1955 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1955.

Events

• April 16 – U.K. theatrical release of Sir Laurence Olivier's film version of Shakespeare's Richard III.
• July 10 – Jorge Luis Borges is appointed Director of the National Library of the Argentine Republic.
• July 14 – Director Stephen Joseph establishes Britain's first theatre in the round at Scarborough, North Yorkshire, predecessor of the Stephen Joseph Theatre.
• July 30 – English poet Philip Larkin, having taken up the post of University Librarian at the University of Hull in March, makes a train journey from Hull to Grantham which inspires his poem The Whitsun Weddings. His collection The Less Deceived is published in November (dated October).
• August 3 – English language premiere of Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot, directed by Peter Hall, opens at the Arts Theatre, London.
• August 27 – First hardback edition of The Guinness Book of Records published in London.
• September – Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is published in Paris; however, it takes until 1958 to be published in the United States.
• November – Frank Herbert's first novel, The Dragon in the Sea, begins its 3-part serialization as Under Pressure in the monthly Astounding Science-Fiction.
• November 28 – Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll receives its stage première by the Union Theatre Repertory Company in Melbourne with the playwright in a leading rôle; this is influential as the first authentically naturalistic modern drama in the theatre of Australia.
• Jean Cocteau is elected to both the Académie française (March 3; inducted October 20) and the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (January 8; inducted October 1).
• An article in the British Journal of Education criticises the novels of Enid Blyton as formula fiction.
• Guru Mani Madhava Chakyar performs Koodiyattam outside the temple for the first time.

New prose fiction

1st ed.

• Kingsley Amis – That Uncertain Feeling
• Isaac Asimov
  • The End of Eternity
  • The Martian Way and Other Stories
• Elisabeth Augustin – Labyrint (Auswege)
• Leigh Brackett – The Long Tomorrow
• Ray Bradbury – The October Country
• Henry Cecil – Brothers in Law
• Louis-Ferdinand Céline – Conversations with Professor Y (Entretiens avec le professeur Y)
• Agatha Christie – Hickory Dickory Dock
• Arthur C. Clarke – Earthlight
• Ivy Compton-Burnett – Mother and Son
• Thomas B. Costain – The Tontine
• Marco Denevi – Rosaura a las 10 ("Rosaura at 10 O'Clock")
• Patrick Dennis – Auntie Mame
• John Dickson Carr – Captain Cut-Throat
• J. P. Donleavy – The Ginger Man
• Friedrich Dürrenmatt – Once a Greek (Grieche sucht Griechin)
• Ian Fleming – Moonraker
• Franquin – La corne de rhinocéros
• William Gaddis – The Recognitions
• David Garnett – Aspects of Love
• William Golding – The Inheritors
• Graham Greene
  • The Quiet American
  • Loser Takes All
• Henri René Guieu
  • L'Agonie du Verre
  • Commandos de l'Espace
  • Univers parallèles
• Robert A. Heinlein – Tunnel in the Sky
• Georgette Heyer – Bath Tangle
• Patricia Highsmith – The Talented Mr. Ripley
• Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp – Tales of Conan
• Aldous Huxley – The Genius and the Goddess
• Mac Hyman – No Time for Sergeants
• Dan Jacobson – The Trap
• Robin Jenkins – The Cone Gatherers
• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala – To Whom She Will
• MacKinlay Kantor – Andersonville
• Nikos Kazantzakis – The Last Temptation of Christ (O Teleutaios Peirasmos)
• Yaşar Kemal – Memed, My Hawk (İnce Memed)
• C. S. Lewis – The Magician's Nephew
• Józef Mackiewicz
  • Droga donikąd ("The Road to Nowhere")
  • Karierowicz
• Alistair Maclean – HMS Ulysses
• Norman Mailer – The Deer Park
• Gabriel García Márquez
  • The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (Relato de un náufrago)
  • Leaf Storm (La Hojarasca)
• J. J. Marric – Gideon's Day
• Brian Moore – The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
• Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita
• Flannery O'Connor
  • Good Country People
  • A Good Man Is Hard To Find
• John O'Hara – Ten North Frederick
• Anthony Powell – The Acceptance World
• Marin Preda – Moromeții, vol. i
• Barbara Pym – Less than Angels
• Alain Robbe-Grillet – Le Voyeur
• Robert Ruark – Something of Value
• Juan Rulfo – Pedro Paramo
• Françoise Sagan – Bonjour Tristesse (English translation)
• 'Michael Scarrott' (A. S. T. Fisher) – Ambassador of Loss
• Isaac Bashevis Singer – Satan in Goray
• Rex Stout – Before Midnight
• Jim Thompson – After Dark, My Sweet
• Morton Thompson – Not As a Stranger
• J. R. R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King
• Evelyn Waugh – Officers and Gentlemen
• Patrick White – The Tree of Man
• Leonard Wibberley – The Mouse That Roared
• Sloan Wilson – The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
• Herman Wouk – Marjorie Morningstar
• John Wyndham – The Chrysalids

