# 1954 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1954.

## Events

* January – Kingsley Amis's first novel, the comic campus novel Lucky Jim, is published by Victor Gollancz Ltd in London.
* January 7 – The Georgetown–IBM experiment is the first public demonstration of a machine translation system, held in New York at the IBM head office.
* January 25 – Dylan Thomas's radio play Under Milk Wood is first broadcast in the U.K. on the BBC Third Programme, two months after its author's death, with Richard Burton as "First Voice".
* February – The London Magazine is revived as a literary magazine, with John Lehmann as editor.
* March 31 – A. L. Zissu is sentenced in Bucharest to life imprisonment for "conspiring against the social order". This has been a focal point in the anti-Zionist clampdown in Communist Romania.
* May 29 – The rediscovered and restored early 17th-century Corral de comedias de Almagro in Spain is re-inaugurated with a play by Calderon de la Barca.
* June 16 – The first public celebration of "Bloomsday" takes place in Dublin: writers Flann O'Brien, Patrick Kavanagh and Anthony Cronin travel in a horse-drawn coach, stopping at numerous bars to retrace the steps of the characters from James Joyce's novel Ulysses.
* June 22 – In the Parker–Hulme murder case, the 15-year-old Julia Hulme, a future writer of English historical detective fiction as Anne Perry, takes part in the murder of her best friend's mother in Christchurch, New Zealand.
* July 29 – The first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's epic The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring – is published in London by George Allen & Unwin. The Two Towers follows on November 11 and publication will be completed in 1955. By 2007, 150 million copies will have been sold worldwide.
* September 1 – Lawrence Quincy Mumford becomes the U.S.Librarian of Congress.
* September 17 – William Golding's first novel, the allegorical dystopian Lord of the Flies, is published by Faber and Faber in London.
* September 22 – Terence Rattigan's two linked plays Separate Tables is first performed, at St James's Theatre, London.
* October 30 – John Updike's first story for The New Yorker, "Friends from Philadelphia", is published. He graduates from Harvard with a thesis on George Herbert, and begins a year's Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship to the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at England's University of Oxford.
* November 19 – Brendan Behan's first play, The Quare Fellow is premièred at the Pike Theatre, Dublin.
* unknown date – Jack Kerouac reads Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible (1932, found in San Jose library), which will influence him greatly.

## New books
### Fiction

* Kingsley Amis – Lucky Jim
* Poul Anderson – The Broken Sword
* Thomas Armstrong – Pilling Always Pays
* Isaac Asimov – The Caves of Steel
* Hamilton Basso – The View from Pompey's Head
* John Bingham – The Third Skin
* Boileau-Narcejac – The Living and the Dead (D'entre les morts)
* Lucy M. Boston – Yew Hall
* Pierre Boulle – The Bridge over the River Kwai (Le Pont de la Rivière Kwaï)
* Taylor Caldwell – Never Victorious, Never Defeated
* Victor Canning – Castle Minerva
* John Dickson Carr
** The Third Bullet and Other Stories
** The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (with Adrian Conan Doyle)
* Henry Cecil – According to the Evidence
* Agatha Christie – Destination Unknown
* Robertson Davies – Leaven of Malice
* Cecil Day-Lewis – The Whisper in the Gloom
* Simone de Beauvoir – The Mandarins (Les Mandarins)
* Daphne du Maurier – Mary Anne
* Ian Fleming – Live and Let Die
* Max Frisch – I'm Not Stiller (Stiller)
* Anthony Gilbert – Snake in the Grass
* William Golding – Lord of the Flies
* Richard Gordon – The Captain's Table
* Walter Greenwood – What Everybody Wants
* James Hadley Chase – The Sucker Punch
* Cyril Hare – That Yew Tree's Shade
* Joan Henry – Yield to the Night
* Hergé – Explorers on the Moon (On a marché sur la Lune)
* Hwang Sun-won – The Descendants of Cain (카인의 후예)
* Mac Hyman – No Time for Sergeants
* Hammond Innes – The Strange Land
* Michael Innes – Appleby Talking
* Randall Jarrell – Pictures from an Institution: a comedy
* Elizabeth Jenkins – The Tortoise and the Hare
* Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成) – The Sound of the Mountain (Yama no Oto; serialization concludes)
* Frances Parkinson Keyes – The Royal Box
* Kalki Krishnamurthy
** Amara Thara
** Ponniyin Selvan (பொன்னியின் செல்வன், "The Son of Ponni"; publication concludes)
* Manuel Mujica Láinez – La casa (The House)
* George Lamming – The Emigrants
* Jacques Laurent – Mata Hari's Daughter
* Camara Laye – Le Regard du roi
* Ira Levin – A Kiss Before Dying
* Astrid Lindgren – Mio, My Son
* E. C. R. Lorac
** Let Well Alone
** Shroud of Darkness
* Ross Macdonald – Find a Victim
* Compton Mackenzie – Ben Nevis Goes East
* Kamala Markandaya – Nectar in a Sieve
* John Masters – Bhowani Junction
* Richard Matheson – I Am Legend
* John Metcalfe – The Feasting Dead
* James A. Michener – Sayonara
* Paul Morand – Hecate and Her Dogs
* Alberto Moravia – Il disprezzo (A Ghost at Noon)
* Iris Murdoch – Under the Net
* Louis Pauwels – L'Amour monstre
* J. B. Priestley – The Magicians
* Maurice Procter – Hell Is a City
* Marcel Proust – Jean Sauteuil (posthumously published)
* Ellery Queen – The Glass Village
* Pauline Réage (Anne Desclos) – Story of O (Histoire d'O)
* Mordecai Richler – The Acrobats
* Lillian Roth – I'll Cry Tomorrow
* Françoise Sagan – Bonjour Tristesse
* Ahmed Sefrioui – La Boîte à merveilles
* Anya Seton – Katherine
* Margit Söderholm – Clouds Over Hellesta
* John Steinbeck – Sweet Thursday
* Irving Stone – Love Is Eternal
* Rex Stout
** The Black Mountain
** Three Men Out
* Edward Streeter – Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation
* Julian Symons – The Narrowing Circle
* Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar – Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü (The Time Regulation Institute)
* Morton Thompson – Not as a Stranger
* J. R. R. Tolkien
** The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
** The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
* Amos Tutuola – My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
* Tarjei Vesaas – Spring Night
* Gore Vidal – Messiah
* Douglass Wallop – The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant
* Monique Watteau – La Colère végétale
* Vaughan Wilkins – Fanfare for a Witch
* Frank Yerby
** Benton's Row
** Bride of Liberty

