1979 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1979.

Events

May – The Merchant Ivory Productions film The Europeans appears. Its screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala draws on the 1878 Henry James novel of the same name.
October 25 – The London Review of Books is first issued, its founding editors being Karl Miller, Mary-Kay Wilmers and Susannah Clapp. For its first six months it appears as an insert to The New York Review of Books.^[1]
K. W. Jeter's novel Morlock Night pioneers full-length fiction in the genre he later calls steampunk.
August Wilson's Jitney is first produced; it becomes the eighth in his "Pittsburgh Cycle".
Dambudzo Marechera's The House of Hunger wins the Guardian Fiction Prize.

New books

Poetry

Kingsley Amis – Collected Poems

Non-fiction

Alison Adburgham – Shopping in Style: London from the Restoration to Edwardian Elegance
David Attenborough – Life on Earth
Harold Walter Bailey – Dictionary of Khotan Saka
Jerome Bruner – On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand
L. Sprague de Camp (editor) – The Blade of Conan
Elizabeth Eisenstein – The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
Peter Evans – The Music of Benjamin Britten
John Fowles – The Tree
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar – The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
Eloise Greenfield, Lessie Jones Little, Pattie Ridley Jones – Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir
Douglas Hofstadter – Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Henry Kissinger – The White House Years
Leon Litwack – Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery
Jean-François Lyotard – The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (La Condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir)
Jessica Mitford – Poison Penmanship: the Gentle Art of Muckraking
Stephen Pile – The Book of Heroic Failures
Clark Ashton Smith – The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith
Margaret Trudeau – Beyond Reason
Tom Wolfe – The Right Stuff

Births

February 4 – Ben Lerner, American poet, novelist and critic
February 10 – Johan Harstad, Norwegian novelist^[3]
March 28 – Benjamin Percy, American short story writer
June 28 – Florian Zeller, French novelist and dramatist
July 14 – Yukiko Motoya, Japanese fiction writer, playwright, theatre director and voice actress
Unknown dates
- D.D. Johnston, Scottish political novelist and university lecturer
- Emily St. John Mandel, Canadian-born novelist

Deaths

January – Dilys Cadwaladr, Welsh-language poet (born 1902)
January 27 – Victoria Ocampo, Argentine publisher, writer and critic (born 1890)
February 9 – Allen Tate, American poet and essayist (born 1899)
February 25 – John L. Wasserman, American entertainment critic (car accident, born 1938)
February 27 – Sir George Clark, English historian (born 1890)
March 26 – Jean Stafford, American short story writer and novelist (heart failure, born 1915)
April 8 – Breece D'J Pancake, American short story writer (suicide, born 1952)
May 10 – J. B. Morton (Beachcomber), English humorous newspaper columnist (born 1893)
May 14 – Jean Rhys, Dominica, West Indies-born English novelist (born 1890)
June 1 – Eric Partridge, New Zealand/British lexicographer (born 1894)
June 3 – Arno Schmidt, German novelist (born 1914)
June 7 – Forrest Carter, American genre novelist (heart failure, born 1925)
July 6 – Malcolm Hulke, English television writer (born 1924)
July 15 – Juana de Ibarbourou, Uruguayan poet (born 1892)
July 21 – Eugène Vinaver, Russian-born English literary scholar (born 1899)
July 23 – Joseph Kessel, French journalist and novelist (born 1898)
July 29 – Herbert Marcuse, German Jewish philosopher (born 1898)
August 8 – Nicholas Monsarrat, English novelist (born 1910)
August 16 – Jerzy Jurandot (Jerzy Glejgewicht), Polish poet and dramatist (born 1911)
September 5 – John Bradburne, English poet and missionary (killed by guerillas; born 1921)
September 25 – Zhou Libo (周立波), Chinese novelist and translator (born 1908)
October 6 – Elizabeth Bishop, American poet (born 1911)
October 17 – S. J. Perelman, American humorist (born 1904)
October 18 – Virgilio Piñera, Cuban poet and short-story writer (born 1912)
December 12 – Goronwy Rees, Welsh journalist and academic (born 1909)
December 19 – Donald Creighton, Canadian historian (born 1902)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Odysseus Elytis

Canada

See 1979 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

Prix Goncourt:
Prix Médicis French:
Prix Médicis International:

Spain

Miguel de Cervantes Prize: Jorge Luis Borges and Gerardo Diego

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore
Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Peter Dickinson, Tulku
Cholmondeley Award:
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: William Golding, Darkness Visible
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Brian Finney, Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography

United States

Elsewhere

Miles Franklin Award: David Ireland, A Woman of the Future
Premio Nadal: Carlos Rojas, El ingenioso hidalgo y poeta Federico García Lorca asciende a los infiernos
Viareggio Prize: Giorgio Manganelli, Centuria

References

^ Grimes, William (2011-06-20). "A. Whitney Ellsworth, First Publisher of New York Review, Dies at 75". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-06-20.
^ Stoppard plays at http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsS/stoppard-tom.html#33484
^ Brageprisen nominations 2010.

[1] Grimes, William (2011-06-20). "A. Whitney Ellsworth, First Publisher of New York Review, Dies at 75". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-06-20.

[2] Stoppard plays at http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsS/stoppard-tom.html#33484

[3] Brageprisen nominations 2010.

[1]

[2]

[3]

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards

Canada

France

Spain

United Kingdom

United States

Elsewhere

References