text:
1958 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1958.

Events

 * January 7 – Tennessee Williams' one-act plays Suddenly, Last Summer and Something Unspoken are premièred off-Broadway.
 * January 13 – In One, Inc. v. Olesen, the Supreme Court of the United States affirms that homosexual writing is not as such obscene.
 * March 29 – The stage première of Max Frisch's dark comedy Biedermann und die Brandstifter (known in English as The Fire Raisers) takes place at the Schauspielhaus Zürich.
 * April 28 – The première of Harold Pinter's play The Birthday Party is held at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in England, with Richard Pearson playing the lead as Stanley.
 * May 19 – The London début of the production of Pinter's The Birthday Party, starring Richard Pearson, takes place at the Lyric Opera House (Hammersmith). It closes after a week, but its reputation is saved by a review by Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times on May 25.
 * May 27 – The 19-year-old Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey is staged by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London. Littlewood had received the script with a covering letter stating "A fortnight ago I didn't know the theatre existed".
 * Spring/Summer – London publishers Faber introduce their paper-covered editions, including T. S. Eliot's Collected Poems, William Golding's Lord of the Flies, J. W. Dunne's An Experiment with Time and the first of several science fiction anthologies edited by Edmund Crispin, all with covers designed by Berthold Wolpe based on the Albertus typeface.
 * August 18 – Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in the United States.
 * c. September – Herbert Marcuse begins teaching at Brandeis University, Massachusetts.
 * October 14 – Brendan Behan's play The Hostage is first performed in an English version by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London. Also this year, Behan's autobiographical Borstal Boy is published in London, and on November 12 it is banned in Ireland by the Censorship of Publications Board.
 * October 23 – Announcement of the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Boris Pasternak leads to denunciation of him in the Soviet Union and threats to expel him.
 * October 28 – Samuel Beckett's monologue Krapp's Last Tape is first performed by Patrick Magee at the Royal Court Theatre, London. Also this year, Beckett's novel The Unnamable is first published in English.
 * November – Truman Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany's is published in this month's Esquire magazine (having been rejected for July's Harper's Bazaar). It appears soon afterwards as the title story in a collection published by Random House in New York City.
 * unknown dates
 * The first volume of Shelby Foote's military history The Civil War: A Narrative is published in the United States.
 * Jack Kerouac writes and narrates the "beat" film, Pull My Daisy (released 1959).
 * Ken Kesey is awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship to enrol in the creative writing program at Stanford University.
 * Mervyn Peake begins to develop Parkinson's disease.

Fiction

 * Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart
 * Kingsley Amis – I Like It Here
 * Jorge Amado – Gabriela, Cravo e Canela (Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon)
 * Louis Aragon – La Semaine Sainte
 * Chingiz Aytmatov – Jamila
 * Layla Balabakki - I Live
 * H. E. Bates – The Darling Buds of May
 * Samuel Beckett – The Unnamable
 * Margot Bennett – Someone from the Past
 * Thomas Berger – Crazy in Berlin
 * John Bingham – Murder Plan Six
 * James Blish – A Case of Conscience
 * Joseph Payne Brennan – Nine Horrors and a Dream
 * Algis Budrys
 * Man of Earth
 * Who?
 * Dino Buzzati – Sessanta racconti
 * Philip Callow – Common People
 * Truman Capote – Breakfast at Tiffany's
 * John Dickson Carr – The Dead Man's Knock
 * Rosario Castellanos – Balún-Canán
 * Henry Cecil – Sober as a Judge
 * Raymond Chandler – Playback
 * Agatha Christie – Ordeal by Innocence
 * Richard Condon – The Oldest Confession
 * A. J. Cronin
 * The Innkeeper's Wife
 * The Northern Light
 * Cecil Day-Lewis – A Penknife in My Heart
 * L. Sprague de Camp – An Elephant for Aristotle
 * Patrick Dennis – Around the World with Auntie Mame
 * August Derleth
 * The Mask of Cthulhu
 * The Return of Solar Pons
 * Elaine Dundy – The Dud Avocado
 * Marguerite Duras – Moderato Cantabile
 * Lawrence Durrell
 * Balthazar
 * Mountolive
 * Nawal El Saadawi – Memoirs of a Woman Doctor (Moudhakkarat tabibat)
 * Ian Fleming – Dr. No
 * C. S. Forester – Hornblower in the West Indies
 * Carlos Fuentes – Where the Air Is Clear (first published in Spanish as La región más transparente)
 * Peter George – Red Alert
 * Rumer Godden – The Greengage Summer
 * Julien Gracq – Un Balcon en forêt (A Balcony in the Forest)
 * Graham Greene – Our Man in Havana
 * Cyril Hare – He Should Have Died Hereafter
 * Marlen Haushofer – We Murder Stella (Wir töten Stella)
 * A. P. Herbert – Made for Man
 * Georgette Heyer – Venetia
 * Thomas Hinde – Happy as Larry
 * Harold L. Humes – The Underground City
 * Emyr Humphreys – A Toy Epic
 * Hammond Innes – The Land God Gave to Cain
 * Michael Innes – The Long Farewell
 * Rona Jaffe – The Best of Everything
 * Anna Kavan – A Bright Green Field and Other Stories
 * Jack Kerouac – The Dharma Bums and The Subterraneans
 * Frances Parkinson Keyes – Victorine
 * Audrey Erskine Lindop– I Thank a Fool
 * Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa – The Leopard (Il Gattopardo, published posthumously)
 * Manuel Lopes – O Galo Que Cantou na Baía
 * E. C. R. Lorac – Murder on a Monument
 * John D. MacDonald – The Executioners
 * Ross Macdonald – The Doomsters
 * Richard Matheson – A Stir of Echoes
 * Gladys Mitchell – Spotted Hemlock
 * Alberto Moravia – Two Women (La ciociara)
 * Penelope Mortimer – Daddy's Gone A-Hunting
 * Iris Murdoch – The Bell
 * M. T. Vasudevan Nair – Naalukettu
 * R. K. Narayan – The Guide
 * Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎) – Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (芽むしり仔撃ち, Memushiri ko-uchi)
 * Maurice Procter – Man in Ambush
 * Barbara Pym – A Glass of Blessings
 * Jean Raspail – Welcome, Honourable Visitors
 * Ernest Raymond – The Quiet Shore
 * Mary Renault – The King Must Die
 * Anya Seton – The Winthrop Woman
 * Alan Sillitoe – Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
 * Terry Southern (as Maxwell Kenton) – Candy
 * Rex Stout
 * And Four to Go
 * Champagne for One
 * Yves Thériault – Agaguk
 * Zaim Topčić – Lump of Sun
 * Robert Traver – Anatomy of a Murder
 * Leon Uris – Exodus
 * Jack Vance – The Languages of Pao
 * Rex Warner – Young Caesar
 * Jerome Weidman – The Enemy Camp
 * Angus Wilson – The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot
 * S. Yizhar – Days of Ziklag (ימי צקלג, Yemei Tziklag)

Children and young people

 * Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams – Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine
 * Rev. W. Awdry – Duck and the Diesel Engine (thirteenth in The Railway Series of 42 books by him and his son Christopher Awdry)
 * Enid Blyton – Five Get into a Fix
 * Michael Bond – A Bear Called Paddington (introducing Paddington Bear)
 * Bruce Carter – The Kidnapping of Kensington
 * Anne de Vries – The New Day (De Nieuwe Dag, last in the Journey Through the Night – Reis door de nacht series)
 * Rumer Godden – The Greengage Summer
 * E. W. Hildick – Jim Starling (first of a series of seven)
 * A. A. Milne, Latin by Alexander Lenard – Winnie ille Pu
 * Elyne Mitchell – The Silver Brumby (first in the Silver Brumby series)
 * Philippa Pearce – Tom's Midnight Garden
 * Keith Robertson – Henry Reed Inc. (first in the Henry Reed series)
 * Dr. Seuss – Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories
 * Elizabeth George Speare – The Witch of Blackbird Pond
 * William O. Steele – The Perilous Road
 * Catherine Storr – Marianne Dreams
 * Rosemary Sutcliff – Warrior Scarlet
 * Nigel Tranter – Spaniard's Isle
 * Henry Treece – The Children's Crusade
 * T. H. White – The Once and Future King

Drama

 * Samuel Beckett – Krapp's Last Tape
 * Brendan Behan – The Hostage
 * Bertolt Brecht – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui, written 1941, first performed)
 * Clemence Dane – Eighty in the Shade
 * Refik Erduran – Bir Kilo Namus (One Kilo Honesty)
 * Max Frisch – The Fire Raisers (Biedermann und die Brandstifter, first stage adaptation)
 * Jean Genet – The Blacks: A Clown Show (Les Nègres, clownerie, first published)
 * Kenneth Horne – Wolf's Clothing
 * N.C. Hunter – A Touch of the Sun
 * Ann Jellicoe – The Sport of My Mad Mother
 * Ronald Millar – The Big Tickle
 * Sławomir Mrożek – The Police (Policja)
 * Heiner Müller and Inge Müller
 * Die Korrektur (The Correction)
 * Der Lohndrücker (The Scab, first performed)
 * Mohan Rakesh – Ashadh Ka Ek Din (आषाढ़ का एक दिन, One Day in Ashadh)
 * Barry Reckord – Flesh to a Tiger
 * Elmer Rice – Cue for Passion
 * Peter Shaffer – Five Finger Exercise
 * N. F. Simpson – The Hole
 * Wole Soyinka – The Swamp Dwellers
 * Derek Walcott – Drums and Colours
 * Arthur Watkyn – Not in the Book
 * Arnold Wesker – Chicken Soup with Barley (first performed)
 * Tennessee Williams – Suddenly, Last Summer