### Children and young people

* Rev. W. Awdry – Edward the Blue Engine (ninth in The Railway Series of 42 books by him and his son Christopher Awdry)
* Viola Bayley – Paris Adventure (first in the Adventure series of 16 books)
* Lucy M. Boston – The Children of Green Knowe (first in the Green Knowe series of six books)
* Eleanor Cameron – The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
* Meindert DeJong – The Wheel on the School (illustrated by Maurice Sendak)
* Rumer Godden – Impunity Jane: The Story of a Pocket Doll
* Joseph Krumgold – ...And Now Miguel
* C. S. Lewis – The Horse and His Boy
* Dr. Seuss – Horton Hears a Who!
* Rosemary Sutcliff – The Eagle of the Ninth
* Henry Treece
** Legions of the Eagle
** The Eagles Have Flown
* Ronald Welch – Knight Crusader

### Drama

* Tawfiq al-Hakim – El Aydi El Na'mah (Soft Hands)
* Brendan Behan – The Quare Fellow
* Dharamvir Bharati – Andha Yug (The Blind Age)
* William Douglas Home – The Manor of Northstead
* Peter Jones – The Party Spirit
* Saunders Lewis – Siwan
* Ronald Millar – Waiting for Gillian
* Hugh Mills – The Little Glass Clock
* Terence Rattigan – Separate Tables
* Reginald Rose – Twelve Angry Men (original version as live teleplay)
* Dylan Thomas – Under Milk Wood (radio play)
* Thornton Wilder – The Matchmaker
* Herman Wouk – The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial

### Poetry

* Tomas Tranströmer – 17 Poems (17 dikter)

### Non-fiction

* Gordon Allport – The Nature of Prejudice
* L. Sprague de Camp – Lost Continents
* Rodney Collin – The Theory of Celestial Influence
* Albert Einstein – Ideas and Opinions
* Gerald Gardner – Witchcraft Today
* Aldous Huxley – The Doors of Perception
* Arthur Koestler – The Invisible Writing: The Second Volume Of An Autobiography, 1932–40
* D. R. Matthews – The Social Background of Political Decision-Makers
* Mervyn Peake – Figures of Speech
* Mihai Ralea – Caracterul antiștiințific și antiuman al psihologiei americane (The Anti-Science and Anti-Humanity Nature of American Psychology)
* A. J. P. Taylor – The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848–1918
* Alice B. Toklas – The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook
* William Kurtz Wimsatt, Jr. – Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (collected essays including "The Intentional Fallacy" and "The Affective Fallacy", cowritten with Monroe Beardsley)
* Barbara Woodhouse
** Dog Training my Way
** Talking to Animals (autobiography)

