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A Companion to American Literature, 3 Volume Set
Page 69

Chronology: 1914 to the Present

Literary event	Date	Historical event
Robert Frost, North of Boston Ezra Pound, editor, Des Imagistes: An Anthology Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons Founding of Little Review, Smart Set, Blast, Vanity Fair, and The New Republic	1914	World War I begins in Europe Opening of the Panama Canal Great Migration of African Americans from the South to northern cities begins
Provincetown Players established in Massachusetts	1915
Susan Glaspell, Trifles H.D., Sea Garden Carl Sandberg, Chicago Poems	1916	Woodrow Wilson reelected President
Abraham Cahan, The Rise of Daniel Levinsky T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence and Other Poems	1917	US enters World War I
Georgia Douglas Johnson, The Heart of a Woman Willa Cather, My Ántonia	1918	Armistice ends fighting in World War I Influenza pandemic begins which kills between 20 and 40 million people worldwide
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio Claude McKay, “If We Must Die”	1919	Ratification of Eighteenth Amendment prohibits manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol Widespread race riots across US during the “Red Summer”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise Sinclair Lewis, Main Street Eugene O’Neill, The Emperor Jones Pound, Hugh Sellwyn Mauberley Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence	1920	US population: 105 710 620 Passage of Nineteenth Amendment grants women right to vote Warren G. Harding elected President
John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers Zitkala‐Sa, American Indian Legends	1921	Emergency Quota Act temporarily limits European immigration
E.E. Cummings, The Enormous Room Eliot, The Wasteland Fitzgerald, Tales of the Jazz Age James Weldon Johnson, The Book of American Negro Poetry McKay, Harlem Shadows O’Neill, The Hairy Ape	1922
Ernest Hemingway, Three Stories and Ten Poems Mina Loy, Lunar Baedecker Wallace Stevens, Harmonium Jean Toomer, Cane	1923	Calvin Coolidge becomes President after death of Harding
William Faulkner, The Marble Faun Marianne Moore, Observations	1924	Immigration Bill severely limits numbers from Europe and disallows immigration from Japan entirely American Indian Citizenship Act provides right to vote to Native Americans
Countee Cullen, Color Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Hemingway, In Our Time Alain Locke, The New Negro Pound, A Draft of XVI Cantos	1925	Scopes Monkey Trial convicts John Scopes of violating Tennessee law for teaching Darwinian evolution in schools.
Hart Crane, White Buildings Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues	1926
Countee Cullen, Caroling Dusk Mourning Dove, Cagewea the Half‐Blood Johnson, God’s Trombones	1927	The Jazz Singer, first full‐length “talkie” motion picture Execution of Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti galvanizes radical writers
Jesse Redmon Fauset, Plum Bun Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness Nella Larsen, Quicksand McKay, Home to Harlem	1928	Herbert Hoover elected President
Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury and Sartoris Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms Elmer Rice, Street Scene	1929	Stock market crash leads to worldwide financial depression
Sinclair Lewis becomes first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature John Dos Passos, U.S.A. trilogy begins Mike Gold, Jews without Money Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, Mule Bone Katherine Anne Porter, “Flowering Judas”	1930	US population: 122 775 046
Hughes, “Christ in Alabama”	1931	Nine African American youths are arrested on charges of rape in Alabama, igniting a campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys
Mary Austin, Earth Horizon Pearl Buck, The Good Earth Sterling Brown, Southern Road Faulkner, Light in August Hughes, Scottsboro Limited	1932	Franklin D. Roosevelt elected President and announces a “New Deal” for the American people
Zora Neale Hurston, “The Gilded Six Bits” Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas	1933	The Twenty‐Fifth Amendment ends Prohibition
George Gershwin, Porgy and Bess Hurston, Mules and Men John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat	1935
Eugene O’Neill awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature Arna Bontemps, Black Thunder Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind	1936	Roosevelt reelected President Outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939
Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God McKay, A Long Way from Home John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men	1937
Buck awarded Nobel Prize in Literature Richard Wright, Uncle Tom’s Children	1938
Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath	1939	World War II begins when Great Britain and France declare war on Germany after its invasion of Poland
Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night Richard Wright, Native Son	1940	US population: 131 669 275 Second great migration of African Americans from south to north and west
Theodore Roethke, Open House	1941	US enters World War II following Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor
John Berryman, Poems Hughes, Shakespeare in Harlem Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth	1942	More than 100 000 American citizens of Japanese origin are interned for the duration of the war
John Cheever, The Way Some People Live Eliot, The Four Quartets Eudora Welty, The Wide Net and Other Stories	1943
Muriel Rukeyser, Beast in View Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie William Carlos Williams, The Wedge	1944	Allies invade Europe on D‐Day, 6 June Roosevelt reelected President
Gwendolyn Brooks, A Street in Bronzeville Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go Steinbeck, Cannery Row	1945	Harry S. Truman becomes President after Roosevelt’s death Germany surrenders on 7 May after atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrenders, ending World War II United Nations established with the aim of preventing another such conflict
Elizabeth Bishop, North and South Robert Lowell, Lord Weary’s Castle McCullers, The Member of the Wedding O’Neill, The Iceman Cometh Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men	1946
Saul Bellow, The Victim Arthur Miller, All My Sons Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire	1947	Anti‐communist investigations led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and House Un‐American Activities Committee (HUAC) continue through mid‐1950s
Arna Bontemps, The Story of the Negro Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms T.S. Eliot awarded Nobel Prize in Literature	1948	Truman reelected President State of Israel established
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There Miller, Death of a Salesman William Faulkner awarded Nobel Prize in Literature	1949	Mao Zedong proclaims the founding of the People’s Republic of China
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles	1950	US population: 151 325 798 Outbreak of the Korean War
Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us Adrienne Rich, A Change of World J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye	1951
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea Bernard Malamud, The Natural	1952	Dwight D. Eisenhower elected President
James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March Miller, The Crucible Salinger, Nine Stories Richard Wright, The Outsider	1953	An armistice ends the fighting in Korea, but no peace treaty is signed
Ernest Hemingway awarded Nobel Prize in Literature	1954	Racial segregation declared unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita	1955
John Ashbery, Some Trees John Berryman, Homage to Mistress Bradstreet Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems	1956	Eisenhower reelected President
Jack Kerouac, On the Road Bernard Malamud, The Assistant	1957	Federal troops enforce integration at Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas
Edward Albee, The Zoo Story Richard Wright, The Long Dream	1958
Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones Philip Roth, Goodbye Coumbus Gary Snyder, Riprap José Antonio Villarreal, Pocho	1959	Alaska and Hawaii become the 49th and 50th states
Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters Galway Kinnel, What a Kingdom It Was Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems John Updike, Rabbit, Run	1960	John F. Kennedy elected President
Edward Albee, An American Dream Amiri Baraka, Preface to a Twenty‐Volume Suicide Note Joseph Heller, Catch‐22 Maxine Kumin, Halfway Walker Percy, The Moviegoer Wright, Eight Men	1961	Ninety tribal groups prepare Declaration of Indian Purpose Freedom Riders attempt to desegregate bus terminals and interstate transportation in the South
Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Baldwin, Another Country Carson, Silent Spring Faulkner, The Reivers Tillie Olson, Tell Me a Riddle John Steinbeck awarded Nobel Prize in Literature	1962
Baldwin, The Fire Next Time Plath, The Bell Jar Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”	1963	Lyndon Johnson becomes President following assassination of Kennedy
Baraka, Dutchman Ellison, Shadow and Act Lowell, For the Union Dead	1964	Passage of Civil Rights Bill Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizes US military action in Vietnam, leading to a rapid escalation of the war
John Barth, Giles Goat Boy Truman Capote, In Cold Blood Malamud, The Fixer	1966
Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness Barth, Lost in the Funhouse Ursula K. LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea Updike, Couples	1968	Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy assassinated Richard M. Nixon elected President
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Loraine Hansberry, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse Five	1969	Stonewall Riots in New York help create gay and lesbian liberation movement Anti‐Vietnam War protests across the country
James Dickey, Deliverance Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice	1970	US population: 302 211 926 Student anti‐war protesters killed by National Guard and police at Kent State and Jackson State Universities
Tomás Rivera, Y no se lo tragó la tierra / And the Earth Did Not Devour Him Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas	1971
Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima Maxine Kumin, Up Country	1972	Nixon reelected President