Poetry

 * John Betjeman – Collected Poems
 * Ko Un – Hyondae Munhak
 * Octavio Paz – La estación violenta
 * Eli Siegel – Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems
 * Clark Ashton Smith – Spells and Philtres

Non-fiction

 * Henri Alleg – La Question
 * Hannah Arendt – The Human Condition
 * Brendan Behan – Borstal Boy
 * Shelby Foote – The Civil War: A Narrative – Vol 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
 * John Kenneth Galbraith – The Affluent Society
 * J. Edgar Hoover – Masters of Deceit
 * Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited
 * Claude Lévi-Strauss – Structural Anthropology
 * Philip O'Connor – Memoirs of a Public Baby
 * Eric Partridge – Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English
 * John Maynard Smith – The Theory of Evolution
 * John Steinbeck – Once There Was A War
 * Raymond Williams – Culture and Society 1780–1950
 * Michael Young – The Rise of the Meritocracy

Births

 * February 9 – Walid al-Kubaisi, Norwegian-Iraqi author, journalist, translator, film director and government scholar (died 2018)
 * March 14 – James Robertson, Scottish novelist
 * April 6 – Graeme Base, English-born Australian children's author and illustrator
 * April 15 – Benjamin Zephaniah, English dub poet (died 2023)
 * May 7 – Robert Antoni, West Indian novelist
 * May 8 – Roddy Doyle, Irish novelist
 * May 14 – Anna Höglund, Swedish writer and illustrator
 * May 18 – Jonathan Maberry, American writer
 * May 21 – Taku Ashibe (芦辺 拓), Japanese mystery novelist
 * May 22 – Wayne Johnston, Canadian novelist
 * May 26 – Moinul Ahsan Saber, Bangladeshi writer and editor
 * June 10 – James F. Conant, American philosopher
 * June 14 – Todur Zanet, Gagauz poet and translator
 * June 16 – Isobelle Carmody, Australian science fiction, fantasy and children's writer
 * June 22 – Bruce Campbell, American actor, producer, writer and director
 * July 3 – Charlie Higson, English speculative fiction writer
 * July 5 – Veronica Guerin, Irish journalist (murdered 1996)
 * August 15 – Victor Shenderovich, Russian writer
 * August 29 – Michael Jackson, American pop singer, songwriter and author (died 2009)
 * September 5 –  Pierre Leroux, Canadian novelist, journalist and screenwriter
 * October 30 – Flora Fraser, English biographer
 * November 11 – Kathy Lette, Australian novelist, playwright and activist
 * November 24 – Gregory Doran, English theater director
 * December 2 - George Saunders
 * December 10 – Cornelia Funke, German children's author
 * unknown dates
 * Lionel Fogarty, indigenous Australian poet
 * Margaret Smith, American poet
 * Nega Mezlekia, Ethiopian writer

Deaths

 * February 4 – Henry Kuttner, American science fiction author (born 1915)
 * February 6 – Charles Langbridge Morgan, English novelist and dramatist (born 1894)
 * February 24 – Herbert Adams, English writer of mystery novels (born 1874)
 * March 15 – Michael Joseph, English publisher (born 1897)
 * March 17 – Margiad Evans, Anglo-Welsh writer and poet (born 1909)
 * March 21 – Cyril M. Kornbluth, American science fiction writer (born 1923)
 * March 24 – Seumas O'Sullivan, Irish poet (born 1879)
 * April 7 – Elliot Paul, American writer (born 1892)
 * April 8 – Ethel Turner, English-born Australian novelist and children's author (born 1873)
 * May 5 – James Branch Cabell, American fantasy author (born 1879)
 * June 4 – Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, American fiction writer and poet (born 1872)
 * June 10 – Angelina Weld Grimké, African-American playwright and poet (born 1880)
 * June 28 – Alfred Noyes, English poet (born 1880)
 * August 6 – Geoffrey Willans, English novelist and comic writer (born 1911)
 * August 29 – Marjorie Flack, American author and illustrator (born 1897)
 * September 11 – Robert W. Service, English-born Canadian comic poet (born 1874)
 * October 7 – Louise Hammond Willis Snead, American writer, artist, and composer (born 1868)
 * October 24 – G. E. Moore, English philosopher (born 1873)
 * October 30 – Rose Macaulay, English novelist (born 1881)
 * November 9 – Dorothy Canfield Fisher, American activist and novelist (born 1879)
 * December 8
 * Nicolae Petrescu-Comnen, Romanian social scientist, historian and poet (born 1881)
 * Peig Sayers (Máiréad Ó Gaoithín), Irish seanchaí (traditional storyteller, born 1873)
 * December 20 – J. C. Squire, English writer and critic (born 1884)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Philippa Pearce, Tom's Midnight Garden
 * Hugo Award for Best Novel: Fritz Leiber, The Big Time
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Angus Wilson, The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Joyce Hemlow, The History of Fanny Burney
 * Miles Franklin Award: Randolph Stow, To the Islands
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Harold Keith, Rifles for Watie
 * Newdigate prize: Jon Stallworthy
 * Nobel Prize in literature: Boris Pasternak
 * Premio Nadal: J. Vidal Cadellans, No era de los nuestros
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Ketti Frings, Look Homeward, Angel
 * Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: James Agee, A Death In The Family
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Penn Warren, Promises: Poems 1954-1956

title: 1958 in literature


text:
1959 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1959.

Events

 * January 31 – Sandu Tudor begins a 40-year sentence at Jilava Prison for "conspiracy against social order" and "intense activity against the working class", as meted out by a Romanian communist tribunal. He will die in 1962 at Aiud prison, possibly from torture.
 * April 30 – Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards receives its stage première. It was originally performed on radio in 1932.
 * May 7 – Scientist and novelist C. P. Snow delivers in the Senate House, University of Cambridge a Rede Lecture on The Two Cultures, to do with a perceived breakdown of communication between the sciences and humanities. It is later published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.
 * May 28 – The Mermaid Theatre opens in the City of London.
 * July 21 – D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is one of three books whose bans are overturned in court with assistance from the lawyer Charles Rembar in the United States, the others being Tropic of Cancer and Fanny Hill. The book, published in 1928, legally circulates in the U.S. after a 31-year obscenity ban.
 * July 29 – The U.K. Obscene Publications Act becomes law, coming into force on August 29. It requires a work to be seen as a whole, permitting a "public good" defence against a prosecution for obscenity, and making prosecutions for obscene libel difficult.
 * September – Anthony Burgess, teaching in Brunei, suffers a breakdown and is forced to return to the UK, where he becomes a full-time novelist.
 * October 29 – Astérix the Gaul makes a first appearance in the first regular issue of the comic magazine Pilote.
 * November 11 – In the United States, the short film Pull My Daisy is released, adapted from an unperformed play by Jack Kerouac, Beat Generation, and narrated by him. It stars poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso.
 * unknown dates
 * Aldous Huxley turns down a knighthood.
 * Colin Dexter begins teaching at Corby Grammar School.
 * Frank Herbert begins researching Dune.
 * Frederik Pohl becomes an editor of the American science fiction magazine Galaxy.
 * Marcel Achard is elected to the Académie française.
 * Literature Wales is established as The Academi Gymreig.
 * The first butoh performance, Kinjiki by Tatsumi Hijikata, is played at a dance festival in Japan. It is based on the novel of that name (Forbidden Colors) by Yukio Mishima and explores the taboos of male homosexuality and pedophilia.

