Modern Literature Time Chart

1960

A selection of publications

W H Auden: Homage to Clio
Stan Barstow: A Kind of Loving
John Betjeman: Summoned by Bells
Robert Bolt: A Man for All Seasons
Lawrence Durrell: Clea
Ted Hughes: Lupercal
Jack Kerouac: The Scripture of The Golden Eternity
Harper Lee: To Kill A Mockingbird
Flannery O’Connor: The Violent Bear It Away
Harold Pinter: The Caretaker
Sylvia Plath: The Colossus
Anthony Powell: Casanova's Chinese Restaurant
David Storey: This Sporting Life
John Updike: Rabbit Run

Historic and political events

USA: Start of sit-in movement, black college students insist on service at segregated lunch counter.
Africa: Nigeria gains independence.
South Africa: Sharpeville massacre, mass protests against apartheid.

Social history

UK: Macmillan's 'wind of change' speech about African nationalism. CND and anti-Apartheid demonstrations. Lady Chatterley trial. Foundation of Royal Shakespeare Company. European influence: Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros. Popular music: The Beatles performing in Hamburg. Cinema: Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho. Ken Russell, Sons and Lovers.

1961

Edward Albee: The American Dream
Samuel Beckett: Happy Days
Thom Gunn: My Sad Captains
Joseph Heller: Catch 22
Malcolm Lowry: Hear Us O Lord In Heaven Thy Dwelling Place
Iris Murdoch: A Severed Head
V S Naipaul: A House for Mr Biswas
John Osborne: Luther
Walker Percy: The Moviegoer
Anthony Powell: Venusberg
J D Salinger: Franny and Zooey
Alan Sillitoe: Key to the Door
Muriel Spark: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
John Steinbeck: The Winter of Our Discontent

USA: John F Kennedy, Democrat, becomes President.
Germany: Berlin Wall constructed
Cuba: Bay of Pigs crisis.
South Africa leaves Commonwealth.
OPEC formed.

UK: Beyond the Fringe revue, and Private Eye magazine begin. Contraceptive pill on sale. 'Ban the bomb' demonstrations. Science: Yuri Gagarin first man in space. Art: Beginnings of Pop Art, David Hockney, Peter Blake, Allen Jones. Popular music: Bob Dylan performing in New York. Cinema: Alain Resnais, L'Année Dernière à Marienbad. François Truffaut Jules et Jim.

1962

Edward Albee: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
A Alvarez: The New Poetry
Elizabeth Bishop: Brazil
Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange
William Carlos Williams: Pictures from Brueghel
William Faulkner: The Reivers
Robert Frost: In the Clearing
Ken Kesey: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Alex la Guma: A Walk in the Night
Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook
Vladimir Nabokov: Pale Fire
Flannery O'Connor: Wise Blood
Anthony Powell: The Kindly Ones
Anne Sexton: All my Pretty Ones
John Steinbeck: Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Kurt Vonnegut: Mother Night
Derek Walcott: In a Green Night

UK: Commonwealth immigrants act. End of National service.
USA: Martin Luther King jailed, then released. Violent protests against enrolment of black student in college.
Africa: Independence of Algeria and Uganda.
South Africa: Nelson Mandela jailed.
West Indies: Independence of Jamaica and Trinidad.

UK: That Was The Week That Was launched. USA: Death of Marilyn Monroe. Technology: John Glenn first American to orbit Earth. First communications satellite; Telstar. Art: Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup cans. Popular music: Bob Dylan, Blowin' in the Wind. Cinema: John Schlesinger, A Kind of Loving. David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia. Stanley Kubrick, Lolita, Tony Richardson, A Taste of Honey.

1963

Kingsley Amis: One Fat Englishman
James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time
Taylor Caldwell: Grandmother and the Priests
Nell Dunn: Up the Junction
John Fowles: The Collector
William Bloke Modisane: Blame Me on History
Iris Murdoch: The Unicorn
V S Naipaul: Mr Stone and the Knights
Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar
Wole Soyinka: The Lion and the Jewel
Tom Stoppard: A Walk on the Water
Can Themba: The Suit
Kurt Vonnegut: Cat's Cradle

UK: Alec Douglas-Home becomes Prime Minister.
USA: John F. Kennedy assassinated, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Democrat, becomes President. Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech at ‘Jobs and Freedom’ march.
Africa: Kenyan independence.

UK: Profumo affair. Great train robbery. CND demonstrations. USA: Timothy Leary expelled from Harvard for experimenting with psychedelic drugs. Science: First kidney transplant. Popular music: Beatles, Please Please Me album - 'Beatlemania'. Cinema: Alfred Hitchcock, The Birds. First James Bond film: Dr. No.

1964

Chinua Achebe: Arrow of God
Saul Bellow: Herzog
John Berryman: 77 Dream Songs
John Betjeman: Ring of Bells
Edward Bond: Saved
John Braine: The Jealous God
Leonard Cohen: Flowers for Hitler
William Golding: The Spire
Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast
Philip Larkin: The Whitsun Weddings
Robert Lowell: For the Union Dead
Vladimir Nabokov: The Luzhin Defense
Joe Orton: Entertaining Mr Sloane
John Osborne: Inadmissible Evidence
Anthony Powell: The Valley of Bones
Richard Rive: Emergency
Peter Shaffer: The Royal Hunt of the Sun
Gore Vidal: Julian
Tom Wolfe: The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby

UK: Labour government under Harold Wilson.
Malawi and Zambia gain independence.
USA: Johnson brings in Civil Rights Act against racial discrimination. Race riots in New York.
Bombing of Vietnam begins.
South Africa: Nelson Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment.
India: Death of Nehru.