Morrison, Sula Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow Tim O’Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck	1973	Peace agreement ends direct US military involvement in the Vietnam War Roe v. Wade ruling by Supreme Court upholds voluntary abortions Occupation of the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, by approximately 200 Oglala Lakota and followers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) ends in a shoot‐out with FBI agents
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Marilyn Hacker, Presentation Piece Charles Johnson, Faith and the Good Thing Tillie Olsen, Yonnondio Leslie Marmon Silko, “Yellow Woman” Gary Snyder, Turtle Island	1974	Nixon resigns and Gerald Ford becomes President
Raymond Carver, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? Audre Lorde, Coal Ntozake Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior Momaday, The Names Ishmael Reed, Flight to Canada Saul Bellow awarded Nobel Prize in Literature	1976	Jimmy Carter elected President
James Alan McPherson, Elbow Room	1977
Baldwin, Just Above My Head Meridel Le Sueur, The Girl Olson, Yonnondio: From the Thirties Isaac Bashevis Singer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature	1978
Octavia Butler, Kindred William Styron, Sophie’s Choice	1979	American hostages seized at US embassy in Tehran, Iran Energy crisis causes big declines in oil production and price hikes by OPEC
Rita Dove, The Yellow House on the Corner	1980	US population: 226 545 805 Ronald Reagan elected President
Jane DeLynn, In Thrall Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory Alice Walker, The Color Purple Edmund White, A Boy’s Own Story	1982
Paula Gunn Allen, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows Jorie Graham, Erosian Snyder, Axe Handles John Edgar Wideman, Sent for You Yesterday	1983
Baraka, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine Ishmael Reed, Flight to Canada August Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom	1984	Reagan reelected President
Don De Lillo, White Noise	1985
Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop Art Spiegelman, Maus Shirley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose	1986
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera Morrison, Beloved Joseph Brodsky awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature	1987
Hisaye Yamamoto, Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories	1988	George H.W. Bush elected President
Oscar Hijuelos, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club Tobias Wolff, This Boy’s Life	1989
Judith Ortiz Cofer, Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood Charles Johnson, Middle Passage Wilson, The Piano Lesson Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried Gary Soto, A Summer Life Wideman, Philadelphia Fire	1990	US population: 248 765 170 Persian Gulf War through 1991
Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Tony Kushner, Angels in America Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place	1991	Dissolution of Soviet Union into 15 separate republics
Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina Cristina García, Dreaming in Cuban Edward P. Jones, Lost in the City Cherríe Moraga, Heroes and Saints Morrison, Jazz	1992	Bill Clinton elected President
Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven Ana Castillo, So Far From God Ernest Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying Yusef Komunyakaa, Neon Vernacular Toni Morrison awarded Nobel Prize in Literature	1993
Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eye, Memory O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods	1994
Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother Chang‐Rae Lee, Native Speaker Helena María Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus	1995	Radical militia members blow up federal building in Oklahoma City
bell hooks, Bone Black Ha Jin, Ocean of Words	1996	Bill Clinton reelected President
De Lillo, Underworld Charles Wright, Black Zodiac	1997
	1998	Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
Rita Dove, On the Bus with Rosa Parks Ellison, Juneteenth Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist	1999	President Clinton acquitted in impeachment proceedings in US Senate
	2000	US population: 281 421 906 George W. Bush elected President
	2001	Terrorists destroy New York’s World Trade Center and attack Pentagon
	2002
Jones, The Known World	2003
Joy Harjo, Native Joy for Real	2004	George W. Bush reelected President
	2005
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home Jones, All Aunt Hagar’s Children	2006
Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao	2007
	2008	Barack Obama elected President
Whitehead, Sag Harbor	2009
Ellison, Three Days Before the Shooting	2010	US population: 308 745 538
Josefina López, Detained in the Desert Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones	2011
Diaz, This is How You Lose Her Reyna Grande, The Distance Between Us Morrison, Home	2012	Barack Obama reelected President
	2013
	2014
	2015
Bob Dylan awarded Nobel Prize in Literature Whitehead, The Underground Railroad	2016	Donald J. Trump elected President

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