fiction

In literature, any work in which the content is completely or largely invented. The term describes imaginative works of narrative prose (such as the novel or the short story), and is distinguished from non-fiction writing (such as history, biography, or works on practical subjects) and from poetry.

Fiction need not be only prose literature; poems can also be fictional. Genres such as the historical novel often combine a fictional plot with real events; biography may also be fictionalized through imagined conversations or events.

fiction - events

109	Roman Empire	Roman satirist Juvenal's first of five books of Satires appears about this time. Each ‘Satire’ attacks a different aspect of what Juvenal saw as the moral degeneracy of Roman society under Domitian.
149	Roman Empire	The writer Lucius Apuleius lectures on philosophy, in Rome. His fame rests on his comic ‘novel’ The Golden Ass, which recounts the adventures of a sorcerer's apprentice accidentally turned into an ass.
c. 376	Greece	The first pastoral romance Daphnis and Chloe is written by the Greek sophist Longus.
c. 1010	Japan	Murasaki Shikibu (‘Lady Murasaki’) writes Genji Monogatari/The Tale of Genji about the love affairs of Prince Genji. The first psychological novel, it is regarded as one of the greatest works of Japanese literature.
c. 1310	Spain	The anonymous Spanish prose romance Amadís de Gaula/Amadis the Gaul (possibly Portuguese in origin) is written. The best-known version of this story is published by the Spanish writer Garcia Rodríguez de Montalvo in 1508.
1353	Florence	Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio completes his Decameron, a collection of tales supposedly told by ten young people living in the country to escape the plague in Florence. It is one of the major prose works of early Italian literature.
c. 1375	England	The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Mandeville, Knight, a collection of travel tales, appears in England. It claims to have been written by a gouty English knight, Sir John Maundeville (Mandeville), though it is likely that Sir John is the creation of the French chronicler and poet Jean d'Outremeuse. The work first appears in a French text dated about 1357. Popular throughout Europe, the book appears many times in English, notably in a 1496 printing.
1473	Netherlands	Gesta Romanorum/Roman Tales is first printed, in Utrecht, Holland. A collection of illustrative tales, anecdotes, and historical narratives written in Latin, it was begun in about 1330 and gradually expanded to become a rich store of tales from Christian, Jewish, and classical sources. It provided many writers (including Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower) with material.
1475	England, Burgundian Netherlands, Holy Roman Empire	English printer William Caxton prints The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, in Bruges, Belgium. His own translation from the French romance by Raoul le Fèvre, it is the first work to be printed in English.
1500	Germany	The anonymous Till Eulenspiegel/The Owl Mirror is first printed, in Lübeck, Germany. This is the first printed example of the German Schwank (‘Farce’), a form of comic tale that developed in medieval Germany.
1501	Spain, England	Spanish writer Fernando de Rojas publishes La Celestina/The Procuress, the first great Spanish novel. It is of great importance in the development of realistic comedy in European literature. It is translated into English in 1631.
1511	France	The Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus publishes the prose satire Encomium moriae/In Praise of Folly in Paris, France. Written in Latin, it is translated into French and German in 1520, and English in 1549.
1516	Italy	Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto publishes the romantic epic Orlando Furioso. A sequel to Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato of 1495, Orlando Furioso is one of the central works of Italian Renaissance literature.
1558	France, Italy	L'Heptaméron/The Heptameron, written by the French patron and writer Margaret of Navarre (Marguerite d'Angoulême), is published posthumously. A collection of tales, it was inspired by the works of the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio.
1575	England	The English poet George Gascoigne publishes Posies, a selection of his works. It contains the play Jocasta, the second tragedy in English blank verse, paraphrased from the Phoenissae by the Greek dramatist Euripides, and ‘Certain Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse’, the earliest critical essay of its kind in English literature.
1590	England	The long prose romance Arcadia by the English courtier and poet Philip Sidney is published posthumously. Most of the book was written in 1580. A new, enlarged edition appears in 1593.
1605	Spain	The Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (Saavedra) publishes part one of El ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha/The Ingenious Knight Don Quixote de la Mancha. The second part appears in 1615.
1733	France	The French writer Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles publishes his sentimental novel Manon Lescaut, his best-known work. It is the last volume of his seven-volume novel Mémoires et aventures d'un homme de qualité qui s'est retiré de monde/Memoirs of a Man of Quality Who Has Retired from the World.
1762	France	The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau publishes Émile, ou l'Education/Émile, or Education, a romance that sets out his ideas on education. His central claim is that education is not about simply imposing knowledge, but about allowing a child to develop naturally. It will have a profound influence on the theory and practice of education.
1762	France	The French writer and encyclopedist Denis Diderot begins his satirical novel Le Neveu de Rameau/Rameau's Nephew, completing it in 1774. It is not published in France until 1821.
1762	England	The English writer Oliver Goldsmith publishes The Citizen of the World; or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher. Written as a series of letters from a Chinese visitor to England, it satirizes contemporary society.
1765	England	The English writer Horace Walpole publishes the novel The Castle of Otranto. A horror story set in the Middle Ages, it starts the vogue for Gothic romances.
