Literary Chronology

1775:: Jane Austen is born on December 16. She grows up in the country village of Steventon, in Hampshire, England.
1815:: Jane Austen's Emma is published.
1817:: Jane Austen dies of Addison's Disease on July 18. She is forty-one years old. She is buried in Winchester Cathedral.
1865:: Rudyard Kipling is born on December 30 in Bombay, India.
1869:: André Gide (André Paul Guillaume Gide) is born on November 22 in Paris, France.
1894:: Dashiell Hammett (Samuel Dashiell Hammett) is born in Saint Mary's County, Maryland.
1895:: Robert Graves (Robert von Ranke Graves) is born on July 24 in Wimbeldon, England.
1901:: Rudyard Kipling's Kim is published.
1902:: Langston Hughes (James Langston Hughes) is born on February 1 in Joplin, Missouri. His unusual middle name had been the birth name of his mother.
1902:: André Gide's The Immoralist is published.
1905:: Jean-Paul Sartre is born on June 21 in Paris, France.
1907:: Rudyard Kipling receives the Nobel Prize in Literature "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration" which characterize his creations.
1914:: Ralph Ellison (Ralph Waldo Ellison) is born on March 1 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
1925:: Flannery O'Connor (Mary Flannery O'Connor) is born in Savannah, Georgia.
1926:: John Fowles is born on March 31 in a suburb of London.
1930:: Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is published.
1934:: Robert Graves's I, Claudius is published.
1936:: Rudyard Kipling dies on January 18 and is buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.
1938:: Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea is published.
1940:: J. M. Coetzee (John Maxwell Coetzee) is born on February 9 in Cape Town, South Africa.
1947:: Octavia Butler (Octavia Estelle Butler) is born on June 22 in Pasadena, California.
1947:: André Gide receives the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight."
1951:: André Gide dies on February 19 in Paris at the age of eighty-one.
1958:: Langston Hughes's Tambourines to Glory is published.
1960:: Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away is published.
1961:: Dashiell Hammett dies of lung cancer.
1964:: Jean-Paul Sartre receives the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a farreaching influence on our age." Sartre declines the prize.
1964:: Flannery O'Connor dies of lupus on August 3 at her mother's home in Milledgeville, Georgia.
1967:: Langston Hughes dies of congestive heart failure on May 22 in New York City.
1969:: John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman is published.
1974:: J. M. Coetzee's Dusklands is published.
1980:: Jean-Paul Sartre dies of a lung tumor on April 15. The extent of his international reputation may be gauged by the attendance of twenty-five thousand people at his funeral.
1985:: Robert Graves dies at the age of ninety.
1993:: Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower is published.
1994:: Ralph Ellison dies on April 16 at the age of eighty in Harlem, New York.
1999:: Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth is published.
2003:: J. M. Coetzee receives the Nobel Prize in Literature for portraying "in innumerable guises" "the surprising involvement of the outsider."