Fiction

 * Eric Ambler – Passage of Arms
 * Isaac Asimov – Nine Tomorrows
 * H.E. Bates – A Breath of French Air
 * Saul Bellow – Henderson the Rain King
 * Derek Bickerton – Payroll
 * Robert Bloch – Psycho
 * Antoine Blondin – A Monkey in Winter (Un Singe en hiver)
 * Heinrich Böll – Billiards at Half-Past Nine (Billard um halb zehn)
 * Ray Bradbury – A Medicine for Melancholy
 * Jurij Brězan – Der Gymnasiast
 * John Brophy – The Day They Robbed the Bank of England
 * John Brunner
 * Echo in the Skull
 * The World Swappers
 * Algis Budrys – The Falling Torch
 * William S. Burroughs – Naked Lunch
 * Taylor Caldwell – Dear and Glorious Physician
 * John Dickson Carr – Scandal at High Chimneys: A Victorian Melodrama
 * Henry Cecil – Settled Out of Court
 * James Hadley Chase – The World in My Pocket
 * Agatha Christie – Cat Among the Pigeons
 * Ivy Compton-Burnett – A Heritage and Its History
 * Barbara Comyns – The Vet's Daughter
 * Richard Condon – The Manchurian Candidate
 * Alexander Cordell – Rape of the Fair Country
 * Julio Cortázar – Las armas secretas (The Secret Weapons, short stories)
 * Richard Crichton – The Great Impostor
 * Cecil Day-Lewis – The Widow's Cruise
 * Allen Drury – Advise and Consent
 * Alfred Duggan – Children of the Wolf
 * Jane Duncan – My Friends the Miss Boyds (first in the My Friends series of 19 books)
 * Shusaku Endo (遠藤 周作) – Wonderful Fool (おバカさん)
 * William Faulkner –  The Mansion
 * Ian Fleming – Goldfinger
 * Sarah Gainham – The Stone Roses
 * Paul Gallico – Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris
 * William Golding – Free Fall
 * Richard Gordon – Doctor and Son
 * Günter Grass – The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel)
 * Walter Greenwood – Saturday Night at the Crown
 * Vasily Grossman – Life and Fate («Жизнь и судьба»; completed but unpublished until the 1980s)
 * Mark Harris – Wake Up, Stupid
 * Robert A. Heinlein
 * The Menace From Earth
 * Starship Troopers
 * The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
 * Dorothy Hewett – Bobbin Up
 * Hwang Sun-won – "Rain Shower" (소나기, Sonagi, short story)
 * Jabra Ibrahim Jabra – Tammūz fī al-Madīnah (Tammuz in the city)
 * Michael Innes – Hare Sitting Up
 * Shirley Jackson – The Haunting of Hill House
 * Uwe Johnson – Mutmassungen über Jakob (Speculations about Jakob)
 * John Knowles – A Separate Peace
 * H. P. Lovecraft etc. – The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces
 * John Lymington – Night of the Big Heat
 * John D. MacDonald
 * Deadly Welcome
 * The Beach Girls
 * The Crossroads
 * Ross Macdonald – The Galton Case
 * Colin MacInnes – Absolute Beginners
 * Compton Mackenzie – The Lunatic Republic
 * Alistair MacLean
 * The Last Frontier
 * Night Without End
 * Naguib Mahfouz – Children of Gebelaawi (أولاد حارتنا)
 * Norman Mailer – Advertisements for Myself
 * Ngaio Marsh – Singing in the Shrouds
 * James A. Michener – Hawaii
 * Walter M. Miller Jr. – A Canticle for Leibowitz
 * Gladys Mitchell – The Man Who Grew Tomatoes
 * V.S. Naipaul – Miguel Street
 * Patrick O'Brian – The Unknown Shore
 * Mervyn Peake – Titus Alone
 * David Piper (as Peter Towry) – Trial by Battle
 * Raymond Queneau – Zazie in the Metro (Zazie dans le Métro)
 * Robert Randall (as Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett) – The Dawning Light
 * Mordecai Richler – The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
 * Kate Roberts – Te yn y grug (short stories)
 * Philip Roth – Goodbye, Columbus
 * Robert Ruark – Poor No More
 * Nathalie Sarraute – Le Planétarium
 * André Schwarz-Bart – The Last of the Just (Le Dernier des justes)
 * Mary Shelley (died 1851) – Mathilda (novella, written 1819–20)
 * Alan Sillitoe – The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
 * Andrew Sinclair – The Breaking of Bumbo, My Friend Judas
 * Aimée Sommerfelt – The Road to Agra (Veien til Agra)
 * Terry Southern – The Magic Christian
 * Howard Spring – All the Day Long
 * Rex Stout – Plot It Yourself
 * Valerie Taylor – The Girls in 3-B
 * John Updike – The Same Door
 * Kurt Vonnegut – The Sirens of Titan
 * Keith Waterhouse – Billy Liar
 * Sheila Watson – The Double Hook

Children and young people

 * Rev. W. Awdry – The Little Old Engine (Fourteenth in The Railway Series of 42 books by him and his son Christopher Awdry)
 * Bruce Carter – Four Wheel Drift
 * René Goscinny – Le petit Nicolas
 * Joseph Krumgold – Onion John
 * Spike Milligan – Silly Verse for Kids
 * Bill Peet
 * Hubert's Hair-Raising Adventure
 * Goliath II
 * Dr. Seuss – Happy Birthday to You!
 * Margery Sharp – The Rescuers (first in the eponymous series of nine novels)

Drama

 * Edward Albee
 * The Death of Bessie Smith (written)
 * The Zoo Story (premiered in German)
 * Jean Anouilh – Becket
 * John Arden – Serjeant Musgrave's Dance
 * Alan Ayckbourn (as Roland Allen) – The Square Cat
 * Samuel Beckett – Embers (first broadcast)
 * Bertolt Brecht (died 1956) – Saint Joan of the Stockyards (Die Heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe, first stage performance)
 * Albert Camus – The Possessed (Les Possédés)
 * Beverley Cross – One More River
 * William Douglas Home – Aunt Edwina
 * Refik Erduran – Cengiz Han’ın Bisikleti (The Bicycle of Genghis Khan)
 * Jack Gelber – The Connection
 * Jean Genet – The Blacks: A Clown Show (Les Nègres, clownerie, first performed)
 * Lorraine Hansberry – A Raisin in the Sun
 * Eugène Ionesco – The Killer (Tueur sans gages)
 * Geoffrey Lumsden – Caught Napping
 * Harold Pinter – The Caretaker (first published)
 * Zofia Posmysz – Pasażerka z kabiny 45 (Passenger from Cabin 45, radio drama)
 * Jean-Paul Sartre – The Condemned of Altona (Les Séquestrés d'Altona, translated as Loser Wins)
 * N. F. Simpson – One Way Pendulum
 * Wole Soyinka – The Lion and the Jewel
 * Arnold Wesker
 * Roots
 * The Kitchen
 * Tennessee Williams – Sweet Bird of Youth
 * Egon Wolff – Parejas de trapo
 * Zhou Xinfang with Xu Siyan – Hai Rui Submits His Memorial (海瑞上疏, Hai Rui Shangshu)

Non-fiction

 * Kenneth Anger – Hollywood Babylon
 * L. Sprague de Camp – Engines
 * August Derleth
 * Arkham House: The First 20 Years
 * Some Notes on H. P. Lovecraft
 * Savitri Devi – Impeachment of Man
 * G. H. Dury – The Face of the Earth
 * C. S. Forester – Sink the Bismarck! (also as The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck)
 * Georges Friedmann – Signal d'une troisième voie?
 * Erving Goffman – The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
 * Laurie Lee – Cider With Rosie
 * Miguel León-Portilla – Visión de los vencidos: Relaciones indígenas de la conquista
 * Garrett Mattingly – The Defeat of the Spanish Armada
 * Czesław Miłosz – Rodzinna Europa (Native Realm)
 * Iona and Peter Opie – The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
 * James Pope-Hennessy – Queen Mary 1867–1953
 * Karl Popper – The Logic of Scientific Discovery
 * Cornelius Ryan – The Longest Day
 * William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White – The Elements of Style
 * Wilfred Thesiger – Arabian Sands
 * Barbara Wootton, Baroness Wootton of Abinger (with V. G. Seal and R. Chambers) – Social Science and Social Pathology

Births

 * January 8 – Ovidiu Pecican, Romanian writer and poet
 * January 9 – Rigoberta Menchú, Guatemalan writer and Nobel Peace Prize winner
 * January 20 – R. A. Salvatore, American science fiction and fantasy author
 * January 28 – Megan McDonald, American children's author
 * February 2 – Jari Tervo, Finnish author
 * March 11 – Dejan Stojanović, Serbian-American poet and essayist
 * March 15 – Ben Okri, Nigerian poet and novelist
 * March 18 – Frédéric-Yves Jeannet, French-born writer in French and Spanish
 * April 15 – Emma Thompson, English actress and screenwriter
 * April 30 – Alessandro Barbero, Italian historian, novelist and essayist
 * c. May 1 – Yasmina Reza, French novelist and dramatist
 * May 3 – Ben Elton, English comedian, novelist and screenwriter
 * May 13 – Zeruya Shalev, Israeli novelist
 * June 12 – Hilary McKay, English children's writer
 * June 13 – Maurice G. Dantec, French science fiction author
 * July 19 – Vigdis Hjorth, Norwegian novelist
 * August 6 – Deborah Levy, South African-born British writer
 * August 17 – Jonathan Franzen, American essayist and novelist
 * August 27 – Jeanette Winterson, English novelist
 * September 9 – Matti Rönkä, Finnish television journalist and novelist
 * September 29
 * Jon Fosse, Norwegian fiction writer, playwright and poet
 * Benjamin Sehene, Rwandan writer
 * October 1 – Brian P. Cleary, American humorist, author and poet
 * October 7 – Steven Erikson, Canadian novelist and fantasy author
 * October 31 – Neal Stephenson, American science fiction writer
 * November 1 – Susanna Clarke, English novelist
 * November 22 – Christoph Klimke, German writer
 * December 20 – Sandra Cisneros, Mexican-born American author
 * unknown dates
 * Moira Young, Canadian children's novelist