1766	England	The English writer Oliver Goldsmith publishes The Vicar of Wakefield, a comic novel that becomes one of his best-known works.
1768	England	The English novelist Laurence Sterne publishes A Sentimental Journey. An account of a tour through France and Italy, it is a satire on the sentimentality of many contemporary novels. Ironically, it is taken seriously by many of his readers and becomes very popular.
1774	Germany	The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe publishes Die Leiden des jungen Werther/The Sorrows of Young Werther, a short novel about a tragic love affair and suicide that embodies the mood of early Romanticism.
1778	England	The English writer Fanny Burney publishes anonymously Evelina, her first and best novel.
1791	France	The French writer and philosopher the Marquis de Sade publishes Justine, a novel whose eroticism and sadomasochism cause an outcry. The word ‘sadism’ is derived from his name.
1794	England	The English writer Anne Radcliffe publishes The Mysteries of Udolpho, a best-selling Gothic romance.
1795–1796	Germany	The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe publishes Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre/Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, a novel charting a young man's journey to emotional and intellectual maturity.
1796	England	The English writer Matthew ‘Monk’ Lewis publishes his Gothic horror novel, The Monk.
1809	Germany	The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe publishes his novel Wahlverwandtschaften/The Elective Affinities.
1811	England	The English writer Jane Austen publishes her novel Sense and Sensibility. She began work on it in 1797.
1812	England	The English poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, publishes the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Further cantos appear in 1816 and 1818. Based on the wanderings of a typical ‘Byronic hero’, it becomes an immediate success.
1812	Germany	The German folklorists and philologists Jakob Ludwig Carl Grimm and his brother Wilhelm Carl Grimm publish the first volume of their famous Kinder and Hausmärchen/Fairy Tales. A second volume appears in 1815 and a third in 1822.
1813	England	The English writer Jane Austen publishes her novel Pride and Prejudice. She completed it in 1797 under the title First Impressions.
1813	Germany	The German writer Adelbert von Chamisso (Louis-Charles-Adélaïde Chamisso de Boncourt) publishes his tale Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte/Peter Schlemihl's Remarkable Story.
1814	England	The English writer Jane Austen publishes her novel Mansfield Park.
1814	Scotland	The Scottish poet and novelist Walter Scott anonymously publishes his first novel, Waverley. Its popularity encourages him to turn from narrative verse to novels.
1816	England	The English writer Jane Austen publishes her novel Emma.
1816	France	The Franco-Swiss writer Benjamin Constant (Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque) publishes his autobiographical novel Adolphe, a thinly disguised account of his relationship with the writer Madame de Staël.
1818	England	Two novels by the English writer Jane Austen are published posthumously: Northanger Abbey (an early Austen novel that makes fun of the taste for gothic novels) and Persuasion.
1818	Scotland	The Scottish poet and novelist Walter Scott publishes the novels Heart of Midlothian and Rob Roy.
1818	England	The English writer Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley publishes the Gothic novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. The novel is published anonymously, although the authorship becomes known in 1823.
1823	USA	The US writer James Fenimore Cooper publishes The Pioneers, the first of the ‘Leatherstocking’ novels.
1826	USA	The US writer James Fenimore Cooper publishes his novel The Last of the Mohicans.
1830	France	The French writer Stendhal publishes his novel Le Rouge et le noir/The Scarlet and the Black.
1833	Scotland	The Scottish essayist and social historian Thomas Carlyle publishes Sartor Resartus, the Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh, a philosophical satire, in Fraser's Magazine. It appears as a book in 1836.
1833	France	The French writer Honoré de Balzac publishes the novel Eugénie Grandet.
1833	Russia	The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin publishes his novel in verse Yevgeny Onegin/Eugene Onegin, his major work. He began writing it in 1823. It quickly becomes one of the best-known works of Russian literature and is used as the basis for the 1879 opera by the Russian composer Peter Illich Tchaikovsky.
1834	Russia	The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin publishes the short story ‘Pikovaya dama’/‘Queen of Spades’.
1835	France	The French writer Honoré de Balzac publishes the novel Le Père Goriot/Father Goriot.
1835	France	The French writer Théophile Gautier publishes his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin.
1835	Russia	The Russian writer Nikolay (Vasilyevich) Gogol publishes his novel Myortvye dushi/Dead Souls, and his short story ‘Shinel’/‘The Overcoat’ – both major works of Russian literature.
1837	England	The English writer Charles Dickens publishes his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, and begins to publish his novel Oliver Twist in the magazine Bentley's Miscellany. It is published as a book in 1838.
1838	England	The English writer Charles Dickens begins publishing The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby in serial form. It appears as a book in 1839.
1839	France	The French writer Stendhal publishes his novel La Chartreuse de Parme/The Charterhouse of Parma.
1840	England	The English writer Charles Dickens begins publishing his novel The Old Curiosity Shop in serial form. It appears as a book in 1841.
1840	Russia	The Russian writer Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov publishes his novel Geroy nashego vremeni/A Hero of Our Time.
1841	USA	The US writer Edgar Allan Poe publishes the short stories ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and ‘Descent into the Maelström’ in Graham's Magazine.