New drama

• Enid Bagnold – The Chalk Garden
• Samuel Beckett – Waiting for Godot (English version)
• Bertolt Brecht – Trumpets and Drums (Pauken und Trompeten; adaptation of Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer (1706))
• William Inge – Bus Stop
• Eugène Ionesco – Jack, or The Submission (Jacques ou la soumission) and The New Tenant (Le Nouveau locataire)
• Kol Jakova – Toka jonë ("Our Land")
• Ray Lawler – Summer of the Seventeenth Doll
• Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee – Inherit the Wind
• Arthur Miller – A View from the Bridge (one-act verse version) and A Memory of Two Mondays
• Jean-Paul Sartre – Nekrassov
• Ariano Suassuna – O Auto da Compadecida ("The Compassionate Self")
• Thornton Wilder – The Matchmaker and A Life in the Sun
• Tennessee Williams – Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
• Carl Zuckmayer – The Cold Light (Das kalte Licht)

Poetry

Main article: 1955 in poetry

• Philip Larkin – The Less Deceived
• R.S. Thomas – Song at the Year's Turning

Non-fiction

• Richard Aldington – Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry
• James Baldwin – Notes of a Native Son
• Ivan Bunin – About Chekhov
• Thomas E. Gaddis – Birdman of Alcatraz
• Robert Graves – The Greek Myths
• The Guinness Book of Records, 1st edition
• T. E. Lawrence (352087 A/c Ross; died 1935) – The Mint: A day-book of the R.A.F. Depot between August and December 1922, with later notes (written 1928; 1st trade edition)
• C. S. Lewis – Surprised by Joy
• Walter Lippmann – Essays in the Public Philosophy
• Walter Lord – A Night to Remember
• Herbert Marcuse – Eros and Civilization
• Alan Marshall – I Can Jump Puddles
• Meher Baba – God Speaks
• RAND – A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates

Births

• January 11 – Max Lucado, American religious writer
• January 12 – Rockne S. O'Bannon, American writer and producer
• January 13 – Jay McInerney, American novelist
• January 27 – Alexander Stuart, English-born American novelist and screenwriter
• February 2 – Leszek Engelking, Polish poet, fiction writer and translator
• February 8 – John Grisham, American novelist
• March 19 – John Burnside, Scottish poet and fiction writer
• March 23 – Lloyd Jones, New Zealand novelist
• April 8 – Barbara Kingsolver, American novelist, essayist and poet
• May 30 – Colm Tóibín, Irish novelist, playwright and poet
• June 4 – Val McDermid, Scottish crime novelist
• June 16 – J. Jill Robinson, Canadian fiction writer
• June 20 – Tor Nørretranders, Danish science author
• July 1 – Lisa Scottoline, American writer of legal thrillers
• July 5 – Mia Couto (António Emílio Leite Couto), Mozambican writer
• July 6
  • Michael Boyd, British theatre director
  • William Wall, Irish author and poet
• August 2 – Caleb Carr, American writer
• August 7 – Vladimir Sorokin, Russian writer
• September 6 – Raymond Benson, American novelist
• September 13 – Hiromi Itō (伊藤 比呂美), Japanese poet, essayist and translator
• October 19 – Jason Shinder, American poet and editor (died 2008)
• November 23 – Steven Brust, American fantasy author
• December 28 – Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波), Chinese critic, writer and activist
• Unknown date – Wang Xiaoni (王小妮), Chinese poet

Deaths

• January 20 – Robert P. Tristram Coffin, American poet, essayist and novelist (born 1892)
• February 23 – Paul Claudel, French poet, dramatist and diplomat (born 1868)
• April 10 – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French philosopher and essayist (born 1881)
• May 16 – James Agee, American writer (born 1909)
• June 6 – Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, English crime writer (born 1883)
• June 17 – Constance Holme, English novelist and dramatist (born 1880)
• June 19 – Adrienne Monnier, French poet and publisher (born 1892)
• June 21 – Roger Mais, Jamaican novelist (born 1905)
• July 3 – Beatrice Chase, English writer (born 1874)
• August 1 – Charles Shaw, Australian writer (born 1900)
• August 2 – Wallace Stevens, American poet (born 1879)
• August 12 – Thomas Mann, German novelist (born 1875)
• August 14 – Herbert Putnam, American Librarian of Congress (born 1861)
• August 29 – Hong Shen (洪深), Chinese dramatist (born 1894)
• September 20 – Robert Riskin, American dramatist and screenwriter (born 1897)
• October 18 – José Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher (born 1883)
• November 1 – Dale Carnegie, American writer (born 1888)
• November 12 – Tin Ujević, Croatian poet (born 1891)
• November 14 – Robert E. Sherwood, American playwright (born 1896)
• December – Al. T. Stamatiad, Romanian poet (born 1885)

Awards

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Eleanor Farjeon, The Little Bookroom
• Frost Medal: Leona Speyer
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Ivy Compton-Burnett, Mother and Son
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: R. W. Ketton-Cremer, Thomas Gray
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Meindert DeJong, The Wheel on the School
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Halldór Kiljan Laxness
• Premio Nadal: Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, El Jarama
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: William Faulkner, A Fable
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Ruth Pitter

In literature

• Ian McEwan's novel The Innocent (1990)
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel Cancer Ward (1967)
• Colin Wilson's novel Adrift in Soho (1961)
• Richard Yates's novel Revolutionary Road (1961)