Deaths

 * January 3 – Edwin Muir, Scottish poet, novelist and translator (born 1887)
 * January 14 – G. D. H. Cole, English political theorist, economist and historian (born 1889)
 * January 26 – Margaret Elizabeth Egan, American librarian (born 1905)
 * January 29 – Pauline Smith, South African novelist (born 1882)
 * February 20 – Laurence Housman, English playwright and writer (born 1865)
 * February 22 – Percy F. Westerman, English children's author (born 1876)
 * February 23 – Luis Palés Matos, Puerto Rican poet (heart failure) (born 1898)
 * February 28 – Maxwell Anderson, American playwright and film writer (born 1888)
 * March 4 – W. W. Greg, English literary scholar (born 1875)
 * March 17 – Galaktion Tabidze (Galaktioni), Georgian poet (suicide, born 1892)
 * March 26 – Raymond Chandler, American crime writer (born 1888)
 * April 12 – James Gleason, American actor, playwright and screenwriter (born 1882)
 * April 14 – Julien Josephson, American screenwriter (born 1881)
 * April 16 – Ramón Armando Rodríguez, Venezuelan writer (born 1895)
 * May 15 – Jeanne de Flandreysy, French writer (born 1874)
 * May 18 – Apsley Cherry-Garrard, English memoirist and explorer (born 1886)
 * May 20 – Alfred Schütz, Austrian philosopher and sociologist (born 1899)
 * May 30 – Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz, Argentine writer, journalist, essayist and poet (born 1898)
 * June 1 – Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Ward), English novelist (born 1883)
 * June 23 – Boris Vian, French novelist (heart attack, born 1920)
 * June 30 – José Vasconcelos, Mexican poet and political writer (born 1882)
 * July 3 – Johan Bojer, Norwegian novelist (born 1872)
 * July 26 – Manuel Altolaguirre, Spanish poet, editor and publisher (car accident, born 1905)
 * August 8 – Emil František Burian, Czech poet, journalist and playwright (born 1904)
 * September 5 – Marta Rădulescu, Romanian novelist and poet (born 1912)
 * September 14 – Laxmi Prasad Devkota, Nepali poet, playwright, and novelist (born 1909)
 * September 18 – Benjamin Péret, French poet (born 1899)
 * October 12 – Arnolt Bronnen, Austrian playwright and director (born 1895)
 * November 29 – Hans Henny Jahnn, German playwright and novelist (born 1894)
 * December 2 – Giuseppe Zucca, Italian screenwriter (born 1887)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers
 * Hugo Award for Best Novel: James Blish, A Case of Conscience
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Morris West, The Devil's Advocate
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Christopher Hassall, Edward Marsh
 * Miles Franklin Award: Vance Palmer, The Big Fellow
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond
 * Nobel Prize for literature: Salvatore Quasimodo
 * Premio Nadal: Ana María Matute, Primera memoria
 * Prix Goncourt: André Schwarz-Bart, Le dernier des Justes
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Archibald MacLeish, J. B.
 * Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Robert Lewis Taylor, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Stanley Kunitz, Selected Poems 1928-1958
 * Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Francis Cornford

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: 1959 in literature


text:
1960 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1960.

Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read? – Mervyn Griffith-Jones prosecuting in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case

Events

 * February–October – Astounding magazine is renamed Analog.
 * Spring – August Derleth launches the poetry magazine Hawk and Whippoorwill in the United States.
 * March 22 – Joan Henry's play Look on Tempests is premièred at the Comedy Theatre in London's West End, as the first play dealing openly with homosexuality to be passed for performance by the Lord Chamberlain in Britain.
 * April 27 – Harold Pinter's play The Caretaker is premièred at the Arts Theatre Club in London's West End, transferring to the Duchess Theatre the following month, where it runs for 444 performances before departing from London for Broadway, Pinter's first significant commercial success. Alan Bates and Donald Pleasence star in the original production.
 * July 11 – Harper Lee's Southern Gothic Bildungsroman To Kill a Mockingbird is published in the United States. She completes no later novel before her death in 2016.
 * August 12 – Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss, is published in the United States; 40 years on it will be the fourth-best selling English-language children's hardcover book yet written.
 * September 5 – Welsh poet Waldo Williams is imprisoned for six weeks for non-payment of income tax (a protest against defence spending).
 * October 3 – The Lilly Library is opened on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington, based on the collections of Josiah K. Lilly Jr.
 * October 6 and December 16 – Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, receives full screenwriting credit for his work on the films Spartacus and Exodus, released in the United States on these dates.
 * c. October – Vasily Grossman submits his novel Life and Fate (Жизнь и судьба) for publication, resulting in confiscation of the manuscript and all related material by the KGB in the Soviet Union.
 * November – Rita Rait-Kovaleva's Russian translation of The Catcher in the Rye is published in the Soviet literary magazine Inostrannaya Literatura as Над пропастью во ржи ("Over the Abyss in Rye").
 * November 2 – R v Penguin Books Ltd: Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover in the United Kingdom.
 * November 8 – Richard Wright delivers a polemical lecture, "The Situation of the Black Artist and Intellectual in the United States", to students and members of the American Church in Paris, a few weeks before his death in the city from heart attack aged 52.
 * November 10 – Lady Chatterley's Lover sells 200,000 copies in one day following its publication in the U.K. since being banned in 1928.
 * November 17 – Michael Foot is re-elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom and relinquishes the editorship of Tribune.
 * November 19 – American novelist Norman Mailer stabs his wife, the artist Adele Morales.
 * November 24 – Raymond Queneau founds Oulipo in France.
 * unknown dates
 * Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal invents the artificial language Lincos, intended for communication with extraterrestrial intelligence.
 * Francophone African scholar Djibril Tamsir Niane publishes the novelization Soundjata, ou l'Epopée du Manding in Paris, the first extended transcription of the 13th-century Epic of Sundiata from Mandinka oral tradition and its first translation into a Western language.

Fiction

 * Chinua Achebe – No Longer at Ease
 * J. R. Ackerley – We Think the World of You
 * Kingsley Amis – Take a Girl Like You
 * Poul Anderson – The High Crusade
 * Lynne Reid Banks – The L-Shaped Room
 * Stan Barstow – A Kind of Loving
 * John Barth – The Sot-Weed Factor
 * Hamilton Basso – The Light Infantry Ball
 * H. E. Bates – When the Green Woods Laugh
 * Charles Beaumont – Night Ride and Other Journeys
 * Robert Bloch – Pleasant Dreams: Nightmares
 * Algis Budrys – Rogue Moon
 * Anthony Burgess
 * The Doctor is Sick
 * The Right to an Answer
 * Morley Callaghan – The Many Colored Coat
 * John Dickson Carr – In Spite of Thunder
 * Carlo Cassola – Bébo's Girl (La ragazza di Bube)
 * Henry Cecil – Alibi for a Judge
 * Louis-Ferdinand Céline – North (Nord)
 * Agatha Christie – The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
 * Barry Crump – A Good Keen Man
 * Roald Dahl – Kiss Kiss (short stories)
 * L. Sprague de Camp
 * The Bronze God of Rhodes
 * The Glory That Was
 * L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt – Wall of Serpents
 * Carmen de Icaza – The House Across the Street (La casa de enfrente)
 * Philip K. Dick
 * Dr. Futurity
 * Vulcan's Hammer
 * E. L. Doctorow – Welcome to Hard Times
 * Lawrence Durrell – Clea (final volume of The Alexandria Quartet, begun 1957)
 * Henry Farrell – What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
 * Gabriel Fielding – Through Streets Broad and Narrow
 * Ian Fleming – For Your Eyes Only (James Bond short stories)
 * Sarah Gainham – The Silent Hostage
 * Richard Gordon – Doctor in Clover
 * Graham Greene – A Burnt-Out Case
 * Arthur Hailey – In High Places
 * Donald Hamilton – Death of a Citizen
 * Wilson Harris – Palace of the Peacock
 * James Leo Herlihy – All Fall Down
 * Hammond Innes – The Doomed Oasis
 * Michael Innes – The New Sonia Wayward
 * Greye La Spina – Invaders from the Dark
 * Jean Lartéguy – Les Centurions
 * Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
 * Clarice Lispector – Family Ties (Laços de família) (short story collection)
 * David Lodge – The Picturegoers
 * Ngaio Marsh – False Scent
 * John Masters – The Venus of Konpara
 * Richard Matheson – The Beardless Warriors
 * Judith Merrill – The Tomorrow People
 * Gladys Mitchell – Say It with Flowers
 * Walter M. Miller – A Canticle for Leibowitz
 * Nancy Mitford – Don't Tell Alfred
 * Alberto Moravia – La noia (The Empty Canvas)
 * Edna O'Brien – The Country Girls
 * Flannery O'Connor – The Violent Bear It Away
 * Scott O'Dell – Island of the Blue Dolphins
 * Wilder Penfield – The Torch
 * Frederik Pohl – Drunkard's Walk
 * Anthony Powell – Casanova's Chinese Restaurant
 * James H. Schmitz – Agent of Vega
 * Nevil Shute (died January 2) – Trustee from the Toolroom
 * Clark Ashton Smith – The Abominations of Yondo
 * Muriel Spark – The Ballad of Peckham Rye
 * Alan Sillitoe – The General
 * David Storey – This Sporting Life
 * Rex Stout
 * Three at Wolfe's Door
 * Too Many Clients
 * William Styron – Set This House on Fire
 * Julian Symons – The Progress of a Crime
 * John Updike – Rabbit, Run
 * Irving Wallace – The Chapman Report
 * John Edward Williams – Butcher's Crossing
 * Raymond Williams – Border Country
 * John Wyndham – Trouble with Lichen

Children and young people

 * Joan Aiken – The Kingdom and The Cave
 * Rev. W. Awdry – The Twin Engines (fifteenth in The Railway Series)
 * Hans Baumann – Ich zog mit Hannibal (I Marched with Hannibal, 1961)
 * Sheila Burnford – The Incredible Journey
 * P. D. Eastman – Are You My Mother?
 * Alan Garner – The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
 * Jean Craighead George – My Side of the Mountain
 * Rumer Godden – "Candy Floss" (short story)
 * Elinor Lyon – Cathie Runs Wild
 * Scott O'Dell – Island of the Blue Dolphins
 * Georges Prosper Remi (as Hergé) – Tintin au Tibet (book publication)
 * Dr. Seuss
 * Green Eggs and Ham
 * One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
 * Barbara Sleigh – The Kingdom of Carbonel

