“Why, if a dirty old mattress is stolen from your attic, they”
- #wikipedia
- #quote
- #trusted-source
- #nytimes.com
- #corroborated
Figure timeline
J. D. Salinger
Jerome David Salinger was an American author best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger published several short stories in Story magazine in 1940, before serving in World War II. In 1948, his critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" appeared in The New Yorker, which published much of his later work.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
culture · American author (1919–2010) · writer · novelist · also J. D. Salinger, Jerome Salinger, Salinger
Born 1 January 1919 · Died 27 January 2010 · Q79904
82 published statements · 0 followers
See & hear
Photos & media
5 photos
Media from Wikimedia Commons, hotlinked at the source under its own licence — see each file for author and terms.
Live now
In the news
Pulling headlines from trusted outlets — this usually takes a few seconds
Checking the wires…
Feed scan
These are live links, not archived citations — they only join the timeline once a collect run verifies and archives them.
Live pulse
Recent highlights
Most recent outstanding titles, awards, and quotes
- Quote
- Quote
2026· 13 entries
“and I never had any intention of publishing them. I wanted them to die a perfectly natural death.”
- #wikipedia
- #quote
- #trusted-source
- #nytimes.com
- #corroborated
“It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #quote
“Jerry Lewis tried for years to get his hands on the part of Holden.”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #quote
“Jesus, he has a helluva talent.”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #quote
WHEC.com: Man sentenced 10 years in prison for killing Salinger’s doorman in hit-and-run
- #news
- #headline
Clarin.com: De Edith Piaf a J.D. Salinger: los vínculos más inesperados entre figuras históricas
- #news
- #headline
Encyclopaedia Britannica: J.D. Salinger | Biography, Books, Death, Education, Religion, Short Stories, & Facts
- #news
- #headline
Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Perfect Day for Bananafish | work by Salinger
- #news
- #headline
Public attention spiked: 11,687 Wikipedia readers in one day, 6.7× the usual 1,752, with 2 article edits. Editors noted: script-assisted date audit and style fixes per MOS:NUM
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #attention
- #spike
- #pageviews
The Guardian: Newly released letters reveal JD Salinger’s wariness over ‘second-rate reviewers’
- #news
- #headline
When his son said the process was "very close" to completion
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Show that during production Salinger asked editor John Woodburn to remove references to his Jewish and Irish background from the dust jacket because he feared reviewers would overemphasize it
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
2023· 1 entry
His son estimated that he would finish transcribing Salinger's notes in "a year or two" and reiterated that "all the unpublished material will be published, but it is a complicated task
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
2021· 2 entries
Based on the 2014 memoir by Joanna Rakoff
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
(Bellevue Literary Press), in which the author imagines a fictionalized biography of the young soldier J
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
2020· 1 entry
The Guardian: My New York Year (aka My Salinger Year) review – bafflingly insipid literary memoir clunks hard
- #news
- #headline
2019· 6 entries
The Guardian: JD Salinger exhibition to unveil photographs, letters and notebooks
- #news
- #headline
The Guardian: JD Salinger estate finally agrees to ebook editions
- #news
- #headline
The Guardian: Jason Reynolds and JD Salinger's posthumous return – books podcast
- #news
- #headline
The Guardian: Matt Salinger: ‘My father was writing for 50 years without publishing. That’s a lot of material’
- #news
- #headline
The Guardian: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms
- #news
- #headline
That "all of what he wrote will at some point be shared" but that it was a major undertaking and not yet ready
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
2018· 1 entry
The Guardian: JD Salinger's teenage lover challenges her 'predator' reputation
- #news
- #headline
2017· 1 entry
Snopes.com rated the claim “A photograph shows author J.D. Salinger writing at a nudist retreat.” False.
Shown as reported and rated by a fact checker, not as an established fact.
- #fact-check
- #rated
- #claim-about-figure
2013· 1 entry
And displayed them in an exhibit, "'Lose not heart': J
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
2011· 1 entry
When Colting agreed not to publish or otherwise distribute the book, e-book, or any other editions of 60 Years Later in the U
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
2010· 3 entries
Died 2010-01-27.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #death
“I love to write and I assure you I write regularly... But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.”