## Births

* January 5 – László Krasznahorkai, Hungarian novelist and screenwriter
* January 15 – Jose Dalisay, Jr., Filipino writer
* January 29 – Oprah Winfrey, American actress and talk show host
* January – Cao Wenxuan (曹文軒), Chinese children's book writer and academic
* February 2 – Moniza Alvi, Pakistani-British poet and writer
* March 4 – Irina Ratushinskaya, Russian writer
* May 6 – Nicholas Crane, English writer, geographer and broadcaster
* March 16 – S. A. Griffin, American actor and poet
* March 20
** Christoph Ransmayr, Austrian writer
** Louis Sachar, American children's author
* April 14 – Bruce Sterling, American science-fiction writer
* May 5 – Hamid Ismailov, Uzbek writer
* May 23 – Anja Snellman, Finnish writer
* June 6 – Cynthia Rylant, American children's author and poet
* June 28 – A. A. Gill, British journalist and critic (died 2016)
* July 17 – J. Michael Straczynski, American author
* July 26 - Michael Grant, American young-adult fiction writer
* August 1 – James Gleick, American non-fiction author
* August 15 – Mary Jo Salter, American poet and academic
* August 17 – Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Russian-Irish writer
* September 14 – Mikey Smith, Jamaican dub poet (killed 1983)
* November 8 – Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese-born English novelist and Nobel laureate
* November 10 – Marlene van Niekerk, South African novelist
* November 11 – Mary Gaitskill, American novelist, essayist and short story writer
* November 12 – Christopher Pike (Kevin Christopher McFadden), American children's author
* December 3 – Grace Andreacchi, American author
* December 7 – Mark Hofmann, American rare book dealer, forger and murderer
* December 20 – Sandra Cisneros, American writer
* unknown dates
** Esther Delisle, French Canadian author and historian
** Ibrahim Nasrallah, Jordanian/Palestinian poet and novelist
** Roma Tearne (Roma Chrysostom), Sri Lankan novelist and artist

## Deaths

* January 1 – Duff Cooper (1st Viscount Norwich), English poet, biographer and politician (born 1890)
* January 21 – E. K. Chambers, English literary scholar (born 1866)
* January 25 – M. N. Roy, Indian philosopher and politician (born 1887)
* February 2 – Hella Wuolijoki, Estonian-born Finnish writer (born 1886)
* February 6 – Maxwell Bodenheim, American poet and novelist (born 1892; murdered)
* March 28 – Francis Brett Young, English novelist and poet (born 1884)
* April 8
** Juan Álvarez, Argentinian historian (born 1878)
** Winnifred Eaton, Canadian author (born 1875)
** Cicely Fox Smith, English poet and nautical writer (born 1882)
* April 19 – Russell Davenport, American journalist and publisher (born 1899)
* May 3 – Earnest Hooton, American writer on anthropology (born 1887)
* June 18 – Constantin Beldie, Romanian literary promoter and memoirist (born 1887)
* July 13 – Grantland Rice, American sportswriter (born 1880)
* July 14 – Jacinto Benavente, Spanish dramatist and Nobel laureate (born 1866)
* August 2 – Julián Padrón, Venezuelan novelist, journalist and lawyer (born 1910)
* August 3 – Colette, French novelist (born 1873)
* September 19 – Miles Franklin, Australian novelist (born 1879)
* September 29 – W. J. Gruffydd, Welsh-language journal editor (born 1881)
* October 22 – Oswald de Andrade, Brazilian poet and polemicist (born 1890)
* November 17 – Ludovic Dauș, Romanian novelist and dramatist (born 1873)
* December 6 – Lucien Tesnière, French grammarian (born 1893)
* December 20 – James Hilton, English novelist (born 1900)

## Awards

* Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Ronald Welch, Knight Crusader
* James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: C. P. Snow, The New Men and The Masters
* James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Keith Feiling, Warren Hastings
* Newbery Medal for children's literature: Joseph Krumgold, ...And Now Miguel
* Nobel Prize for Literature: Ernest Miller Hemingway
* Premio Nadal: Francisco Alcántara, La muerte sienta bien a Villalobos
* Prix Goncourt: Simone de Beauvoir, Les mandarins
* Pulitzer Prize for Drama: John Patrick, The Teahouse of the August Moon
* Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: no award given
* Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Theodore Roethke: TheWaking
* Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Ralph Hodgson