Drama

 * Edward Albee – The Death of Bessie Smith and The Sandbox (first performances)
 * Samuel Beckett – The Old Tune (first broadcast)
 * Robert Bolt – A Man for All Seasons (stage version) and The Tiger and the Horse
 * Marc Camoletti – Boeing-Boeing
 * Henry Cecil and William Saroyan – Settled Out of Court
 * Noël Coward – Waiting in the Wings
 * Beverley Cross – Strip the Willow
 * Witold Gombrowicz – The Marriage (Ślub, first performance)
 * Eugène Ionesco – Rhinocéros
 * Ira Levin – Critic's Choice
 * Stephen Lewis and Theatre Workshop – Sparrers Can't Sing
 * Bruce Mason – The End of the Golden Weather
 * Tad Mosel – All the Way Home
 * Harold Pinter
 * The Caretaker (first performed and published)
 * The Room (first professional performance)
 * A Night Out (first broadcast)
 * Terence Rattigan – Ross
 * Barry Reckord – You in Your Small Corner
 * Nelson Rodrigues – Beijo no Asfalto (The Asphalt Kiss)
 * Wole Soyinka – A Dance of the Forests
 * Gore Vidal – The Best Man
 * Maruxa Vilalta – Los disorientados (The Disoriented Ones)
 * Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall – Billy Liar
 * Orson Welles (adaptation) – Chimes at Midnight
 * Tennessee Williams – Period of Adjustment

Poetry

 * Douglas Livingstone – The Skull in the Mud
 * Sylvia Plath – The Colossus and Other Poems
 * Alan Sillitoe – The Rats and other poems

Non-fiction

 * Joy Adamson – Born Free
 * Kingsley Amis – New Maps of Hell
 * Philippe Ariès – Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (L'Enfant et la vie familiale sous l'Ancien Régime)
 * Peg Bracken – The I Hate to Cook Book
 * Albert Camus (died January 4) – Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (selected essays)
 * Jean-Paul Desbiens – Les Insolences du Frère Untel (The Insolences of Brother Anonymous)
 * Hans-Georg Gadamer – Truth and Method (Wahrheit und Methode)
 * John Howard Griffin – Black Like Me
 * Helen Keller – Light in my Darkness
 * Arthur Koestler – The Lotus and the Robot
 * Jessica Mitford – Hons and Rebels
 * A. S. Neill – Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing
 * Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier – The Morning of the Magicians (Le Matin des magiciens)
 * R. C. Majumdar – An Advanced History of India
 * Jean-Paul Sartre – Critique of Dialectical Reason (Critique de la raison dialectique)
 * William L. Shirer – The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
 * H. H. Smythe and M. M. Smythe – The New Nigerian Elite
 * W. T. Stace – The Teachings of the Mystics
 * Elie Wiesel – Night (La Nuit, 1958)

Births

 * January 18 – Mark Rylance, English actor and theater director
 * January 23 – André Verbart, Dutch poet
 * January 28 – Robert von Dassanowsky, Austrian-American historian and academic
 * January 31 – Grant Morrison, Scottish comic-book and graphic-novel scriptwriter
 * February 19 – Helen Fielding, English novelist and screenwriter
 * March 8 – Jeffrey Eugenides, American fiction writer
 * April 28 – Ian Rankin, Scottish crime novelist
 * April 29 – Andrew Miller, English novelist
 * May 4 – Kate Saunders, English author and children's writer
 * May 21 – John O'Brien, American novelist (died 1994)
 * May 24 - Eric Brown, British science fiction writer (died 2023)
 * June 2 – Julie Myerson, English novelist and columnist
 * July 13 – Ian Hislop, Welsh-born satirist
 * August 4 – Tim Winton, Australian novelist
 * October 2 – Joe Sacco, Maltese-born graphic author
 * October 18 – Hồ Anh Thái, Vietnamese author
 * November 10 – Neil Gaiman, English author
 * December 10 – Kenneth Branagh, Northern Irish actor and screenwriter
 * unknown dates
 * Malcolm Pryce, Anglo-Welsh detective novelist
 * Alexis Stamatis, Greek novelist, playwright and poet
 * D. J. Taylor, English literary critic and biographer

Deaths

 * January 4 – Albert Camus, French Pied-Noir novelist (car accident, born 1913)
 * January 9 – Elsie J. Oxenham (Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley), English girls' story writer (born 1880)
 * January 12 – Nevil Shute, English-born novelist (stroke, born 1899)
 * January 14 – Ralph Chubb, English poet, printer and artist (born 1892)
 * January 28 – Zora Neale Hurston, African-American anthropologist and author (born 1891)
 * May 30 – Boris Pasternak, Russian novelist, poet and translator (born 1890)
 * July 27
 * Leonora Eyles, English feminist writer and novelist (born 1889)
 * Ethel Lilian Voynich, Anglo-Irish novelist and composer (born 1864)
 * July 28 – Kassian Bogatyrets, Rusyn priest, politician and historian (born 1868)
 * August 19 – Frances Cornford, English poet (born 1886)
 * August 29 – Vicki Baum, Austrian-born novelist writing in German and English (born 1888)
 * October 19 – Hjalmar Dahl, Finnish journalist, translator and writer (born 1891)
 * October 31 – H. L. Davis, American fiction writer and poet (born 1894)
 * November 20 – Ya'akov Cohen, Russian-born Israeli poet (born 1881)
 * November 28 – Richard Wright, African-American novelist and poet (born 1908)
 * December 26 – Tetsuro Watsuji (和辻 哲郎), Japanese philosopher and historian of ideas (born 1889)

Awards

 * American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Criticism: E. B. White
 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Ian Wolfran Cornwall, The Making of Man
 * Eric Gregory Award: Christopher Levenson
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Rex Warner, Imperial Caesar
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Canon Adam Fox, The Life of Dean Inge
 * Kate Greenaway Medal: Gerald Rose, Old Winkle and the seagulls
 * Miles Franklin Award: Elizabeth O'Conner, The Irishman
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Joseph Krumgold, Onion John
 * Nobel Prize for literature: Saint-John Perse
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Jerome Weidman, George Abbott for book, Jerry Bock for music, and Sheldon Harnick for lyrics, Fiorello!
 * Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Allen Drury, Advise and Consent
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: W. D. Snodgrass, Heart's Needle
 * Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: John Betjeman

title: 1960 in literature


text:
1961 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1961.

Events

 * January 24 – The American dramatist Arthur Miller and the film star Marilyn Monroe are granted a divorce in Mexico on grounds of incompatibility.
 * February – Sylvia Plath suffers a miscarriage. Several of her poems, including "Parliament Hill Fields", address the event.
 * March 15 – Hugh Wheeler's comedy Big Fish, Little Fish opens at the ANTA Theater in New York City, directed by Sir John Gielgud. It is one of the early Broadway plays to explore frankly the issue of male homosexuality.
 * March 20 – The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, becomes the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and its company the Royal Shakespeare Company, with Peter Hall as director.
 * May – Grove Press publishes Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer in the United States 27 years after its original publication in France. The book leads to one of many obscenity trials (Grove Press, Inc., v. Gerstein) that test American laws on pornography in the 1960s.
 * May 27 – The British bookseller WHSmith closes the last of its in-store circulating library branches.
 * August 8 – The first issue of Fantastic Four, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, is published. It is considered the beginning of the post-World War II Marvel Comics line of superhero comic books.
 * August 18 – The British magazine Tribune publishes a letter from playwright John Osborne beginning "Damn You, England..."
 * September 8 – Publication of the science fiction novel series Perry Rhodan, der Erbe des Universums, originally written by K. H. Scheer and Walter Ernsting, is begun by Arthur Moewig Verlag in Germany in Romanhefte (partwork) format. It is then published every week, attaining more than 2880 issues and around two billion total copies sold worldwide by the end of 2016.
 * September 14 – Novelist William Golding, having resigned a teaching post at Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury, sets off for the academic year 1961/1962 to teach at Hollins College, Virginia, United States.
 * November 10 – Joseph Heller's satirical novel Catch-22 is first put on sale by Simon & Schuster in the United States, after favorable advance reviews in October. Heller has been working on the book since 1953, based on his experiences as a bombardier during World War II. Its title, which becomes a phrase referring to a no-win situation, had previously been Catch-18.
 * unknown date – Michael Halliday publishes a seminal paper on the systemic functional grammar model.

