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Literary Suicides
Return to Fiction_L Booklists Menu
January 2006
Compiled by Jennifer Durand,
from contributions by the members of Fiction_L.
(To use this list in your library, book club, etc., please include the following credit line: "Compiled by the subscribers of the Fiction_L mailing list." This list may not be used for commercial purposes.)
| Akutagawa, Ryunosuke | 7/24/27 | Drug overdose |
| Aquin, Hubert | 3/15/77 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound |
| Bell, Gertrude | 7/11/26 | Sleeping pill overdose |
| Berryman, John | 1/7/72 | Jumped off a bridge |
| Bjorneboe, Jens | 5/9/76 | ? |
| Boye, Karin | 4/23 or 24/41 | Sleeping pill overdose and exposure to cold.
Unclear whether suicide was her intent. |
| Braselton, Jeanne | 3/29/03 | ? |
| Brautigan, Richard | 9/84(Body discovered 10/25/84) | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Carpenter, Don | 7/27/95 | ? Apparent suicide |
| Celan, Paul | 4/70 | Drowning in Seine River |
| Chang, Iris | 11/10/04 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound |
| Chatterton, Thomas | 8/24/1770 | Poisoned himself with arsenic. |
| Clift, Charmain | 7/8/69 | Sleeping pill overdose. |
| Crane, Hart | 4/26 or 27/63 | Jumped into the Gulf of Mexico. |
| Crosby, Harry | 12/10/29 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Cuppy, Will | 9/19/49 | Possible suicide. Variously reported as caused by coronary arteriosclerosis or
by barbiturate poisoning with complications. |
| de Montherlant, Henry | 9/21/72 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound to the throat. |
| de Nerval, Gerard | 1/26/1855 | Body found hanging from a railing
in the Rue de la Vielle Lanterne in Paris. |
| Dorris, Michael | 4/11/97 | Sleeping pills, vodka, plastic bag over his head. |
| Drieu la Rochelle, Pierre | 3/16/45 | Drug overdose and gas inhalation. "Tore open the gas line in his apartment and took three tubes of gardenal." |
| Duiker, K. Sello | 1/19/05 | ? |
| Egolf, Tristan | 5/7/05 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound |
| Esenin, Sergei | 12/28/25 | Hanged himself, but not before slitting his wrists and writing a poem in his own blood. |
| Fletcher, John Gould | 5/10/50 | Drowning. |
| Gary, Romain | 12/2/80 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Gilman, Charlotte Perkins | 8/17/35 | Suffering from cancer, she inhaled a large dose of chloroform. |
| Gordon, Adam Lindsay | 6/24/1870 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Gray, Spalding | 1/04 | Drowning in the East River (probably jumped from the Staten
Island ferry) |
| Hatfield, James | 7/18/01 | Alcohol/Anti-depressant overdose or prescription drug overdose. |
| Hedayat, Sadeq | 4/4/51 | Gassed himself. "The circumstances of his death are still
under debate." |
| Hemingway, Ernest | 7/2/61 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Herlihy, James Leo | 10/2/93 | Sleeping pill overdose. |
| Hoffman, Abbie | 4/12/89 | Barbiturate overdose. |
| Howard, Robert E. | 6/12/36 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Inge, William | 6/10/73 | ? |
| Izzi, Eugene | 12/7/96 | Hanging from 14th floor of his office building. He was wearing a bulletproof vest
and a loaded gun was on the floor of his office. Some suspect
foul play. |
| Jozsef, Attila | 12/3/37 | Hurled himself in front of a moving train. |
| Kane, Sarah | 2/20/99 | Hanging. |
| Kenney, Douglas | 8/27/80 | Fell or jumped from a cliff. |
| Knebel, Fletcher | 2/26/93 | ? |
| Koestler, Arthur | 3/3/83 | In pain from Parkinson's Disease he and his wife both overdosed. |
| Kosinski, Jerzy | 5/3/91 | Suffocation. |
| Levi, Primo | 4/11/87 | Fall in stairway of his apartment building. Some question suicide. |
| Lindsay, Vachel | 12/5/31 | Ingesting poison (Lysol) or
coronary thrombosis (there is some debate) |
| Lockridge Jr., Ross | 3/6/48 | Carbon monoxide inhalation in his garage |
| London, Jack | 11/22/16 | Morphine overdose |
| Lowry, Malcolm | 6/27/57 | Alcohol and barbiturates overdose |
| Lukas, J. Anthony | 6/5/97 | Asphyxiation (hanged himself with a bathrobe sash) |
| Marai, Sandor | 2/21/89 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Mayakovsky, Vladimir | 4/14/30 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Mew, Charlotte | 3/24/28 | Drank disinfectant. |
| Miller Jr., Walter M. | 1/9/96 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. "He called 911 and said there was a dead man on his front lawn. Three minutes later, police arrived and found him sitting in a chair on his lawn, dead from a bullet to the brain." |
| Mishima, Yukio | 11/25/70 | Seppuku (ritual suicide) |
| O'Brien, John | 4/11/94 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Osamu, Dazai | 6/19/48 | Body found in the Tamagawa Canal in Tokyo. Disappeared 6/13/48. |
| Patrick, John | 11/7/95 | ? |
| Pavese, Cesare | ? | Sleeping pill overdose |
| Piper, H. Beam | 11/11/64 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Plath, Sylvia | 2/11/63 | Inhaled gas from her kitchen oven. |
| Potocki, Jan | 1815 | "Although details are uncertain,
it is widely believed he committed suicide
by shooting himself with a silver bullet, modeled from the
knob on his sugar bowl." |
| Rabikovitz, Dalia (or Rabikovich) | 8/21/05 | Suicide or sudden heart irregularities |
| Seabrook, William | 9/20/45 | Sleeping pill overdose. |
| Sexton, Anne | 10/4/74 | Carbon monoxide inhalation in her garage. |
| Stifter, Adalbert | 1/1868 | Apparently, he cut his throat, but the doctor arrived and kept him from bleeding
to death. He died 1/28/1868 from what was probably cirrhosis
of the liver, although some say he died from slashing his neck. |
| Teasdale, Sara | 1/29/33 | Took sleeping pills, laid in bathtub. |
| Thompson, Hunter S. | 2/20/05 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Throssell, Ric | 4/20/99 | Sleeping pill overdose with his wife
who was suffering from cancer. |
| Toller, Ernst | 5/22/39 | ? |
| Toole, John Kennedy | 3/26/69 | Hose to car exhaust pipe. |
| Tsvetaeva, Marina | 8/31/41 | Hanging. |
| Tucholsky, Kurt | 12/21/35 | Ingested poison. |
| Vanderbilt, Amy | 12/27/74 | Fall from the 2nd floor of her New York
City apartment building |
| Vazirani, Reetika | 7/16/03 | Slashed her wrists as well as those of her.
15-month-old son in a murder suicide.
She was the wife of poet Yusef Komunyakaa. |
| von Kleist, Heinrich | 11/21/1811 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Webb, Gary | 12/10/24 | Self-inflicted gunshot wound. |
| Williams, Kenneth | 4/15/88 | Possible sleeping pill overdose. |
| Witkiewicz, Stanislaw Ignacy | 9/18/39 | Cut his throat. |
| Woolf, Virginia | 3/28/41 | Drowning. |
| Zweig, Stefan | 2/22/42 | Ingested poison with his wife. |
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