1844	France	The French writer Alexandre Dumas père publishes his adventure novels Les Trois Mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers and Le Comte de Monte-Cristo/The Count of Monte Cristo.
1846	France	The French writer Honoré de Balzac publishes his novel La Cousine Bette/Cousin Bette.
1846	USA	The US writer Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes his story collection Mosses From an Old Manse, which includes ‘Young Goodman Brown’ and ‘Rappaccini's Daughter’.
1847	England	The English writer Frederick Marryat publishes his historical novel The Children of the New Forest, which becomes a classic of children's literature.
October 1847	England	The English writer Charlotte Brontë publishes her second novel, Jane Eyre, under the name Currer Bell. (Her first novel, The Professor, does not appear until 1857.)
December 1847	England	The English writer Emily Brontë publishes her only novel, Wuthering Heights, under the name Ellis Bell.
1849	England	The English writer Charles Dickens begins to publish his novel David Copperfield in serial form. It is published as a book in 1850. Its full title is: The Personal History, Experience and Observations of David Copperfield the Younger, of Blunderstone Rookery, Which He Never Meant to be Published on Any Account.
1851	USA	The US writer Herman Melville publishes his novel Moby Dick, or the Whale, his major work and one of the great US novels of the 19th century.
1852	England	The English writer William Makepeace Thackeray publishes his novel The History of Henry Esmond.
1855	England	The English writer Anthony Trollope publishes his novel The Warden.
1856	France	The French writer Gustave Flaubert publishes his novel Madame Bovary in serial form. Appearing as a book in 1857, it is one of the major French novels of the 19th century.
1856	England	The English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes her novel in verse Aurora Leigh (the first printing is incorrectly dated 1857).
1856	USA	The US writer Herman Melville publishes his story collection Piazza Tales, which includes ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’.
1857	England	The English writer Thomas Hughes publishes Tom Brown's Schooldays, which becomes a classic of English ‘public school’ literature.
1857	England	The English writer William Makepeace Thackeray begins to publish his novel The Virginians (which he also illustrates) in serial form. It appears as a book in 1859.
1857	England	The English writer Anthony Trollope publishes his novel Barchester Towers.
1859	England	The English writer Charles Dickens publishes his novel A Tale of Two Cities.
1859	Russia	The Russian writer Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov publishes his comic novel Oblomov.
1860	England	The English writer William Wilkie Collins publishes his novel The Woman in White.
1860	England	The English writer George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Anne Evans) publishes her novel The Mill on the Floss.
1860	Russia	The Russian writer Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev publishes his novel Nakanune/On the Eve.
1862	France	The French writer Victor Hugo publishes his novel Les Misérables.
1862	Russia	The Russian writer Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev publishes his novel Ottsy i deti/Fathers and Sons. Depicting the conflict between conservatives and radicals, the book is attacked by both.
1864	Russia	The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy publishes the first part of his epic novel Voyna i mir/War and Peace. The second part appears in 1869.
1864	Russia	The Russian writer Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky publishes his novel Zapiski iz podpolya/Notes from the Underground.
1866	Russia	The Russian writer Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky publishes his novel Prestupleniye i nakazaniye/Crime and Punishment, the first of his major novels.
1869	USA	The Perkins Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, produces the first novel in raised type for blind people, Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop.
1870	USA	The US writer Bret Harte publishes The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Stories, which includes, along with the title story, ‘The Outcasts of Poker Flats’ and ‘Tennessee's Partner’. The stories first appeared in the magazine Overland Monthly.
1870	France	The French writer Jules Verne publishes his novel Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers/Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
1871	England	The English writer George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Anne Evans) publishes the first part of her novel Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. The last part appears in 1872.
1871	England	The English writer and mathematician Lewis Carroll writes the children's classic Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.
1872	England	The English writer Samuel Butler publishes his satirical novel Erewhon.
1874	England	The English writer Thomas Hardy publishes his novel Far from the Madding Crowd.
1875	Russia	The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy publishes the first part of his novel Anna Karenina. The second part appears in 1875.
1876	USA	The US writer Mark Twain publishes his novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
1877	England	The English writer Anna Sewell publishes her novel Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, which becomes a classic of children's literature.
1878	USA	The US writer Henry James publishes his story ‘Daisy Miller’ and his novel The Europeans.
1879	Russia	The Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky publishes the first part of his novel Bratia Karamazovy/The Brothers Karamazov. The second part appears in 1880.
1879	England	The English writer George Meredith publishes his novel The Egoist.
1880	USA	The US writer Lewis Wallace publishes his historical novel Ben-Hur.
1880	France	The French writer Emile Zola publishes his novel Nana, one of the Les Rougon-Macquart series and Le Roman expérimental/The Experimental Novel, setting out his theories on the novel.
1881	France	The unfinished novel Bouvard et Pécuchet/Bouvard and Pécuchet, by the French writer Gustave Flaubert, is published posthumously.
1882	France	The French writer Guy de Maupassant publishes his short story collection Mademoiselle Fifi.
1883	Scotland	The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson publishes his adventure novel Treasure Island. It first appeared as a serial in the magazine Young Folks from 1881 to 1882 under the title The Sea Cook, or Treasure Island.