Fiction

 * Brian Aldiss – The Primal Urge
 * Poul Anderson – Three Hearts and Three Lions
 * J. G. Ballard – The Wind From Nowhere
 * James Barlow – Term of Trial
 * Sheila Burnford – The Incredible Journey
 * Morley Callaghan – A Passion in Rome
 * John Dickson Carr – The Witch of the Low Tide: An Edwardian Melodrama
 * Jean Cau – The Mercy of God
 * Henry Cecil – Daughters in Law
 * Sid Chaplin – The Day of the Sardine
 * James Hadley Chase – A Lotus for Miss Quon
 * Agatha Christie
 * Double Sin and Other Stories
 * The Pale Horse
 * A. J. Cronin – The Judas Tree
 * Jennifer Dawson – The Ha-Ha
 * Cecil Day-Lewis – The Worm of Death
 * L. Sprague de Camp – The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate
 * R. F. Delderfield – Stop at a Winner
 * August Derleth – The Reminiscences of Solar Pons
 * Cyprian Ekwensi – Jagua Nana
 * Ian Fleming – Thunderball (based on screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham and the author)
 * Gillian Freeman (as Eliot George) – The Leather Boys
 * Gabriel García Márquez – No One Writes to the Colonel (El coronel no tiene quien le escriba)
 * Martyn Goff – The Youngest Director
 * Richard Gordon – Doctor on Toast
 * Edward Gorey (as Ogdred Weary) – The Curious Sofa. A Pornographic Tale
 * Winston Graham – Marnie
 * Vasily Grossman – Everything Flows (Все течет; first published 1989)
 * Harry Harrison – The Stainless Steel Rat
 * Robert A. Heinlein – Stranger in a Strange Land
 * Joseph Heller – Catch-22
 * Marlen Haushofer – The Wall
 * Patricia Highsmith – This Sweet Sickness
 * Richard Hughes -The Fox in the Attic
 * Michael Innes – Silence Observed
 * James Kennaway – Household Ghosts
 * Ismith Khan – The Jumbie Bird
 * Margaret Laurence – The Stone Angel
 * John le Carré – Call for the Dead
 * Stanisław Lem – Solaris
 * Audrey Erskine Lindop – The Way to the Lantern
 * H. P. Lovecraft – The Shunned House
 * Ross Macdonald – The Wycherly Woman
 * Compton Mackenzie – Mezzotint
 * Gladys Mitchell – The Nodding Canaries
 * Iris Murdoch – A Severed Head
 * V. S. Naipaul – A House for Mr. Biswas
 * R. K. Narayan – The Man-Eater of Malgudi
 * Juan Carlos Onetti – El astillero (The Shipyard)
 * Walker Percy – The Moviegoer
 * Emeric Pressburger – Killing a Mouse on Sunday
 * Caradog Prichard – Un Nos Ola Leuad (One Moonlit Night)
 * Harold Robbins – The Carpetbaggers
 * J. D. Salinger – Franny and Zooey
 * Leonardo Sciascia – Il giorno della civetta
 * Muriel Spark – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
 * Howard Spring – I Met a Lady
 * John Steinbeck – The Winter of Our Discontent
 * Irving Stone – The Agony and the Ecstasy
 * Rex Stout – The Final Deduction
 * Theodore Sturgeon – Some of Your Blood
 * Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎) – The Diary of a Mad Old Man (瘋癲老人日記)
 * Leon Uris – Mila 18
 * Rose Valland – Le Front de l'art
 * H. Russell Wakefield – Strayers from Sheol
 * Edward Lewis Wallant – The Pawnbroker
 * Evelyn Waugh – Unconditional Surrender
 * Morris West – Daughter of Silence
 * Angus Wilson – The Old Men at the Zoo
 * Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road

Children and young people

 * Rev. W. Awdry – Branch Line Engines (sixteenth in The Railway Series of 42 books by him and his son Christopher Awdry)
 * Roald Dahl – James and the Giant Peach
 * L. Sprague de Camp – non-fiction
 * The Heroic Age of American Invention
 * Man and Power: The Story of Power from the Pyramids to the Atomic Age
 * Barbara C. Freeman – Two-Thumb Tom
 * Rumer Godden – Miss Happiness and Miss Flower
 * René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo – Asterix the Gaul (Astérix le Gaulois)
 * Maria Gripe – Josephine
 * Norton Juster – The Phantom Tollbooth
 * Bill Peet – Huge Harold
 * Kin Platt – The Blue Man
 * Wilson Rawls – Where the Red Fern Grows
 * George Selden – The Cricket in Times Square (first in an unnamed sequence of seven books)
 * Dr. Seuss – The Sneetches and Other Stories
 * Elizabeth George Speare – The Bronze Bow
 * John Rowe Townsend – Gumble's Yard
 * Tomi Ungerer – The Three Robbers

Drama

 * John Barton – The Hollow Crown (anthology)
 * Samuel Beckett
 * Happy Days
 * Rough for Radio I
 * Rough for Radio II
 * Emilio Carballido – Un pequeño día de ira
 * Spiro Çomora – Karnavalet e Korçës (Carnival at Korçë)
 * Henry Denker – A Far Country
 * Friedrich Dürrenmatt – The Physicists (Die Physiker)
 * Max Frisch – Andorra
 * Jean Genet – The Screens (Les Paravents)
 * Girish Karnad – Yayati
 * Heiner Müller – Die Umsiedlerin (The Resettler Woman)
 * Tom Murphy – A Whistle in the Dark
 * John Osborne – Luther
 * Neil Simon – Come Blow Your Horn
 * John Whiting – The Devils
 * Tennessee Williams – The Night of the Iguana
 * Wu Han – Hai Rui Dismissed from Office (海瑞罢官, Hǎi Ruì bà guān)

Poetry

 * August Derleth editor – Fire and Sleet and Candlelight

Non-fiction

 * Alison Adburgham – A Punch History of Manners and Modes, 1841–1940
 * The Artists' & Writers' Cookbook – with recipes from 150 famous writers and artists
 * Wayne C. Booth – The Rhetoric of Fiction
 * E. H. Carr – What Is History?
 * Frantz Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la Terre)
 * Fritz Fischer – Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegzielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914–1918
 * Georges Friedmann – The Anatomy of Work (English translation)
 * Ernest K. Gann – Fate Is the Hunter
 * Jane Jacobs – The Death and Life of Great American Cities
 * Richard Foster Jones – Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in Seventeenth Century England
 * Theodora Kroeber – Ishi in Two Worlds
 * R. D. Laing – Self and Others
 * John C. Lilly – Man and Dolphin
 * Marshall McLuhan – The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man
 * Louis Nizer – My Life in Court
 * Karl Popper – The Poverty of Historicism
 * Anant Priolkar – The Goa Inquisition
 * Maxime Rodinson – Muhammad
 * Bertrand Russell – Has Man a Future?
 * Colin Turnbull – The Forest People
 * Webster's Third New International Dictionary
 * Theodore H. White – The Making of the President 1960
 * Raymond Williams – The Long Revolution
 * Peter Wessel Zapffe – Indføring i litterær dramaturgi (Introduction to literary dramaturgy)

Births

 * January 8 – Arnaldur Indriðason, Icelandic crime novelist
 * January 11 – Jasper Fforde, English fantasy novelist
 * January 12 – Simon Russell Beale, Malaysian-born English Shakespearean actor
 * January 28 – Arnaldur Indridason, Icelandic writer
 * May 4 – Ishita Bhaduri, Indian poet and writer
 * May 17 – Han Dong, Chinese poet and novelist
 * May 19 – Jennifer Armstrong, American children's author
 * May 22 – Andrea Dunbar, English playwright (died 1990)
 * June 9 – Aaron Sorkin, American screenwriter, producer and playwright
 * June 23 – David Leavitt, American novelist
 * June 24 – Rebecca Solnit, American writer and essayist
 * July 7 – Eric Jerome Dickey, American writer
 * July 10 – Carol Anne Davis, Scottish crime writer
 * July 18 – M. J. Alexander, American author and photographer
 * July – Richard Flanagan, Australian novelist
 * August 20 – Greg Egan, Australian science fiction author
 * September 13 – Tom Holt, English historical and comic novelist and poet
 * September 26 – Will Self, English novelist, political commentator and broadcaster
 * October 5 – Sílvia Soler, Catalan writer and journalist
 * October 29 – Michael Gurr, Australian playwright (died 2017)
 * November 9 – Jackie Kay, Scottish poet and novelist
 * November 14 – Jurga Ivanauskaitė, Lithuanian writer (died 2007)
 * November 18 – Steven Moffat, Scottish TV writer
 * November 24 – Arundhati Roy, Indian writer and activist
 * November – Sarah Holland, English novelist, actress and singer
 * December 8 – Ann Coulter, American author
 * November 20 – David Mills, American journalist and TV writer (died 2010)
 * December 23 – Ezzat el Kamhawi, Egyptian novelist and journalist
 * December 30 – Douglas Coupland, Canadian author
 * unknown date – Winsome Pinnock, British playwright