UK: Start of pirate radio stations. Art: 'OP' art - geometric designs which give illusion of movement. Popular music: Beatles perform in USA. Rise of The Rolling Stones. Cinema: Stanley Kubrick, Doctor Strangelove. The Beatles in A Hard Day's Night.

1965

Edward Bond: Saved
Margaret Drabble: The Millstone
Richard Eberhart: Selected Poems
John Fowles: The Magus
Seamus Heaney: Death of a Naturalist
Doris Lessing: Landlocked
David Lodge: The British Museum Is Falling Down
Norman Mailer: An American Dream
Harold Pinter: The Homecoming
Sylvia Plath: Ariel
Paul Scott: The Jewel in the Crown
Jon Silkin: Nature with Man
Neil Simon: The Odd Couple
Wole Soyinka: The Interpreters
Derek Walcott: The Castaway

USA: Step-up in bombing of Vietnam, troops sent in. Martin Luther King leads further civil rights marches.
Africa: Rhodesia declares UDI, gains independence.
India: War with Pakistan over Kashmir.

UK: Death of Churchill. Beatles awarded MBE. Miniskirts appear in Mary Quant's boutique in King's Road. Post Office Tower opened. Gas discovered in North Sea. USA: Allen Ginsberg coins term Flower Power at Anti-war rally. Technology: First space walk by astronaut. Popular music: The Beach Boys, California Girls. The Rolling Stones, Satisfaction.

1966

Chinua Achebe: A Man of the People
Edward Albee: A Delicate Balance
Margaret Atwood: The Circle Game; Expeditions; Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein
Truman Capote: In Cold Blood
Nadine Gordimer: The Late Bourgeois World
Graham Greene: The Comedians
LeRoi Jones: Black Art
Bernard Malamud: The Fixer
Nancy Mitford: The Sun King
Joe Orton: Loot
Anthony Powell: The Soldier's Art
Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea
Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Guildernsterne are Dead
Jacqueline Susann: Valley of the Dolls
Patrick White: The Solid Mandala

USA: Further race riots.
China: Cultural revolution under Mao Tse-tung.
Guyana: Guyana gains independence.
India: Indira Gandhi becomes Prime Minister.

UK: 'Swinging London', Carnaby Street fashions, hippies. England wins World Cup. Aberfan disaster. Technology: First space docking. First moon landing. Art and popular music: Velvet Underground perform multi-media shows with Andy Warhol. Bob Dylan introduces electric guitars and back-up band. Cinema: Michael Caine in Alfie. David Lean, Dr. Zhivago. Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev.

1967

Angela Carter: The Magic Toyshop
Margaret Drabble: Jerusalem the Golden
Allen Ginsberg: TV Baby Poems
Anthony Hecht: The Hard Hours
Ted Hughes: Wodwo
Langston Hughes: The Panther and the Lash
Alex la Guma: And a Threefold Cord
V S Naipaul: The Mimic Men
R K Narayan: The Vendor of Sweets
Peter Nichols: A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
Joe Orton: The Erpingham Camp
Harold Pinter: The Homecoming
Wole Soyinka: Idanre
William Styron: The Confessions of Nat Turner
Derek Walcott: Dream on Monkey Mountain
Thornton Wilder: The Eighth Day
Angus Wilson: No Laughing Matter

UK: UK leaves Aden, independence for South Yemen.
USA: Further race riots.
Israel: Six Day War.

UK: Abortion legalised, homosexuality decriminalised. Flower Power festival. Oz magazine launched. Rolling Stones on drugs charges. USA: Demonstrations against Vietnam war. Science: First heart transplant. Warnings of 'greenhouse effect'. Technology: First microwave oven. Classical music: Stockhausen, Anthems.
Popular music: The Beatles: Sergeant Pepper. Jimi Hendrix, Are You Experienced? The Monkees, I'm A Believer.

1968

Alan Bennett: Forty Years On
Taylor Caldwell: Testimony of Two Men
Bessie Head: When Rain Clouds Gather
Norman Mailer: The Armies of the Night
Liverpool Poets: The Liverpool Scene
Anthony Powell: The Military Philosophers
Tom Stoppard: The Real Inspector Hound
John Updike: Couples
Gore Vidal: Myra Breckenridge

USA: Martin Luther King assassinated.
Robert Kennedy assassinated.
USSR: Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Northern Ireland: 'Troubles' begin.
France: Paris: student riots.

UK: Capital punishment abolished. Race Relations Bill. Enoch Powell's Birmingham speech. Violent ant-Vietnam war demonstration in Grosvenor Square. Theatre censorship abolished.

1969

W H Auden: City without Walls
Kingsley Amis: The Green Man
Margaret Atwood: The Edible Woman
Angela Carter: Heroes and Villains
Leonard Cohen: Poems 1956-1968
A J Cronin: A Pocketful of Rye
John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Seamus Heaney: Door into the Dark
Doris Lessing: The Four Gated City
Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye
Iris Murdoch: Bruno's Dream
Vladimir Nabokov: Ada, or Ardor
Joe Orton: What the Butler Saw
Philip Roth: Portnoy's Complaint
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five

USA: Millions in anti-Vietnam war protests. Richard Milhous Nixon, Republican, becomes President, promises withdrawal from Vietnam.
Northern Ireland: Rioting, British troops sent in.

UK: Free rock concerts in Hyde Park. First Isle of Wight festival. Miners' strike. USA: Start of gay rights movement. Start of internet. Woodstock festival. Murder of Sharon Tate. Technology: Astronauts walk on the moon. Human egg fertilised in test tube. First flight of Concorde. Cinema: Easy Rider. Women in Love. If.