarusian: Я з вогненнай вёскі; Out of the Fire)
• Jorge Amado – Tieta do Agreste
• Jay Anson – The Amityville Horror
• Margaret Atwood – Dancing Girls
• Richard Bach – Illusions
• Richard Bachman – Rage
• Leland Bardwell – Girl on a Bicycle
• Gerd Brantenberg – Egalias døtre (The Daughters of Egalia, 1985, also Egalia's Daughters, 1986)
• Terry Brooks – The Sword of Shannara
• Andrés Caicedo – ¡Que viva la música!
• J. M. Coetzee – In the Heart of the Country
• Robin Cook – Coma
• Robert Coover – The Public Burning
• Basil Copper – And Afterward, the Dark
• L. Sprague de Camp
  • The Hostage of Zir
  • The Queen of Zamba
• L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter – Conan of Aquilonia
• Michel Déon – The Foundling's War
• Philip K. Dick – A Scanner Darkly
• Joan Didion – A Book of Common Prayer
• Buchi Emecheta – The Slave Girl
• Howard Fast – The Immigrants
• Timothy Findley – The Wars
• Leon Forrest – The Bloodworth Orphans
• John Fowles – Daniel Martin
• Marilyn French – The Women's Room
• Pauline Gedge – Child of the Morning
• Günter Grass – The Flounder (Der Butt)
• Mark Helprin – Refiner's Fire
• Shirley Hughes – Dogger
• Erica Jong – How to Save Your Own Life
• Elias Khoury – الجبل الصغير (al-Jabal al-saghir, The Little Mountain)
• Stephen King – The Shining
• John le Carré – The Honourable Schoolboy
• Ernest Lehman – The French Atlantic Affair
• Robert Ludlum – The Chancellor Manuscript
• Brian Lumley – The Horror at Oakdeene and Others
• George R. R. Martin – Dying of the Light
• Colleen McCullough – The Thorn Birds
• Larry McMurtry – Terms of Endearment
• Robert Merle – Fortune de France
• Toni Morrison – Song of Solomon
• Iris Murdoch – The Sea, the Sea
• Péter Nádas – The End of a Family Story
• Patrick O'Brian – The Mauritius Command
• Ellis Peters – A Morbid Taste for Bones
• Barbara Pym – Quartet in Autumn
• Ruth Rendell – A Judgement in Stone
• Alun Richards – Ennal's Point^[3]
• Harold Robbins – Dreams Die First
• Paul Scott – Staying On
• Erich Segal – Oliver's Story
• Irwin Shaw – Beggarman, Thief
• M. P. Shiel – Prince Zaleski and Cummings King Monk
• Sidney Sheldon – Bloodline
• Elizabeth Smart – A Bonus
• Botho Strauß – Devotion
• Remy Sylado – Gali Lobang Gila Lobang
• Craig Thomas – Firefox
• J. R. R. Tolkien – The Silmarillion
• Melvin Van Peebles – The True American, A Folk Fable
• Mario Vargas Llosa – Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (La tía Julia y el escribidor)
• P. G. Wodehouse – Sunset at Blandings (posthumous)
• Christopher Wood – James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me

Children and young people

• Richard Adams – The Plague Dogs
• Sandra Boynton – Hippos Go Berserk!
• Helen Cresswell – The Bagthorpe Saga
• Rumer Godden – The Rocking Horse Secret
• Diana Wynne Jones – Charmed Life
• Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Enchantments and Curses
• Maurice Sendak – Seven Little Monsters
• Barbara Smucker – Underground to Canada (also Runaway to Freedom: A Story of the Underground Railway)
• Bill Peet - Big Bad Bruce
• Karin Bolte (with Willi Glasauer) - Wie Alfred berühmt wurde und andere Erzählungen für Kinder|How Alfred Became Famous and Other Stories for Children
• Irmela Brender (with Hans-Joachim Gelberg and Willi Glasauer) - Leseladen: Orte, innen und außen|Leseladen: Inside Out Places
• Willi Glasauer - Le Journal Enseveli|The Buried Newspaper

Drama

• Robert Bolt – State of Revolution
• Tony Harrison (adapter) – The Mysteries
• Mike Leigh – Abigail's Party^[4]
• Heiner Müller – Die Hamletmaschine
• Mary O'Malley – Once a Catholic
• Dennis Potter – Brimstone and Treacle