1884	USA	The US writer Mark Twain publishes his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
1885	England	The English explorer and translator Richard Burton publishes the first volume of his The Arabian Nights, translations of a collection of Arabic tales. The final volume appears in 1888.
1885	England	The English writer Henry Rider Haggard publishes his adventure novel King Solomon's Mines.
1886	USA	The US writer Henry James publishes his novels The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima.
1886	Scotland	The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson publishes his novels The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Kidnapped.
1886	Russia	The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy publishes his novella Smeat Ivana Ilyicha/The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
1887	Scotland	The Scottish writer Arthur Conan Doyle publishes A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes novel.
1888	France	The French writer Guy de Maupassant publishes his novel Pierre et Jean/Pierre and Jean.
1889	England	The English writer Jerome K Jerome publishes his comic novel Three Men in a Boat.
1890	Norway	The Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun (pseudonym of Knut Pederson) publishes his novel Sult/Hunger.
1890	Russia	The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy publishes his story Kreitserova sonata/The Kreutzer Sonata.
1890	France	The French writer Emile Zola publishes his novel La Bête humaine/The Human Beast.
1891	England	The English writer Thomas Hardy publishes his novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
1891	Ireland	The Irish writer Oscar Wilde publishes his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories.
1891	UK	The Scottish writer Arthur Conan Doyle publishes the first of his Sherlock Holmes stories in Strand Magazine.
1893	USA	The US writer Stephen Crane publishes his novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.
1893	USA	The US writer Ambrose Bierce publishes his collection of short stories Can Such Things Be?
1894	England	The English writer Anthony Hope publishes his novel The Prisoner of Zenda, which becomes a classic adventure novel.
1894	England	The English writer Rudyard Kipling publishes his collection of tales The Jungle Book.
1895	England	The English writer H G Wells publishes his fantasy novel The Time Machine.
1895	USA	The US writer Stephen Crane publishes his novel The Red Badge of Courage.
1896	Poland	The Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz publishes his novel Quo Vadis?.
1896	England	The English writer Thomas Hardy publishes his novel Jude the Obscure.
1897	Poland, UK	The Polish-born British writer Joseph Conrad (Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) publishes his novel The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’.
1897	England	The English writer H G Wells publishes his novel The Invisible Man.
1897	England	The English writer Bram (Abraham) Stoker publishes his novel Dracula, a classic horror novel that launches the Dracula myth.
1898	USA	The US writer Henry James publishes his story The Turn of the Screw.
1898	USA	The US writer Stephen Crane publishes his The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure, which includes, along with the title story, ‘A Bride Comes to Yellow Sky’.
1899	USA	The US writer Kate (O'Flaherty) Chopin publishes her short novel The Awakening.
1900	USA	The US author Frank L Baum writes the children's classic The Wizard of Oz.
1901		The Australian writer Miles Franklin publishes her novel My Brilliant Career, widely seen as one of the first wholly Australian novels.
1901		The English writer Rudyard Kipling publishes his novel Kim.
1902		The French writer André Gide publishes his novel L'Immoraliste/The Immoralist.
1902		The English writer Rudyard Kipling publishes his collection of children's tales Just So Stories.
1902		British writer Beatrix Potter publishes the classic children's book The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
1903		The US writer Henry James publishes his novel The Ambassadors and the story ‘The Beast in the Jungle’.
1903		The US writer Jack London publishes his novel The Call of the Wild.
1903		The satirical novel The Way of All Flesh, by the English writer Samuel Butler, is published posthumously.
1905		The US writer Edith Wharton publishes her novel House of Mirth.
1905		The US writer Jack London publishes his novel White Fang.
1906		The English writer John Galsworthy publishes The Man of Property, the first novel in his sequence of novels and stories The Forsyte Saga. The final volume appears in 1922.
1906		The US journalist Upton Sinclair publishes his novel The Jungle, a controversial book that exposes the conditions in the Chicago stockyards. As a direct result Congress passes laws to improve conditions in slaughterhouses.
1908		The Scottish writer Kenneth Grahame publishes his children's novel The Wind in the Willows.
1909		The French writer André Gide publishes his novel La Porte Etroite/Strait is the Gate.
1911		The English writer G K Chesterton publishes his collection of detective stories The Innocence of Father Brown.
1911		The English-born US writer Frances Hodgson Burnett publishes her children's novel The Secret Garden.
1912		The German writer Thomas Mann publishes his novella Der Tod in Venedig/Death in Venice.
1913		The French writer Marcel Proust publishes Du Côté de chez Swann/Swann's Way. This is the first volume of his multi-volume novel A la recherche du temps perdu/Remembrance of Things Past.
1913		The US writer Eleanor Porter publishes her children's novel Polyanna.
1913		The French writer Alain-Fournier publishes his novel Le Grand Meaulnes/The Lost Domain.
1913		The English writer D H Lawrence publishes his novel Sons and Lovers.
1914		The Irish writer James Joyce publishes his collection of short stories Dubliners. The stories were written between 1904 and 1907.
