CHRONOLOGY
1932
AUTHOR’S LIFE: Birth of Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul in Trinidad (August 17).
LITERARY CONTEXT: Huxley: Brave New World.
Faulkner: Light in August.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Election of Roosevelt in US. Nazis become largest party in German Reichstag.
1933
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Roosevelt announces ‘New Deal’; Hitler becomes German Chancellor.
1934
LITERARY CONTEXT: Fitzgerald: Tender is the Night.
Miller: Tropic of Cancer.
Waugh: A Handful of Dust.
1935
LITERARY CONTEXT: Lewis: It Can’t Happen Here.
Steinbeck: Tortilla Flat.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Nuremberg Laws depriving Jews of citizenship and rights.
1936
LITERARY CONTEXT: Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom!
Eliot: Collected Poems.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Outbreak of Spanish Civil War (to 1939). Hitler and Mussolini form Rome — Berlin Axis. Stalin’s ‘Great Purge’ (to 1938).
1937
LITERARY CONTEXT: Dos Passos: USA.
Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men.
Hemingway: To Have and
Have not.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Japanese invasion of China.
1938
LITERARY CONTEXT: Greene: Brighton Rock.
Waugh: Scoop.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Germany annexes Austria; Munich crisis.
1939
LITERARY CONTEXT: Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath.
Joyce: Finnegans Wake.
Miller: Tropic of Capricorn.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: World War II.
1940
LITERARY CONTEXT: Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Greene: The Power and the Glory.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Fall of France; Battle of Britain.
1941
LITERARY CONTEXT: Fitzgerald: The Last Tycoon.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor; USA enters war. Hitler invades USSR.
1942
LITERARY CONTEXT: Eliot: Four Quartets.
Camus: The Stranger.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Rommel defeated at El Alamein.
1943–8
AUTHOR’S LIFE: Attends Queen’s Royal College, Port of Spain.
1943
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Allied invasion of Italy.
1944
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Allied landings in Normandy.
1945
LITERARY CONTEXT: Orwelclass="underline" Animal Farm.
Waugh: Brideshead Revisited.
Borges: Fictions.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Defeat of Germany. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. End of World War II. Foundation of the United Nations.
1947
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Indian independence. Cold War develops.
1948
LITERARY CONTEXT: Greene: The Heart of the Matter.
Paton: Cry, the Beloved Country.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Jewish state of Israel comes into existence. Apartheid introduced in South Africa. Gandhi assassinated in India.
1949
LITERARY CONTEXT: Orwelclass="underline" Nineteen Eighty-Four.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Chinese Revolution. Foundation of NATO.
1950–54
AUTHOR’S LIFE: University College, Oxford; settles in England.
1950
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Korean War (to 1953)
1951
LITERARY CONTEXT: Frost: Complete Poems.
Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye.
1952
LITERARY CONTEXT: Beckett: Waiting for Godot.
Steinbeck: East of Eden.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Eisenhower elected US President. Accession of Elizabeth II.
1953
LITERARY CONTEXT: Bellow: The Adventures of Augie March.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Death of Stalin. European Court of Human Rights set up in Strasbourg.
1954–6
AUTHOR’S LIFE: Editor, ‘Caribbean Voices’ for the BBC, England.
1954
LITERARY CONTEXT: Amis: Lucky Jim.
Golding: Lord of the Flies.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Vietnam War begins.
1955
AUTHOR’S LIFE: Marries Patricia Anna Hale.
LITERARY CONTEXT: Nabokov: Lolita.
Williams: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
1956
LITERARY CONTEXT: Osborne: Look Back in Anger.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Suez crisis. British and French begin process of decolonization in Africa. Khrushchev reveals to the Twentieth Party Congress the truth about Stalinist purges. Soviet troops crush Hungarian uprising.