Poetry

• Frank Belknap Long – In Mayan Splendor

Non-fiction

• Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. – The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
• Bruce Chatwin – In Patagonia
• Robert Coles – Children of Crisis
  • vol. 4, Eskimos, Indians, Chicanos
  • vol. 5, The Privileged Ones: The Well-off and the Rich in America
• Esther Deans – Esther Deans' Gardening Book: Growing Without Digging
• Patrick Leigh Fermor – A Time Of Gifts
• Len Deighton – Fighter: the True Story of the Battle of Britain
• Jim Fixx – The Complete Book of Running
• Michael Herr – Dispatches
• Edith Holden (died 1920) – The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady^[5]
• Bharati Mukherjee and Clark Blaise – Days and Nights in Calcutta
• David M. Potter – The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861
• E. F. Schumacher – A Guide for the Perplexed
• Peter Ustinov – Dear Me

Births

• February 21 – Jonathan Safran Foer, American novelist
• October 16 – Laura Wade, English playwright
• September 15 – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian novelist
• November 12 – Richelle Mead, American young-adult novelist
• Unknown date – Tena Štivičić, Croatian playwright

Deaths

• January 14 – Anaïs Nin, French-Cuban erotic novelist and diarist (born 1903)
• February 27 – John Dickson Carr, American crime novelist (born 1906)
• March 4
  • Andrés Caicedo, Colombian novelist and cinéaste (suicide, born 1951)
  • Alexandru Ivasiuc, Romanian novelist (killed in earthquake, born 1933)
• March 15 – Hubert Aquin, French Canadian novelist, essayist and political activist (suicide, born 1929))
• April 7 – Jim Thompson, American fiction writer (born 1906)
• April 11 – Jacques Prévert, French poet and screenwriter (born 1900)
• May 9 – James Jones, American novelist (heart failure, born 1921)
• July 2 – Vladimir Nabokov, Russian/American novelist (born 1899)
• August 26 – H. A. Rey, German-born American children's writer and illustrator (born 1898)
• September 4 – E. F. Schumacher, German-born economist (born 1911)
• September 12 – Robert Lowell, American poet (heart attack, born 1917)
• October 27 – James M. Cain, American novelist and newspaperman (born 1892)
• November 10 – Dennis Wheatley, English occult novelist (born 1897)
• November 30
  • Miloš Crnjanski, Serbian poet and novelist (born 1893)
  • Terence Rattigan, English dramatist (bone cancer, born 1911)
• December 9 – Clarice Lispector, Brazilian novelist (ovarian cancer, born 1920)
• December 22 – Frank Thiess, German novelist (born 1890)
• Unknown dates
  • Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Argentine comic book writer (disappearance, born 1919)
  • Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari, Punjabi novelist (born 1914)

Awards

• Nobel Prize in Literature: Vicente Aleixandre

Canada

• 1977 Governor General's Awards

France

• Prix Goncourt: Didier Decoin, John l'enfer
• Prix Médicis French: Michel Butel, L'Autre Amour
• Prix Médicis International: Héctor Bianciotti, Le Traité des saisons – Argentina

Spain

• Premio Miguel de Cervantes: Alejo Carpentier

United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Paul Mark Scott, Staying On
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Gene Kemp, The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler
• Eric Gregory Award: Tony Flynn, Michael Vince, David Cooke, Douglas Marshall, Melissa Murray
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: George Painter, Chateaubriand: Volume 1 – The Longed-For Tempests
• Knighthood for services to the theatre: Peter Hall
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Norman Nicholson
• Whitbread Best Book Award: Beryl Bainbridge, Injury Time

United States

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for the Novel, Saul Bellow
• Nebula Award: Frederik Pohl, Gateway
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Mildred D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
• Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science: Gerard K. O'Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Michael Cristofer, The Shadow Box
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: James Merrill, Divine Comedies
• Pulitzer Prize for History: David M. Potter: The Impending Crisis, 1841-1861 (Completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher).
• Pulitzer Prize for Biography: John E. Mack: A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence

Rest of the World

• Miles Franklin Award: Ruth Park, Swords and Crowns and Rings
• Premio Nadal: José Asenjo Sedano, Conversación sobre la guerra
• Viareggio Prize: Davide Lajolo, Veder l'erba dalla parte delle radici

References