1915		The US writer Willa Cather publishes her novel The Song of the Lark.
1915		The English writer Ford Madox Ford publishes his novella The Good Soldier.
1915		The English writer D H Lawrence publishes his novel The Rainbow.
1915		The Bohemian-born German writer Franz Kafka publishes his novella Die Verwandlung/Metamorphosis.
1917		The English writer P G Wodehouse publishes The Man with Two Left Feet, a collection of stories in which his comic characters Jeeves and Wooster first appear.
1920		The English writer Agatha Christie publishes The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Her first novel, it introduces her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.
1921		The English writer D H Lawrence publishes his novel Women in Love. It was privately published in the USA in 1920.
1921		The Italian writer Italo Svevo publishes his novel La coscienza di Zeno/The Confessions of Zeno.
1922		The Irish writer James Joyce publishes his novel Ulysses in Paris, France.
1924		The English writer E M Forster publishes his novel A Passage to India.
1925		The English writer Ivy Compton-Burnett publishes her novel Pastors and Masters.
1925		The US writer Sinclair Lewis publishes his novel Arrowsmith.
1925		The US writer F Scott Fitzgerald publishes his novel The Great Gatsby.
1925		The novel Der Prozess/The Trial by the Bohemian-born German writer Franz Kafka is published posthumously.
1925		The English writer Virginia Woolf publishes her novel Mrs Dalloway.
1926		The US writer Ernest Hemingway publishes his novel The Sun Also Rises, which is published as Fiesta in Britain. He also publishes his novel The Torrents of Spring.
1926		The novel Das Schloss/The Castle by the Bohemian-born German writer Franz Kafka is published posthumously.
1926		The English writer A A Milne publishes his children's story book Winnie-the-Pooh.
1926		The Russian writer Isaak Babel publishes his story collection Konarmiya/Red Cavalry.
1927		The US writer Ernest Hemingway publishes his story collection Men Without Women.
1927		The German writer Hermann Hesse publishes his novel Der Steppenwolf/Steppenwolf.
1927		The US writer Sinclair Lewis publishes his novel Elmer Gantry.
1927		The English writer Virginia Woolf publishes her novel To the Lighthouse.
1927		The US writer Thornton Wilder publishes his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
1928		The English writer Evelyn Waugh publishes his novel Decline and Fall.
1928	Italy, USA, UK	The English writer D H Lawrence publishes his novel Lady Chatterley's Lover privately in Florence, Italy. Thought obscene, the full text is not published until 1959 in the USA, and 1960 in Britain.
1929		The German writer Alfred Döblin publishes his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz.
1929		The English writer Richard Hughes publishes his novel A High Wind in Jamaica, which is published in the USA as The Innocent Voyage.
1929		The English writer J B Priestley publishes his novel The Good Companions.
1929		The US writer Ernest Hemingway publishes his novel A Farewell to Arms.
1929		The German writer Erich Remarque publishes his novel Im Westen nichts Neues/All Quiet on the Western Front.
1930		The English writer Agatha Christie publishes her novel Murder at the Vicarage, which introduces her amateur detective Miss Jane Marple.
1930		The US writer Dashiell Hammett publishes his novel The Maltese Falcon, a classic of US hard-boiled detective fiction.
1930		The German writer Hermann Hesse publishes his novel Narziss und Goldmund/Narcissus and Goldmund.
1930		The US writer Katherine Anne Porter publishes her short-story collection Flowering Judas.
1930		The Austrian writer Robert Musil publishes the first part of his novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften/The Man Without Qualities. The final part appears in 1943.
1931		The Belgian-born French crime writer Georges Simenon publishes his first Maigret novel, Pietr-le-Letton/The Case of Peter the Lett.
1931		The US writer Pearl Buck publishes her novel The Good Earth. A story about peasant life in China, it becomes the best-selling novel in the USA for two years. She receives a Pulitzer prize for it in 1932 and it contributes to her winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938.
1931		The US writer William Faulkner publishes his novel Sanctuary. Despite its subject matter – rape, murder, and a lynching – it is the first of his novels to achieve popular success.
1931		The English writer Virginia Woolf publishes her novel The Waves.
1931		The French writer and aviator Antoine Marie Roger de St-Exupéry publishes his second novel Vol de nuit/Night Flight.
1932		The French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline publishes his novel Voyage au bout de la nuit/Journey to the End of the Night. A grimly realistic account of his experiences as a doctor among the poor, written in a strikingly original style, it wins international acclaim.
1932		The English writer Aldous Huxley publishes his novel Brave New World, which presents a nightmarish vision of a utopia based on science and technology.
1932		The US writer Erskine Caldwell publishes his novel Tobacco Road, which establishes his reputation and becomes a best-seller. In 1933, dramatized by Jack Kirkland, it will run on Broadway for more than 3,000 performances.
1934		The English crime writer Agatha Christie publishes novel Murder on the Orient Express.
1934		The US writer William Saroyan publishes The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, a collection of short stories that establishes his reputation.