Deaths

 * January 10 – Dashiell Hammett, American crime writer and screenwriter (lung cancer, born 1894)
 * January 21 – Blaise Cendrars (Frédéric-Louis Sauser), Swiss novelist and poet (born 1887)
 * January 30 – Dorothy Thompson, American journalist (born 1893)
 * February 4 – Hazel Heald, American pulp fiction writer (born 1896)
 * March 18 – E. Arnot Robertson, English novelist (born 1903)
 * April 9 – Oliver Onions (George Oliver), English novelist and ghost story writer (born 1873)
 * April 22 – Joanna Cannan, English pony book writer and detective novelist (born 1896)
 * April 30 – Jessie Redmon Fauset, American editor, writer and educator (born 1882)
 * May 26 – William Troy, American writer and teacher (cancer, born 1903)
 * June 2 – George S. Kaufman, American dramatist and critic (born 1889)
 * June 15 – Peyami Safa, Turkish journalist and writer (born 1899)
 * July 1 – Louis-Ferdinand Céline, French novelist and pamphleteer (born 1894)
 * July 2 – Ernest Hemingway, American novelist (suicide, born 1899)
 * July 12 – Mazo de la Roche, Canadian novelist (born 1879)
 * July 17 – Olga Forsh, Russian dramatist, novelist and memoirist (born 1873)
 * August 14 – Clark Ashton Smith, American writer (born 1893)
 * August 18 – Leonhard Frank, German writer (died 1882)
 * September 27 – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), American poet, novelist and memoirist (born 1886)
 * October 19 – Mihail Sadoveanu, Romanian novelist (born 1880)
 * November 2 – James Thurber, American humorist (born 1894)
 * December 7 – Roussan Camille, Haitian poet and journalist (born 1912)
 * December 26 – Gertrude Minnie Faulding, English children's writer and novelist (born 1875)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Lucy M. Boston, A Stranger at Green Knowe
 * Eric Gregory Award: Adrian Mitchell, Geoffrey Hill
 * Formentor Prize: Jorge Luis Borges and Samuel Beckett
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Jennifer Dawson, The Ha-Ha
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: M. K. Ashby, Joseph Ashby of Tysoe
 * Lorne Pierce Medal: Robertson Davies
 * Miles Franklin Award: Patrick White, Riders in the Chariot
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Scott O'Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins
 * Nobel Prize in Literature: Ivo Andrić
 * Premio Nadal: Juan Antonio Payno, El curso
 * Prix Goncourt: Jean Cau, La Pitié de Dieu
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Tad Mosel, All the Way Home
 * Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Phyllis McGinley, Times Three: Selected Verse From Three Decades
 * National Book Award for Fiction: Conrad Richter, The Waters of Kronos
 * National Book Award for Nonfiction: William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
 * National Book Award for Poetry: Randall Jarrell, The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Poems and Translations

title: 1961 in literature


text:
1962 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1962.

Events

 * January 7 – In an article in The New York Times Book Review, Gore Vidal calls Evelyn Waugh "our time's first satirist".
 * February 17 – Arthur Miller marries the photographer Inge Morath.
 * February 28 – F. R. Leavis delivers the Richmond lecture Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow at Downing College, Cambridge, which arouses controversy.
 * May 11 – The Finnish Ministry of Education forbids the import and distribution of eight children's books (including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), published by Kynäbaari, because of the poor quality and clandestine abridgement of the translations.
 * May – Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell are prosecuted and jailed for defacing library books in London.
 * June 5 – Marvel Comics publishes Amazing Fantasy #15, featuring the debut of its Spider-Man feature by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. The Amazing Spider-Man periodical series begins publication in December.
 * June 30 – The works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are denounced by the Roman Catholic Church.
 * July – The General Law Amendment Act in South Africa denies freedom of speech to opposition activists and writers.
 * September – Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath separate. From the beginning of the following month, Plath experiences a burst of creativity, writing in the last few months of her life most of the poems on which her reputation will rest. They include many that will appear in Ariel and Winter Trees. On October 31, Heinemann in London publish The Colossus which will be the only collection of her poems published in her lifetime under her own name. In December she moves to a London flat in a house where W. B. Yeats lived as a boy.
 * November – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Оди́н день Ива́на Дени́совича, Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha), the author's semi-autobiographical account of life in the gulag, is published in Novy Mir in an unprecedented acknowledgement of the Soviet Union's Stalinist past.
 * December – L. Frank Baum's short story "The Tiger's Eye" appears for the first time nearly 60 after it was written.
 * December 4 – A tape-recorded conversation on science fiction takes place between Kingsley Amis, C. S. Lewis and Brian Aldiss in Lewis's rooms at Cambridge.
 * unknown dates
 * Richard Booth opens a second-hand bookshop at the old fire station in the future "bookshop town" of Hay-on-Wye in Wales.
 * Lynne Reid Banks goes to live in a kibbutz in Israel.
 * George Oppen publishes his first collection of poetry since Discrete Series in 1934, breaking a 28-year silence. He goes on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1969.
 * A parallel text edition of George Bernard Shaw's play Androcles and the Lion is published posthumously by Penguin Books in the UK, as the first published work in the phonetic Shavian alphabet devised by Ronald Kingsley Read.

Fiction

 * H. G. Adler – Eine Reise (A Journey)
 * Nelson Algren (editor) – Nelson Algren's Own Book of Lonesome Monsters: 13 Masterpieces of Black Humor (anthology)
 * Eric Ambler – The Light of Day
 * Isaac Asimov, editor – The Hugo Winners
 * James Baldwin – Another Country
 * J. G. Ballard – The Drowned World
 * William Barrett – Lilies of the Field
 * Giorgio Bassani – The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini)
 * Thomas Berger – Reinhart in Love
 * Jorge Luis Borges – Ficciones (The Garden of Forking Paths and Artifices translated by Anthony Bonner)
 * Ray Bradbury
 * R is for Rocket
 * Something Wicked This Way Comes
 * John Braine – Life at the Top
 * John Brunner
 * Secret Agent of Terra
 * The Super Barbarians
 * Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler – Fail-Safe
 * Anthony Burgess
 * A Clockwork Orange
 * The Wanting Seed
 * William S. Burroughs – The Ticket That Exploded
 * Taylor Caldwell – A Prologue To Love
 * Alejo Carpentier – El Siglo de las Luces (Age of Enlightenment, translated as Explosion in a Cathedral)
 * John Dickson Carr – The Demoniacs
 * Rosario Castellanos – Oficio de tinieblas (The Book of Lamentations)
 * Agatha Christie – The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
 * James Clavell – King Rat
 * Lionel Davidson – The Rose of Tibet
 * Len Deighton – The IPCRESS File
 * August Derleth
 * Lonesome Places
 * The Trail of Cthulhu
 * August Derleth, editor – Dark Mind, Dark Heart
 * Philip K. Dick – The Man in the High Castle
 * Tonke Dragt – De brief voor de Koning (The Letter for the King)
 * Allen Drury – A Shade of Difference
 * Richard Gordon – Doctor in the Swim
 * Edward Grierson – The Massingham Affair
 * William Faulkner – The Reivers
 * Gabriel Fielding – The Birthday King
 * Ian Fleming – The Spy Who Loved Me
 * C. S. Forester – Hornblower and the Hotspur
 * Carlos Fuentes
 * Aura
 * The Death of Artemio Cruz
 * Aldous Huxley – Island
 * Hammond Innes – Atlantic Fury
 * Michael Innes – A Connoisseur's Case
 * Shirley Jackson – We Have Always Lived in the Castle
 * James Jones – The Thin Red Line
 * William Melvin Kelley – A Different Drummer
 * Jack Kerouac – Big Sur
 * Ken Kesey – One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
 * Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II – Seven Days in May
 * James Krüss – Timm Thaler
 * Manuel Mujica Láinez – Bomarzo
 * Anna Langfus – Les bagages de sable (Bags of Sand)
 * John le Carré – A Murder of Quality
 * Doris Lessing – The Golden Notebook
 * Anne Morrow Lindbergh – Dearly Beloved
 * H. P. Lovecraft – Dreams and Fancies
 * Eloise McGraw – The Golden Goblet
 * Alistair MacLean – The Satan Bug
 * Gabriel García Márquez – In Evil Hour (La mala hora)
 * Ngaio Marsh – Hand in Glove
 * Khadija Mastoor – Aangan (آنگن, Courtyard)
 * Gladys Mitchell – My Bones Will Keep
 * Marcel Moreau – Quintes
 * Penelope Mortimer – The Pumpkin Eater
 * Vladimir Nabokov – Pale Fire
 * M. T. Vasudevan Nair – Asuravithu
 * Patrick O'Brian – Richard Temple
 * Katherine Anne Porter – Ship of Fools
 * Zofia Posmysz – Passenger (Pasażerka)
 * Anthony Powell – The Kindly Ones
 * Otfried Preußler – The Robber Hotzenplotz
 * Reynolds Price – A Long and Happy Life
 * J. B. Priestley – The Shapes of Sleep
 * Mary Renault – The Bull from the Sea
 * Mercè Rodoreda – The Time of the Doves (La plaça del Diamant)
 * Sankar – Chowringhee
 * Isaac Bashevis Singer – The Slave
 * Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
 * Fernando Soto Aparicio – La rebelión de las ratas (The Rebellion of the Rats)
 * Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake) – The Hunter
 * Mary Stewart – The Moon-Spinners
 * Rex Stout
 * Gambit
 * Homicide Trinity
 * Noel Streatfeild – Travelling Shoes (first published as Apple Bough)
 * Zaim Topčić – Black Snows
 * Kurt Vonnegut – Mother Night
 * Irving Wallace – The Prize
 * Elie Wiesel – Day
 * David Wilkerson – The Cross and the Switchblade
 * Herman Wouk – Youngblood Hawke

Children and young people

 * Joan Aiken – The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
 * Rev. W. Awdry – Gallant Old Engine (seventeenth in The Railway Series of 42 books by him and his son Christopher Awdry)
 * Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire – Book of Greek Myths
 * Tonke Dragt – De brief voor de Koning (The Letter for the King)
 * Madeleine L'Engle – A Wrinkle in Time
 * Penelope Farmer – The Summer Birds
 * Ezra Jack Keats – The Snowy Day (picture book)
 * Jean Little – Mine for Keeps
 * Eloise Jarvis McGraw – The Golden Goblet
 * Ruth Park – The Muddle-Headed Wombat
 * Bill Peet – Smokey
 * Otfried Preußler – The Robber Hotzenplotz
 * Barbara Sleigh – No One Must Know
 * Ivan Southall – Hills End
 * Bernard Waber – The House on East 88th Street (first in the Lyle the Crocodile series)
 * Stan & Jan Berenstain – The Big Honey Hunt (first in The Berenstain Bears series)

