This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1966.
Events
February – The Nottingham-based chain of pharmacy stores Boots UK closes the last of its circulating "Booklovers' Library" branches.[1]
February 10 – Author Jacqueline Susann has her first novel, Valley of the Dolls, published. From a friend she obtains a list of the bookstores on whose sales figures The New York Times relies for its bestseller list. She then uses her own money to buy large quantities of her book at these stores, causing it to head the list. Valley of the Dolls incidentally comes to rank among the best-selling novels of all time.
March 9 – J. R. R. Tolkien writes to Roger Verhulst expressing concerns about a proposed book about him by W. H. Auden, saying, "I regard such things as premature impertinences.... I cannot believe that they have a usefulness to justify the distaste and irritation given to the victim," but adding: "I owe Mr. Auden a debt of gratitude for the generosity with which he has supported and encouraged me since the first appearance of The Lord of the Rings."[2]
August 24 – Tom Stoppard's tragicomedyRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is first played, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Despite small audiences, Stoppard's reputation is made by a review by Ronald Bryden in The Observer.[5]
September 9 – New Beacon Books, the first Caribbean publishing house in England, releases its first title, Foundations by John La Rose.[6]
October 21 – Jacques Derrida delivers a lecture, La Structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines,[7] to a structuralism colloquium at Johns Hopkins University, giving international prominence to his work on literary theory.
November 3–4 – The 1966 flood of the Arno in Florence causes severe damage to libraries, including the National Central Library and Gabinetto Vieusseux.
November 28 – Truman Capote's Black and White Ball ("The Party of the Century") is held in New York City. The guest of honor, the Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, later says: "Truman called me up that summer and said, 'I think you need cheering up. And I'm going to give you a ball.'...I was...sort of baffled....I felt a little bit like Truman was going to give the ball anyway and that I was part of the props."[8]
December – Moskva magazine begins the first publication of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita (Ма́стер и Маргари́та), begun in 1928 but left incomplete on the author's death in 1940. It appears in two parts with portions omitted or altered.
unknown date – The first modern revival of a play by Bhāsa, Madhyamavyayoga, directed by Shanta Gandhi, is performed in a Hindi translation.[9]
^George Plimpton (1997). Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. New York, Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-23249-7, p. 248.
^Austrian Information. Information Department of the Austrian Consulate General. 1996. p. 5.
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