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Literary Chronology

1820:

Anna Sewell is born on March 30 in Yarmouth, England.

1856:

Harold Frederic is born on August 19 in Utica, New York.

1871:

James Weldon Johnson is born on June 17 in Jacksonville, Florida.

1877:

Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty is published.

1878:

Anna Sewell dies on April 25, just five months after her novel Black Beauty was published.

1885:

Sinclair Lewis (Harry Sinclair Lewis) is born on February 7 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota.

1896:

Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware is published.

1898:

Harold Frederic dies on October 19.

1909:

James Agee (James Rufus Agee) is born on November 27 in Knoxville, Tennessee.

1912:

James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man is published.

1918:

Muriel Spark is born on February 1 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

1920:

Ray Bradbury is born on August 22 in Waukegan, Illinois.

1924:

Kobo Abe is born on March 7 in Tokyo.

1925:

William Styron is born on June 11 in Newport News, Virginia.

1927:

Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry is published.

1932:

Umberto Eco is born on January 5 in Alessandria, Italy.

1938:

James Weldon Johnson dies on June 26 in a car accident in Wiscasset, Maine.

1947:

Salman Rushdie is born on June 19 to a prosperous family in Bombay, India.

1951:

Sinclair Lewis dies of heart disease in Rome, Italy.

1955:

James Agee dies of heart failure on May 16.

1957:

James Agee’s A Death in the Family is published.

1957:

Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine is published.

1958:

James Agee is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for A Death in the Family.

1960:

Arundhati Roy is born. Roy grows up in Aymanam, a village in the state of Kerala, in southern India.

1961:

Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is published.

1962:

Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes is published.

1968:

William Styron is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Confessions of Nat Turner.

1979:

William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice is published.

1980:

Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose is published.

1988:

Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is published.

1993:

Kobo Abe dies of heart failure on January 22 in Tokyo.

1997:

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is published.