1934		The English novelist Evelyn Waugh publishes his satirical novel A Handful of Dust.
1934		The novel And Quiet Flows the Don by the Russian writer Mikhail Sholokhov is published in English. The first part of a two-part English translation, it comprises the first two volumes of the four-volume epic Tikhy Don/The Silent Don, which began appearing in the Soviet Union in 1928.
1934		The English novelist James Hilton publishes his sentimental novel about a school teacher, Goodbye, Mr Chips. It becomes a best-seller in the USA.
1935		The Bulgarian writer Elias Canetti publishes the novel Die Blendung/The Blinding in German. It will be translated in 1946 as Auto-Da-Fé in Britain and The Tower of Babel in the USA.
1935		The English writer Christopher Isherwood publishes his novel Mr Norris Changes Trains. It is published in the USA as The Last of Mr Norris.
1936	USA	The US writer Margaret Mitchell publishes her novel Gone with the Wind, which becomes one of the best-selling novels of the 20th century.
1937	USA	The US writer Ernest Hemingway publishes his novel To Have and Have Not.
1937	England	The English writer J R R Tolkien publishes his fantasy novel The Hobbit.
1937	USA	The US writer John Steinbeck publishes his novella Of Mice and Men.
1938	Ireland, France	The Irish writer Samuel Beckett publishes his first novel, Murphy.
1938	England	The English writer Graham Greene publishes his novel Brighton Rock.
1938	England	The English writer Daphne du Maurier publishes her highly successful romantic melodrama Rebecca.
1938	France	The French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre publishes his novel Nausée/Nausea. It becomes one of the classics of the philosophy of existentialism.
1939	England	The English writer Rumer Godden publishes her novel Black Narcissus. A melodrama set in a convent in the Himalayas, it becomes a best-seller.
1939	Ireland	The Irish writer James Joyce publishes the final version of his novel Finnegan's Wake (parts had appeared as early as 1928).
1939	USA	The US writer John Steinbeck publishes his novel The Grapes of Wrath, a vivid account of the Depression in California.
1940	USA	The US writer Walter van Tilburg Clark publishes his novel The Ox-Bow Incident. Based on a lynching, the novel brings considerable psychological and moral depth to the Wild West novel.
1940	England	The English writer Graham Greene publishes his novel The Power and the Glory.
1940	USA	The US writer Ernest Hemingway publishes his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, set during the Spanish Civil War.
1940	Hungary, UK	The Hungarian-born British writer Arthur Koestler publishes Darkness at Noon, set in Russia during the Stalinist purges of the 1930s.
1941	USA	The Last Tycoon, an unfinished novel by the US writer F Scott Fitzgerald, is published posthumously.
1942	England	The English writer Enid Blyton publishes the first of her Famous Five children's novels.
1943	France	The French writer Antoine Marie Roger de Saint-Exupéry publishes his children's story Le Petit Prince/The Little Prince.
1944	England	The English novelist Joyce Cary publishes his novel The Horse's Mouth.
1944	France	The French writer Jean Genet publishes his first novel Notre Dame des fleurs/Our Lady of the Flowers, written in prison.
1945	England	The English writer George Orwell publishes his novel Animal Farm, a satire directed against Stalinist Russia in particular, and totalitarianism in general.
1945	France	The French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre publishes his novels L'Age de raison/The Age of Reason and Le Sursis/The Reprieve. They form the first two parts of his novel sequence Les Chemins de la liberté/The Roads to Freedom.
1945	England	The English novelist Evelyn Waugh publishes his novel about the Catholic English aristocracy, Brideshead Revisited.
1945	Italy	The Italian writer Carlo Levi publishes Cristo si èfermato ad Eboli/Christ Stopped at Eboli, a lyrical account of his political exile in southern Italy.
1946	Greece	The Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis publishes his novel Víos kai politía tou Aléxi Zormá/Zorba the Greek.
1946	USA	The US novelist and academic Robert Penn Warren's novel All the King's Men, based on the career of Louisiana governor Huey Long, is published.
1947	England	The English writer Malcolm Lowry publishes his finest novel Under the Volcano.
1948	England	The English writer Graham Greene publishes his novel The Heart of the Matter.
1948	USA	The US writer Norman Mailer publishes The Naked and the Dead. A novel depicting the lives of US soldiers in World War II, it quickly becomes a best-seller.
1948	South Africa	The South African writer Alan Paton publishes Cry, the Beloved Country, a novel which brings international attention to apartheid in South Africa.
1948	England	The English writer Henry Green publishes his novel Concluding.
1949	England	The English writer Enid Blyton publishes the first of her Noddy children's books.
1949	England	The English writer George Orwell publishes his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, a darkly pessimistic vision of the future.
1950	England	The English writer Doris Lessing publishes her novel The Grass is Singing.
1951	France, Ireland	The Irish writer Samuel Beckett publishes his novels Malone meurt/Malone Dies and Molloy in French (the English versions appear in 1956 and in 1955 respectively).
1951	USA	The Russian-born US writer Isaac Asimov publishes Foundation, the first novel in his science fiction Foundation Trilogy.
