1971 in literature

The year 1971 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• March 25–December 14 – 1971 killing of Bengali intellectuals peaks.
• April 21 – The 13th century Codex Regius is returned from Denmark to Iceland under naval escort.
• July 4 – Michael S. Hart posts the first e-book, a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, on the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign's mainframe computer, the origin of Project Gutenberg.^[1]
• July 14 – Simon Gray's play Butley is first performed at the Criterion Theatre in London, produced by Michael Codron and directed by Harold Pinter with Alan Bates in the lead.
• October 20 – The Destiny Waltz by Gerda Charles wins the UK's first Whitbread Novel of the Year Award. Geoffrey Hill wins the poetry prize for Mercian Hymns and Michael Meyer in the biography category for Henrik Ibsen.^[2]
• November – Hunter S. Thompson's roman à clef Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is first published in Rolling Stone as a two-part article illustrated by Ralph Steadman.
• December 24 – Popular Dutch writer and broadcaster Godfried Bomans is buried in the Sint-Adelbertskerkhof (Saint Adelbert Cemetery) in Bloemendaal, two days after his death from a heart attack.

New books

• Hiroshi Aramata – Teito Monogatari
• Kofi Awoonor – This Earth, My Brother
• Denys Val Baker – The Face in the Mirror
• William Peter Blatty – The Exorcist
• Richard Brautigan – Revenge of the Lawn
• Charles Bukowski – Post Office
• Albert Camus (d. 1960) – A Happy Death (La Mort heureuse)
• John Dickson Carr – Deadly Hall
• Agatha Christie
  • Nemesis
  • The Golden Ball and Other Stories
• Brian Cleeve – Cry of Morning
• Miloš Crnjanski – Roman o Londonu ("A Novel about London")
• Gwen Davis – Touching
• L. Sprague de Camp – The Clocks of Iraz
• L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter – Conan the Buccaneer
• Walter de la Mare – Eight Tales
• August Derleth, editor – Dark Things
• E. L. Doctorow – The Book of Daniel
• E. M. Forster (posthumous) – Maurice
• Frederick Forsyth – The Day of the Jackal
• Dick Francis – Bonecrack
• Ernest J. Gaines – The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
• George Garrett – Death of the Fox
• John Gardner – Grendel
• William Golding – The Scorpion God
• Arthur Hailey – Wheels
• Bohumil Hrabal – I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále)
• David Ireland – The Unknown Industrial Prisoner
• Anna Kavan – A Scarcity of Love
• Thomas Keneally – The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
• Jerzy Kosinski – Being There
• John le Carré – The Naive and Sentimental Lover
• Ursula K. Le Guin – The Lathe of Heaven
• Stanisław Lem
  • Dzienniki gwiazdowe (The Star Diaries)
  • Kongres futurologiczny (The Futurological Congress)
• Brian Lumley – The Caller of the Black
• John D. MacDonald – A Tan and Sandy Silence
• Antonine Maillet – La Sagouine
• Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Choice of Magic
• James A. Michener – The Drifters
• Nicholas Mosley – Natalie Natalia
• Alice Munro – Lives of Girls and Women
• V. S. Naipaul – In a Free State
• William F. Nolan – Space for Hire
• Rosamunde Pilcher – The End of Summer
• Anthony Powell – Books Do Furnish a Room
• Terry Pratchett – The Carpet People
• Otfried Preußler – Krabat
• John Rawls – A Theory of Justice
• Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro – Sergeant Getulio
• Mordecai Richler – St. Urbain's Horseman
• Harold Robbins – The Betsy
• Leonardo Sciascia – Il contesto
• Paul Scott – The Towers of Silence (third of The Raj Quartet)
• Hubert Selby Jr. – The Room
• Tom Sharpe – Riotous Assembly
• John S. Simon - The Sign of The Fool
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn – August 1914
• Wallace Stegner – Angle of Repose
• Irving Stone – The Passions of the Mind
• Francis Stuart – Black List, Section H
• Gay Talese – Honor Thy Father
• Tom Tryon – The Other
• John Updike – Rabbit Redux
• Joseph Wambaugh - The New Centurions
• Herman Wouk – The Winds of War
• Roger Zelazny
  • The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories
  • Jack of Shadows

New drama

• Simon Gray – Butley
• Peter Handke – Der Ritt über den Bodensee ("The Ride Across Lake Constance")
• Franz Xaver Kroetz
  • Hartnäckig ("Persistent")
  • Heimarbeit ("Homeworker" or "Housework")
  • Michis Blut: ein Requiem auf bairisch ("Michi's blood: a Requiem in Bavarian")
  • Wildwechsel
• Mustapha Matura – As Time Goes By
• John Mortimer – A Voyage Round My Father (stage version)

Poetry

• Maya Angelou – Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie
• Kofi Awoonor – Night of My Blood
• Donald S. Fryer – Songs and Sonnets Atlantean
• Ted Hughes – Crow
• Alan Llwyd – Y March Hud ("The Magic Horse")
• Clark Ashton Smith – Selected Poems

