This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1971.

Events

• March 25–December 14 – The 1971 killing of Bengali intellectuals reaches a peak.
• April 21 – The 13th-century Codex Regius manuscript is returned by Denmark to Iceland under naval escort.
• June 30 – Release of musical film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in the United States, based on Roald Dahl's 1964 children's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Although Dahl is credited for the screenplay, creative differences with the production team cause him to disown the picture.^[1]
• July 4 – Michael S. Hart posts the first e-book, a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, on the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign's mainframe computer, as the origin of Project Gutenberg.^[2]
• July 14 – Simon Gray's play Butley has its first performance at the Criterion Theatre in London, produced by Michael Codron and directed by Harold Pinter, with Alan Bates in the lead.
• October 20 – The Destiny Waltz by Gerda Charles wins the U.K.'s first Whitbread Novel of the Year Award. Geoffrey Hill wins the poetry prize for Mercian Hymns and Michael Meyer the biography category for Henrik Ibsen.^[3]
• November – Hunter S. Thompson's roman à clef Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is first published in Rolling Stone, as a two-part article illustrated by Ralph Steadman.
• November 29 – Yuri Lyubimov's production of Hamlet is seen first at the Taganka Theatre in Moscow, with singer-songwriter and poet Vladimir Vysotsky in the lead.^[4]
• December 24 – The Dutch writer and broadcaster Godfried Bomans is buried in the Sint-Adelbertskerkhof (St. Adelbert Cemetery) in Bloemendaal, the Netherlands, two days after he dies from a heart attack.
• unknown date – Powell's Books opens its first bookstore in Portland, Oregon.^[5]

New books

Births

• January 6 – Karin Slaughter, American crime novelist
• January 16 – Helen Darville, Australian novelist
• January 18 – Binyavanga Wainaina, Kenyan writer (died 2019)
• January 25 – Philip Coppens, Belgian journalist and author (died 2012)
• February 3 – Sarah Kane, English playwright (died 1999)
• March 13 – Viet Thanh Nguyen, Vietnamese fiction writer
• March 29 – José Luis Rodríguez Pittí, Panamanian writer and photographer
• May 9 – Dan Chiasson, American poet, critic and journalist
• May 25 - Nicole Luiken, Canadian science fiction writer
• June 4 – Karl Martin Sinijärv, Estonian journalist and poet
• June 28 – Sophie Hannah, English poet and novelist
• July 17 – Cory Doctorow, Canadian science fiction writer^[10]
• July 22 – Akhil Sharma, Indian novelist
• July 23 – Mohsin Hamid, Pakistani fiction writer
• September 3 – Kiran Desai, Indian novelist
• October 17 - Patrick Ness, British-American speculative fiction author
• October 25 – Elif Shafak (Elif Şafak), French-born Turkish novelist
• November 5 – Rana Dasgupta, English-born Indian novelist
• December 19 – Tristan Egolf, American novelist and activist (died 2005)
• unknown dates
  • Petina Gappah, Zambian-born fiction writer
  • John Wray, American novelist

Deaths

• January 18 – N. Porsenna, Romanian novelist, essayist, poet and social psychologist (Parkinson's disease, born 1892)
• January 24 – St. John Greer Ervine, Irish-born dramatist (born 1883)^[11]
• March 5 – Allan Nevins, American journalist and historian (born 1890)^[12]
• March 7 – Stevie Smith (Florence Margaret Smith), English poet and novelist (born 1902)^[13]
• March 21 – Kyūya Fukada (深田 久弥), Japanese writer and mountaineer (born 1903)
• March 23 – Simon Vestdijk, Dutch writer (born 1898)^[14]
• April 10 – André Billy, French novelist (born 1882)^[15]
• April 13 – Juhan Smuul, Estonian writer (born 1922)
• April 15 – Friedebert Tuglas, Estonian writer and critic (born 1886)^[16]
• May 19 – Ogden Nash, American poet and humorist (born 1902)^[17]
• May 20 – Waldo Williams, Welsh-language poet (born 1904)^[18]
• June 1 – Reinhold Niebuhr, American theologian (born 1892)^[19]
• June 4 – György Lukács (György Bernát Löwinger), Hungarian philosopher and critic (born 1885)^[20]
• June 5 – Clifford Dyment, English poet (born 1914)^[21]
• June 6 – Edward Andrade, English writer, poet and physicist (born 1887)^[22]
• July 4
  • Maurice Bowra, English poet, humorist and Oxford don (born 1898)^[23]
  • August Derleth, American writer and anthologist (heart attack, born 1909)^[24]
• July 7 – Claude Gauvreau, Québécois Canadian poet and dramatist (born 1925)^[25]
• July 27 – Jacques Lusseyran, French author and Resistance fighter (car crash, born 1924)^[26]
• August 30 – Peter Fleming, English travel writer and traveller (born 1907)^[27]
• October 13 – János Kemény, American-born Hungarian writer and editor (born 1903)
• October 21 – Naoya Shiga, Japanese novelist (pneumonia, born 1883)^[28]
• October 25 – Philip Wylie, American novelist and non-fiction writer (born 1902)^[29]
• November – Lucia Mantu, Romanian writer (born 1888)^[30]
• November 1 – Gertrud von Le Fort, German novelist, poet and essayist (born 1876)^[31]
• November 10 – Walter Van Tilburg Clark, American novelist (cancer, born 1909)^[32]
• November 11 – A. P. Herbert, English humorist, novelist and politician (born 1890)^[33]
• November 28 – Dimitrie Stelaru (Dumitru Petrescu), Romanian poet and novelist (cirrhosis, born 1917)
• November 29 – Edith Tolkien (née Bratt), English wife of J. R. R. Tolkien (born 1889)^[34]
• December 5 – Gaito Gazdanov, Russian-born novelist (born 1903)^[35]
• December 22 – Godfried Bomans, Dutch writer and broadcaster (heart attack, born 1913)
• December 25 – S. Foster Damon, American critic and poet (born 1893)^[36]

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Pablo Neruda

Notes

• Hahn, Daniel (2015). The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (2nd ed.). Oxford. University Press. ISBN 9780198715542.

References