1951	England	The English writer Arthur C Clarke publishes his short story ‘The Sentinel’, which is filmed in 1968 as 2001: A Space Odyssey.
1951	USA	The US writer Carson McCullers publishes her novella The Ballad of the Sad Café.
1951	England	The English writer Nicholas Monsarrat publishes his novel The Cruel Sea.
1951	England	The English writer Anthony Powell publishes A Question of Upbringing, the first of 12 volumes in the sequence A Dance to the Music of Time. The final volume appears in 1975.
1951	USA	The US writer J D Salinger publishes his novel The Catcher in the Rye.
1951	USA	The US writer William Faulkner publishes his novel Requiem for a Nun.
1952	USA	The US writer Ernest Hemingway publishes his novella The Old Man and the Sea.
1952	England	The English writer Doris Lessing publishes her novel Martha Quest.
1952	USA	The US writer John Steinbeck publishes his novel East of Eden.
1952	USA	The US writer Bernard Malamud publishes his allegorical novel about baseball The Natural.
1953	USA	The US writer Saul Bellow publishes his novel The Adventures of Augie March.
1953	USA	The US writer William Burroughs publishes his novel Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict.
1953	USA	The US writer Raymond Chandler publishes his novel The Long Goodbye.
1953	England	The English writer Ian Fleming publishes Casino Royale, the first James Bond thriller.
1953	France, Ireland	The Irish writer Samuel Beckett publishes his novel L'Innommable/The Unnamable in French. The English version appears in 1958. He also publishes his novel Watt.
1954	England	The English writer Kingsley Amis publishes his novel Lucky Jim.
1954	England	The English writer William Golding publishes his novel Lord of the Flies, partly a reworking of the Victorian boys' tale The Coral Island (1858).
1955	England	The English writer Graham Greene publishes his novel The Quiet American.
1955	Russia, USA	The Russian-born US writer Vladimir Nabokov publishes his novel Lolita in Paris, France, following rejection by US publishers on grounds of obscenity. It is published in the USA in 1958.
1955	USA	The US writer Flannery O'Connor publishes her short-story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find.
1955	France	The French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet publishes his novel Le Voyeur/The Voyeur.
1955	England	The Irish-born English writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch publishes her novel The Flight from the Enchanter.
1956	Japan	The Japanese writer Yukio Mishima publishes his novel Kinkakuji/The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
1956	USA	The US writer Patricia Highsmith publishes her novel The Talented Mr Ripley.
1956	France	The Algerian-born French writer Albert Camus publishes his novel La Chute/The Fall.
1957	England	The English writer John Braine publishes his novel Room at the Top.
1957	England	The English writer Lawrence Durrell publishes his novel Justine, the first volume of The Alexandria Quartet.
1957	USA	The US writer Jack Kerouac publishes his novel On the Road, one of the major works of the ‘Beat’ movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
1957	Australia	The Australian writer Patrick White publishes his novel Voss.
1957	Russia, USSR	The Russian writer Boris Pasternak publishes his novel Doktor Zhivago/Dr Zhivago in Italy, permission having been refused in the USSR. An English translation appears in 1958. Its worldwide success causes Pasternak to be severely criticized in the USSR, and he declines the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 fearing that if he leaves the USSR he will not be allowed to return.
1957	USA	The illustrated children's books How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat are published by the US author and illustrator Dr Seuss.
1958	England	The English writer Alan Sillitoe publishes his novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
1958	Nigeria	The Nigerian Ibo writer Chinua Achebe publishes his novel Things Fall Apart.
1958	USA	The US writer Truman Capote publishes his novella Breakfast at Tiffany's.
1959	Germany	The German writer Heinrich Böll publishes Billiard um halb zehn/Billiards at Half-Past Nine.
1959	USA	The US writer William Burroughs publishes his novel The Naked Lunch.
1959	England	The English writer Roald Dahl publishes his collection of short stories Kiss, Kiss.
1959	USA	The US writer Philip Roth publishes his short-story collection Goodbye, Columbus.
11 June 1959	USA	The US Postmaster General bans the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence from the mail (meaning in effect that it cannot be distributed in the USA), citing its erotic passages.
21 July 1959	USA	A US federal district court in New York City lifts the ban that the Postmaster General had placed on Lady Chatterley's Lover by English author D H Lawrence, ruling that the novel, which was privately published in Florence in 1928, is not obscene. A complete edition is published.
1960	USA	The US writer Harper Lee publishes her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961.
1960	USA	The US writer John Updike publishes his novel Rabbit Run, the first of four novels featuring the career of Harry ‘Rabbit’ Armstrong.
1960	France	The French writer Claude Simon publishes his novel La Route des Flandres/The Road to Flanders.
1961	USA	The US writer Joseph Heller publishes his novel Catch-22.
1961	Scotland	The Scottish writer Muriel Spark publishes her novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
1961	USA	The US writer Tillie Olsen publishes her story collection Tell Me a Riddle.
1962	England	The English writer Anthony Burgess publishes his novel A Clockwork Orange, which becomes controversial because of its violence. An equally controversial film adaptation by the director Stanley Kubrick is released in 1971 and soon withdrawn from general circulation in Britain.