Non-fiction

• Pierre Berton – The Last Spike
• Carlos Castaneda – A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan
• Robert Coles
  • Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers, vol 2 of Children of Crisis – Pulitzer Prize, 1973
  • The South Goes North, vol 3 of Children of Crisis – Pulitzer Prize, 1973
• Carl N. Degler - Neither Black nor White
• Brian J. Ford – Nonscience
• Robert Foster – The Complete Guide to Middle-earth
• Eduardo Galeano – Open Veins of Latin America (Las venas abiertas de América Latina)
• Joan Garrity – The Sensuous Woman
• Graham Greene – A Sort of Life
• Xaviera Hollander – The Happy Hooker: My Own Story
• H. P. Lovecraft – Selected Letters III (1929–1931)
• Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel – Hess: A Biography
• Spike Milligan – Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall.
• Alison Plowden – Young Elizabeth
• John S. Simon – The Sign of The Fool
• B. F. Skinner – Beyond Freedom and Dignity
• Keith Thomas – Religion and the Decline of Magic: studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth century England
• Pierre Vallières – White Niggers of America (translation)
• Tom Wolfe – The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Births

• January 16 – Helen Darville, Australian novelist
• January 25 – Philip Coppens, Belgian journalist and author (died 2012)
• February 3 – Sarah Kane, playwright (died 1999)
• March 29 – José Luis Rodríguez Pittí, Panamanian writer and photographer
• May 28 – Richard Gunn, journalist and motoring writer
• July 17 – Cory Doctorow, science fiction writer
• July 22 – Akhil Sharma, Indian novelist
• September 3 – Kiran Desai, Indian novelist
• November 5 – Rana Dasgupta, English-born Indian novelist
• December 19 – Tristan Egolf, American novelist and activist (died 2005)
• Unknown date – Diana Evans, English novelist of Nigerian extraction

Deaths

• January 24 – St. John Greer Ervine, Irish-born dramatist (born 1883)
• March 5 – Allan Nevins, American journalist and historian (born 1890)
• March 7 – Stevie Smith (Florence Margaret Smith), English poet and novelist (born 1902)
• March 21 – Kyūya Fukada (深田 久弥), Japanese writer and mountaineer (born 1903)
• April 10 – André Billy, French novelist (born 1882)
• May 19 – Ogden Nash, American poet and humorist (born 1902)
• May 20 – Waldo Williams, Welsh-language poet (born 1904)
• June 1 – Reinhold Niebuhr, American theologian (born 1892)
• June 4 – György Lukács (György Bernát Löwinger), Hungarian philosopher and critic (born 1885)
• June 5 – Clifford Dyment, English poet (born 1914)
• June 6 – Edward Andrade, English writer, poet and physicist (born 1887)
• July 4 – August Derleth, American writer and anthologist (heart attack, born 1909)
• July 7 – Claude Gauvreau, Québécois Canadian poet and dramatist (born 1925)
• July 27 – Jacques Lusseyran, French author and Resistance fighter (car crash, born 1924)
• August 30 – Peter Fleming, English travel writer and traveler (born 1907)
• October 13 – János Kemény, American-born Hungarian writer and editor (born 1903)
• October 25 – Philip Wylie, American novelist and non-fiction writer (born 1902)
• November 1 – Gertrud von Le Fort, German novelist, poet and essayist (born 1876)
• November 10 – Walter Van Tilburg Clark, American novelist (cancer, born 1909)
• December 5 – Gaito Gazdanov, Russian-born novelist (born 1903)
• December 22 – Godfried Bomans, Dutch writer and broadcaster (heart attack, born 1913)
• December 25 – S. Foster Damon, American critic and poet (born 1893)

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Pablo Neruda

Canada

• See 1971 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

• Prix Goncourt: Jacques Laurent, Les Bêtises
• Prix Médicis: Pascal Lainé, L'Irrévolution

United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: V. S. Naipaul, In a Free State
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Ivan Southall, Josh
• Cholmondeley Award: Charles Causley, Gavin Ewart, Hugo Williams
• Eric Gregory Award: Martin Booth, Florence Bull, John Pook, D. M. Warman, John Welch
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Nadine Gordimer, A Guest of Honour
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Julia Namier, Lewis Namier
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Stephen Spender

United States

• Frost Medal: Melville Cane
• Hugo Award: Larry Niven, Ringworld
• Nebula Award: Robert Silverberg, A Time of Changes
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Betsy Byars, Summer of the Swans
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Paul Zindel, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: William S. Merwin, The Carrier of Ladders

Elsewhere

• Akutagawa Prize: Azuma Mineo, Okinawan Boy
• Miles Franklin Award: David Ireland, The Unknown Industrial Prisoner
• Premio Nadal: José María Requena, El cuajarón
• Viareggio Prize: Ugo Attardi, L'erede selvaggio

References

1. ↑ Hart, Michael (August 1992). "The History and Philosophy of Project Gutenberg". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 2011-10-05. .
2. ↑ "Whitbreads in Literary World". The Glasgow Herald. 1971-10-21. p. 16. Retrieved 2014-06-05.