1979 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1979.

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Events

• May – The Merchant Ivory Productions film The Europeans is released. Its screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala draws on the 1878 Henry James novel of the same name.^[1]
• 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.^[2]
• November – Dambudzo Marechera's The House of Hunger wins the Guardian Fiction Prize.^[3]
• unknown dates
  • K. W. Jeter's novel Morlock Night pioneers full-length fiction in the genre he later calls steampunk.^[4]
  • August Wilson's Jitney is first produced; it becomes the eighth in his "Pittsburgh Cycle".^[5]

New books

Fiction

• Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• V. C. Andrews – Flowers in the Attic
• Jeffrey Archer – Kane and Abel
• Barbara Taylor Bradford – A Woman of Substance
• Octavia Butler – Kindred
• Italo Calvino — If on a winter's night a traveler
• Orson Scott Card – A Planet Called Treason
• Angela Carter – The Bloody Chamber
• Eileen Chang – Lust, Caution
• Agatha Christie – Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories
• L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter – Conan the Liberator
• Michael Ende – The Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte)
• José Pablo Feinmann – Últimos días de la víctima
• Thomas Flanagan — Year of the French
• Alan Dean Foster – Alien (movie novelization)
• Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini — A che punto è la notte
• Brian Garfield – The Paladin
• William Golding – Darkness Visible
• William Goldman – Tinsel
• Nadine Gordimer – Burger's Daughter
• Arthur Hailey – Overload
• Stratis Haviaras – When the Tree Sings
• Douglas Hill – Galactic Warlord
• Stephen King – The Dead Zone
• Russell Kirk – The Princess of All Lands
• Milan Kundera – The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (first published in French as Le Livre du rire et de l'oubli)
• John le Carré – Smiley's People
• Morgan Llywelyn – Lion of Ireland: The Legend of Brian Boru
• Robert Ludlum – The Matarese Circle
• Norman Mailer – The Executioner's Song
• Cormac McCarthy – Suttree
• Roger McDonald – 1915: a novel
• Haruki Murakami – Hear the Wind Sing (風の歌を聴け, Kaze no uta o kike)
• Ellis Peters – One Corpse Too Many
• Jerry Pournelle – Janissaries
• Satyajit Ray – Hatyapuri
• Harold Robbins – Memories of Another Day
• Philip Roth – The Ghost Writer
• Scott Spencer – Endless Love
• Mary Stewart – The Last Enchantment
• Peter Straub – Ghost Story
• William Styron – Sophie's Choice
• Trevanian – Shibumi
• Kaari Utrio – Rautalilja
• Jack Vance – The Face
• Kurt Vonnegut – Jailbird
• Elizabeth Walter – In the Mist and Other Uncanny Encounters
• William Wharton – Birdy
• Kit Williams – Masquerade
• Raymond Williams – The Fight for Manod
• Robert Anton Wilson – Schrodinger's Cat
• Tom Wolfe – The Right Stuff
• Roger Zelazny – Roadmarks

Children and young people

• Chris Van Allsburg – The Garden of Abdul Gasazi
• Katharine Mary Briggs (with Anne Yvonne Gilbert) – Abbey Lubbers, Banshees, & Boggarts: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies
• Raymond Briggs – Fungus the Bogeyman
• Roald Dahl – The Twits
• Colin Dann – The Animals of Farthing Wood
• Peter Dickinson (with Wayne Anderson) – The Flight of Dragons
• Elizabeth Laird – Rosy's Garden
• Robie Macauley – A Secret History of Time to Come
• Robert Munsch – Mud Puddle
• Bill Peet – Cowardly Clyde
• Daniel Pinkwater
  • Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars
  • Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario
• Ellen Raskin – The Westing Game
• Jane Severance (with Tea Schook) – When Megan Went Away
• Barbara Sleigh – Carbonel and Calidor
• Angela Sommer-Bodenburg – Der kleine Vampir
• Rosemary Wells – Max & Ruby

Drama

• Bahram Beyzai – Death of Yazdgerd (مرگ یزدگرد)
• Caryl Churchill – Cloud Nine
• David Fennario – Balconville
• Richard Harris – Outside Edge
• Elfriede Jelinek – Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte; oder Stützen der Gesellschaften (What Occurred after Nora Left her Husband, or Supports of Society)
• Heiner Müller – Hamletmachine (first performance)
• Mark Medoff – Children of a Lesser God
• Neil Oram – The Warp
• Peter Shaffer – Amadeus
• Sam Shepard – Buried Child
• Martin Sherman – Bent
• Tom Stoppard – Undiscovered Country^[6]

Poetry

Main article: 1979 in 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
• Ion Biberi – Lumea de azi (World of Today)
• Jerome Bruner – On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand
• L. Sprague de Camp (editor) – The Blade of Conan
• Joan Didion – The White Album
• 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^[7]
• February 27 - Alexander Gordon Smith, British children's and young-adult author
• March 28 – Benjamin Percy, American short story writer
• April 14 – Patrick Somerville, American novelist and short story writer
• May 21 - James Clancy Phelan, American young-adult and thriller 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^[8]