1962	Italy	The Italian writer Giorgio Bassani publishes his novel Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini/The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.
1962	England	The English writer Doris Lessing publishes her novel The Golden Notebook.
1962	Russia	The Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn publishes his novella Odin den Ivana Denisovicha/One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which wins international acclaim after being allowed into print by the Soviet authorities in the magazine Novy Mir.
1963	USA	The US writer Mary McCarthy publishes her novel The Group.
1963	USA	The US writer Sylvia Plath publishes her novel The Bell Jar.
1963	USA	The US writer Thomas Pynchon publishes his novel V.
1963	Japan	The Japanese writer Yukio Mishima publishes his novel Gogo no eiko/The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea.
1963	USA	The US writer Kurt Vonnegut publishes his novel Cat's Cradle.
1963	Germany	The German writer Heinrich Böll publishes Ansichten eines Clowns/The Clown.
1964	England	The English writer John Le Carré publishes his novel The Spy Who Came In from the Cold.
1964	USA	The US writer Richard Brautigan publishes his novel A Confederate General from Big Sur.
1965	USA	The short-story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge by the US writer Flannery O'Connor is published posthumously.
1967	Colombia	The Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez publishes his novel Cien años de soledad/One Hundred Years of Solitude.
1967	Egypt	The Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz publishes his novel Miramar.
1968	USA	The US writer John Updike publishes his novel Couples, a study of sexual promiscuity in New England.
1968	USA	The US writer Gore Vidal publishes his transvestite fantasy novel Myra Breckinridge.
1969	England	The English writer John Fowles publishes his novel The French Lieutenant's Woman, set in Victorian England.
1969	USA	The US writer Kurt Vonnegut publishes his novel Slaughterhouse Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death.
1969	England	The English writer Graham Greene publishes his linked set of short stories Travels with My Aunt.
1969	Russia, USA	The Russian-born US writer Vladimir Nabokov publishes his novel Ada.
1971	Russia	The Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn publishes his novel Avgust chetynadtsatovo/August 1914 in the West (his works were banned in the USSR during the 1960s).
1973	USA	The US writer Erica Jong publishes her novel Fear of Flying. Controversial because of its explicit sexuality, it becomes a best-seller.
1975	Colombia	The Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez publishes his novel El otoño del patriarca. An English translation, The Autumn of the Patriarch, is published in 1977.
1976	USA	The US writer Alex Haley publishes his novel Roots. Documenting the history of a family of black Americans of African origin through seven generations, it becomes a phenomenal success as a book and a TV series. It will win a Pulitzer prize in 1977.
1978	UK	The Anglo-Irish novelist Iris Murdoch publishes her novel The Sea, The Sea, which wins the Booker Prize.
1979	USA	The US writer Philip Roth publishes his novel The Ghost Writer.
1980	Italy	The Italian writer and scholar Umberto Eco publishes his novel Il nome della rosa/The Name of the Rose. Though littered with scholarly allusions and Latin quotations, the novel – a detective story set in the Middle Ages – is an unexpected best-seller.
1980	England	The English writer William Golding publishes his novel Rites of Passage, which wins the Booker Prize.
1981	England	The Indian-born English writer Salman Rushdie publishes his novel Midnight's Children, which wins the Booker Prize.
1982	USA	The US writer Alice Walker publishes her novel The Color Purple. It wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983.
1982	Ireland, France	The Irish writer Samuel Beckett publishes his novel Ill Seen, Ill Said.
1984	France	The French writer Marguerite Duras publishes her novel L'Amant/The Lover.
1985	Canada	The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood publishes her novel The Handmaid's Tale.
1986	England	The English writer Kingsley Amis publishes his novel The Old Devils, which wins the Booker Prize.
1987	USA	The US writer Toni Morrison publishes her novel Beloved, which wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988.
1988	India, UK	The Indian-born British writer Salman Rushdie publishes his novel The Satanic Verses.
1989	Japan, England	The Japanese-born English writer Kazuo Ishiguro publishes his novel Remains of the Day, which wins the Booker Prize.
1990	England	The English writer A S Byatt publishes her novel Possession: A Romance, which wins the Booker Prize.
1991	England	The English writer Angela Carter publishes her last novel Wise Children.
1991	Nigeria	The Nigerian writer Ben Okri publishes his novel The Famished Road, which wins the Booker Prize.
1993	Ireland	The Irish writer Roddy Doyle publishes his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, which wins the Booker Prize.
1994	UK	The British writer Louis de Bernières publishes his novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
1996	Canada	The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood publishes her novel Alias Grace, based on the 19th-century case of a 16-year-old girl convicted of murder.
1996	England	The English writer Doris Lessing publishes her novel Love, Again.
1997	Colombia	The Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez publishes his novel News of a Kidnapping.
June 1997	UK	English writer J K Rowling publishes Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first book of what becomes her best-selling children's series about a schoolboy wizard.
April 1998	USA	US writer John Irving publishes his novel A Widow for One Year.
21 June 2003		The English writer J K Rowling publishes her new book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth in a hugely successful children's series.

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