- #wikiquote
- #saying
- #undated
- #lang:en
“I'm aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in The Catcher in the Rye. Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf out of their reach.”
- #wikiquote
- #saying
- #undated
- #lang:en
2009· 1 entry
But at the time of Salinger's death, it was still listed as "unavailable"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
2001· 2 entries
Menand wrote in The New Yorker that "Catcher in the Rye rewrites" among each new generation had become "a literary genre all its own"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Janet Malcolm wrote in The New York Review of Books that "Zooey" "is arguably Salinger's masterpiece
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1999· 2 entries
25 years after the end of their relationship, Maynard auctioned a series of letters Salinger had written her
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
His ex-lover Joyce Maynard concluded, "The only person who might ever have played Holden Caulfield would have been J
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1996· 1 entry
Salinger gave a small publisher, Orchises Press, permission to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1995· 1 entry
Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui released the film Pari, an unauthorized loose adaptation of Franny and Zooey
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1992· 1 entry
The New York Times reported, "Not even a fire that consumed at least half his home on Tuesday could smoke out the reclusive J
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1991· 1 entry
"His is the most influential body of work in English prose by anyone since Hemingway
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1977· 1 entry
That reading Salinger's stories for the first time was a landmark experience, and that "nothing quite like it has happened to me since"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1972· 2 entries
At age 53, Salinger had a relationship with 18-year-old Joyce Maynard that lasted for nine months
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Salinger's daughter Margaret was with him when he received a letter from Sylvia
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1967· 1 entry
With Claire getting custody of the children
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1961· 3 entries
Time magazine devoted its cover to Salinger
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
The critic Alfred Kazin explained that Salinger's choice of teenagers as a subject matter was one reason for his appeal to young readers, but another reason was "a consciousness [among youths] that he speaks for them and
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
And Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction in 1963
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1955· 1 entry
“Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
1953· 3 entries
Salinger published a collection of seven stories from The New Yorker (including "Bananafish"), as well as two the magazine had rejected
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Features a ten-year-old child who expresses Vedantic insights
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Moved from an apartment at 300 East 57th Street, New York, to Cornish, New Hampshire
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1952· 2 entries
After several years of practicing Zen Buddhism, while reading The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna about Hindu religious teacher Sri Ramakrishna
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
“De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
1951· 1 entry
“Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
1950· 2 entries
“Requiem for the Phantom of the Opera”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
“For Esmé—with Love and Squalor”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
1948· 5 entries
“The Boy in the People Shooting Hat”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
“Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
His critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" appeared in The New Yorker, which published much of his later work
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
“A Perfect Day for Bananafish”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
“Just Before the War with the Eskimos”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
1947· 3 entries
Salinger submitted a short story, "The Bananafish", to The New Yorker
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
“The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
“A Young Girl in 1941 with No Waist at All”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
1946· 2 entries
Whit Burnett agreed to help Salinger publish a collection of his short stories through Story Press's Lippincott Imprint
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Wrote, "I almost always write about very young people", a statement that has been called his credo
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1945· 1 entry
“The Daughter of the Late, Great Man”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
1944· 4 entries
“What Babe Saw, or Ooh-La-La!”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
“What Got into Curtis in the Woodshed”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
“A Young Man in a Stuffed Shirt”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
“Last Day of the Last Furlough”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
1943· 1 entry
“Rex Passard on the Planet Mars”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
1942· 4 entries
“The Last and Best of the Peter Pans”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
“Over the Sea Let’s Go, Twentieth Century Fox”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
Salinger started dating Oona O'Neill, daughter of the playwright Eugene O'Neill
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
“Personal Notes of an Infantryman”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
1941· 3 entries
“I Went to School with Adolf Hitler”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
“The Lovely Dead Girl at Table Six”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
“Monologue for a Watery Highball”
- #wikiquote
- #quote
1939· 1 entry
Salinger attended the Columbia University School of General Studies in Manhattan, where he took a writing class taught by Whit Burnett, longtime editor of Story magazine
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1936· 1 entry
Studied at Valley Forge Military Academy and College (1936).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #education
1932· 1 entry
The family moved to Park Avenue, and Salinger enrolled at the McBurney School, a nearby private school
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1919· 1 entry
Born 1919-01-01.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #birth