Deaths

• January – Dilys Cadwaladr, Welsh-language poet (born 1902)
• January 27 – Victoria Ocampo, Argentine publisher, writer and critic (born 1890)^[9]
• February 9 – Allen Tate, American poet and essayist (born 1899)^[10]
• February 25 – John L. Wasserman, American entertainment critic (car accident, born 1938)^[11]
• February 27 – Sir George Clark, English historian (born 1890)
• March 26 – Jean Stafford, American short story writer and novelist (heart failure; born 1915)^[12]
• 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-born English novelist (born 1890)^[13]
• June 1 – Eric Partridge, New Zealand/British lexicographer (born 1894)^[14]
• June 3 – Arno Schmidt, German novelist (born 1914)^[15]
• June 7 – Forrest Carter, American genre novelist (heart failure, born 1925)
• July 6 – Malcolm Hulke, English television writer (born 1924)
• July 7 – Ahmad Qandil, Saudi Arabian poet (born 1911) ^[16]
• 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)^[17]
• July 29 – Herbert Marcuse, German Jewish philosopher (born 1898)^[18]
• August 8 – Nicholas Monsarrat, English novelist (born 1910)
• August 16 – Jerzy Jurandot (Jerzy Glejgewicht), Polish poet and dramatist (born 1911)
• August 20 – Christian Dotremont, Belgian painter and writer (born 1922)^[19]
• August 22 – James T. Farrell, American novelist (born 1904)^[20]
• September 5 – John Bradburne, English poet and missionary (killed by guerillas; born 1921)
• September 6 – Guy Bolton, British playwright (born 1884)^[21]
• 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)^[22]
• October 18 – Virgilio Piñera, Cuban poet and short-story writer (born 1912)
• December 12 – Goronwy Rees, Welsh journalist and academic (born 1909)^[23]
• 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: Antonine Maillet, Pélagie-la-Charrette^[24]
• Prix Médicis French: Claude Durand, La Nuit zoologique^[25]
• Prix Médicis International: Alejo Carpentier, La harpe et l'ombre^[26]

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:
• Guardian Fiction Prize: Neil Jordan, Night in Tunisia and Dambudzo Marechera, The House of Hunger
• 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

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction :
• Nebula Award: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
• Hugo Award: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
• Locus Award for Best Novel: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
• Newbery Medal for children's literature:
• Bancroft Prize: Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan, 1941–1945
• Bancroft Prize: Anthony F. C. Wallace, Rockdale: The Growth of An American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Sam Shepard, Buried Child
• Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography: Leonard Baker, Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Penn Warren, Now and Then: Poems 1976–1978
• Pulitzer Prize for History: Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics
• Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction: E. O. Wilson, On Human Nature

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

1. Jessica Bomarito; Jelena Krstovic (July 2006). Short Story Criticism: Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers. Cengage Gale. p. 249. ISBN 978-0-7876-8888-2.
2. 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.
3. Flora Veit-Wild (1992). Dambudzo Marechera: A Source Book on His Life and Work. Hans Zell. p. 188. ISBN 978-0-905450-97-1.
4. Dana Percec (26 June 2014). Reading the Fantastic Imagination: The Avatars of a Literary Genre. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 221. ISBN 978-1-4438-6297-4.
5. James Fisher (1 June 2011). Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater: 1930-2010. Scarecrow Press. p. 402. ISBN 978-0-8108-7950-8.
6. Stoppard plays at http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsS/stoppard-tom.html#33484 Archived 2012-11-28 at the Wayback Machine
7. Brageprisen nominations 2010.
8. "Mandel, Emily St. John 1979– --" in Contemporary Authors, v. 301. Gale, 2010.
9. Goodwin Jr., Paul B. "Ocampo, Victoria (1890–1979)". Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia – via Encyclopedia.com.
10. "Allen Tate, Poet, critic and Teacher, Dead". The New York Times. February 10, 1979. Retrieved October 25, 2022.
11. John Wasserman (1993). Praise, Vilification, & Sexual Innuendo, Or, How to be a Critic: The Selected Writings of John L. Wasserman (1964-1979). Chronicle Books. p. 1. ISBN 9780811802475.
12. Stacy Lorraine Braukman; Susan Ware (2004). Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century. Belknap Press. p. 609.
13. Mitgang, Herbert (17 May 1979). "Jean Rhys, 84, Novelist Known for 'sargasso Sea'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 24 April 2020.
14. Meanjin, volume 38. University of Melbourne. 1979. p. 516.
15. Review of Contemporary Fiction. John O'Brien. 1988. p. 142.
16. "السيرة الذاتية". alithnainya (in Arabic). Archived from the original on 7 August 2022. Retrieved 7 August 2022.
17. "Obituaries". Cross & Cockade Journal. 20. the Society: 380. 1979.
18. Kenneth A. Briggs (July 31, 1979). "Marcuse, Radical Philosopher, Dies". New York Times. Retrieved March 26, 2022.
19. State, Paul (2004). Historical Dictionary of Brussels. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Pub. Group. p. 225. ISBN 9780810865556.
20. Wald, Alan (1987). The New York intellectuals : the rise and decline of the anti-Stalinist left from the 1930s to the 1980s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 259. ISBN 9780807841693.
21. "Mr Guy Bolton", obituary, The Times, 23 November 1979, p. 11
22. "S. J. Perelman, Humorist, Is Dead - The New York Times". New York Times. October 18, 1979. Retrieved October 25, 2022.
23. "Goronwy Rees (1909-1979)". From Warfare to Welfare (MYGLYW). Archived from the original on 21 February 2015. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
24. Anthony Pym; Miriam Shlesinger; Daniel Simeoni (2008). Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in Homage to Gideon Toury. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 181. ISBN 978-90-272-1684-7.
25. Francois Chaubet (26 January 2018). Claude Durand, biographie. Editions du Cerf. p. 132. ISBN 978-2-204-12473-7.
26. Jeune Afrique. Société africaine de presse. 1980. p. 75.