Drama

 * Edward Albee – Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
 * Wilberto Cantón – Nosotros somos Dios (We Are God)
 * Friedrich Dürrenmatt – Die Physiker (The Physicists)
 * Witold Gombrowicz – Historia
 * Arthur Kopit – Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad
 * Spike Milligan and John Antrobus – The Bed-Sitting Room
 * David Rudkin – Afore Night Come
 * Peter Shaffer – The Private Ear/The Public Eye (double bill)
 * David Turner – Semi-Detached
 * Arthur Watkyn – Out of Bounds

Poetry

 * Bella Akhmadulina – Struna (The String)
 * George Oppen – The Materials
 * Al Purdy – Poems for all the Annettes
 * William Carlos Williams – Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems

Non-fiction

 * Philippe Ariès – L'Enfant et la vie familiale sous l'Ancien Régime (Children and Family Life under the Ancien Régime, translated as Centuries of Childhood, 1962)
 * W. H. Auden – The Dyer's Hand and other essays
 * Helen Gurley Brown – Sex and the Single Girl
 * Rachel Carson – Silent Spring
 * Thomas B. Costain – The Last Plantagenets (last book in the Pageant of England series)
 * L. Sprague de Camp – Energy and Power
 * August Derleth – 100 Books by August Derleth
 * Milovan Đilas – Conversations with Stalin
 * Milton Friedman – Capitalism and Freedom
 * Thomas Kuhn – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
 * Dumas Malone – Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty
 * W. Somerset Maugham – Looking Back
 * V. S. Naipaul – The Middle Passage: Impressions of Five Societies – British, French and Dutch in the West Indies and South America
 * Louis Nizer – My Life in Court
 * Russell Page – The Education of a Gardener
 * Anthony Sampson – Anatomy of Britain
 * John Steinbeck – Travels With Charley: In Search of America
 * Percy Thrower – Percy Thrower's Encyclopaedia of Gardening
 * Barbara Tuchman – The Guns of August
 * Robert Warshow – The Immediate Experience

Births

 * January 17 – Sebastian Junger, American novelist, journalist and documentary film-maker
 * January 29 – Olga Tokarczuk, Polish fiction writer and poet
 * February 8 – Malorie Blackman, English writer for young adults and children
 * February 21
 * Chuck Palahniuk, American novelist and journalist
 * David Foster Wallace, American novelist and essayist (died 2008)
 * March 27 – John O'Farrell, English writer of fiction and non-fiction, comedy scriptwriter and political campaigner
 * March 30 – Yōko Ogawa (小川 洋子), Japanese novelist and essayist
 * March 31 – Michal Viewegh, Czech fiction writer
 * April 2 – Mark Shulman, American children's author
 * April 6 – Javier Cercas, Spanish novelist and academic
 * April 13 – Chris Riddell, South African-born English children's book illustrator
 * April 22 – B. Jeyamohan, Tamil novelist
 * May 11 - Amir Hamed, Uruguayan writer, essayist and translator (died 2017)
 * May 12 – Yang Hongying (楊紅櫻), Chinese children's author
 * May 17 – Lise Lyng Falkenberg, Danish novelist and biographer
 * May 19 – Jonathan Dee, American novelist
 * June 12 – Jordan Peterson, Canadian clinical psychologist and writer
 * July 30 – Lavinia Greenlaw, English poet and novelist
 * August 3 – Abdo Khal, Saudi Arabian writer
 * August 10 – Suzanne Collins, American novelist and television writer
 * August 16 – Christian Cameron, American-born Canadian writer
 * August 27 – Sjón (Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson), Icelandic novelist and poet
 * September 22 - Nuzo Onoh, British-Nigerian writer
 * October 11 – Anne Enright, Irish novelist
 * October 19 – Tracy Chevalier, American historical novelist
 * October 28 – Mark Haddon, English novelist and poet
 * November 4 - Rick Yancey, American young-adult writer
 * November 12
 * Neal Shusterman, American children's author and poet
 * Naomi Wolf, American writer and activist
 * December 17 – Jan Bondeson, Swedish non-fiction writer

Deaths

 * January 17 – Gerrit Achterberg, Dutch poet (heart attack, born 1905)
 * January 20 – Robinson Jeffers, American poet (born 1887)
 * January 24 – Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Turkish novelist and essayist (born 1901)
 * February 16 – Frank Prewett, Canadian poet (born 1893)
 * February 24 – Hu Shih (胡適), Chinese Nobel Prize-winning philosopher and language reformer (born 1891)
 * March 3 – Pierre Benoit, French novelist (born 1886)
 * March 16 – Dora Adele Shoemaker, American poet, playwright, educator (born 1873)
 * March 20 – C. Wright Mills, American sociologist (born 1916)
 * April 1 – Michel de Ghelderode, Belgian playwright (born 1898)
 * April 24 – Emilio Prados, Spanish poet and editor (born 1899)
 * May 3 — Helen Dortch Longstreet, American social advocate, librarian, and newspaper woman (born 1863)
 * May 24 – E. M. W. Tillyard, English literary scholar (born 1889)
 * May 13 – Constantin Gane, Romanian biographer and historical novelist (torture, born 1885)
 * May 26 – Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, English poet (born 1878)
 * June 2 – Vita Sackville-West, English poet and gardener (born 1892)
 * June 27 – Paul Viiding, Estonian poet and critic (born 1904)
 * July 6 – William Faulkner, American novelist and Nobel laureate (born 1897)
 * July 8 – Georges Bataille, French writer (cerebral arteriosclerosis, born 1897)
 * July 21 – G. M. Trevelyan, English historian (born 1876)
 * July 27 – Richard Aldington, English poet and novelist (born 1892)
 * August 9 – Hermann Hesse, German-born Swiss novelist, poet and painter (born 1877)
 * September 3 – E. E. Cummings, American poet (born 1894)
 * September 21 – Ouyang Yuqian (欧阳予倩), Chinese dramatist (born 1889)
 * September 22 – Jean-René Huguenin, French novelist and literary critic (born in 1936)
 * September 23 – Patrick Hamilton, English dramatist (liver and kidney failure, born 1904)
 * November 6 – Howard R. Garis, American children's fiction writer (born 1873)
 * November 17 – Sandu Tudor, Romanian poet, journalist and theologian (stroke and possibly torture, born 1896)
 * December 3 – Dame Mary Gilmore, Australian poet and journalist (born 1865)
 * December 12 – Felix Aderca, Romanian novelist, critic, poet and journalist (cancer, born 1891)
 * December 18 – Garrett Mattingly, American historian (born 1900)
 * December – Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, English working class novelist and campaigner (born 1886)

Awards

 * American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction: William Faulkner
 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Pauline Clarke, The Twelve and the Genii
 * Eric Gregory Award: Donald Thomas, James Simmons, Brian Johnson, Jenny Joseph
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Ronald Hardy, Act of Destruction
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Meriol Trevor, Newman: The Pillar and the Cloud and Newman: Light in Winter
 * Miles Franklin Award: Thea Astley, The Well Dressed Explorer and George Turner, The Cupboard Under the Stairs
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth George Speare, The Bronze Bow
 * Newdigate Prize: Stanley Johnson
 * Nobel Prize for Literature: John Steinbeck
 * Premio Nadal: José María Mendiola, Muerte por fusilamiento
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Frank Loesser, Abe Burrows, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
 * Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Edwin O'Connor, The Edge of Sadness
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Alan Dugan, Poems
 * Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Christopher Fry

title: 1962 in literature


text:
1963 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1963.

Events

 * January – Novy Mir publishes "Matryona's Home", the first of three more stories by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn critical of the Soviet regime. They will be the last of his works to be published in the Soviet Union until 1990.
 * January 2 – The Traverse Theatre opens in Edinburgh.
 * February – English novelist Barbara Pym submits her seventh book, An Unsuitable Attachment, for publication. It is rejected by Tom Maschler at her regular publisher, Jonathan Cape, and by others. She will not have another novel published until 1977 and An Unsuitable Attachment does not appear until 1982, posthumously.
 * February 11 – American-born poet Sylvia Plath (age 30) commits suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in her London flat about a month after her only novel, the semi-autobiographical The Bell Jar, appears and six days after writing her last poem, "Edge".
 * March – The Publications and Entertainments Act in South Africa enables the government to impose strict censorship. Des Troye's novel An Act of Immorality (an attack on miscegenation provisions in the country's Immorality Act) is among the first to be prohibited.
 * March/April – The Bologna Children's Book Fair is inaugurated.
 * March 19 – Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop premières the ensemble musical Oh, What a Lovely War! at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, London.
 * May 17 – The first Galician Literature Day is held.
 * July 16 – A day after admission to the Acland Hospital in Oxford, C. S. Lewis suffers a heart attack. Though later discharged, he dies at home four months later.
 * August 20 – The Royal Shakespeare Company introduces its performance cycle of Shakespeare's history plays under the title The War of the Roses, adapted and directed by John Barton and Peter Hall at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.
 * September – Publication in India of Bhalchandra Nemade's Bildungsroman, Kosala ('Cocoon'), considered the first existentialist novel in Marathi literature, written in the author's native village.
 * October 21 – The first film from Merchant Ivory Productions is released: The Householder with a screenplay adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from her own novel.
 * October 22 – The Royal National Theatre Company is newly formed in the U.K. under Artistic Director Laurence Olivier. Its first performance is with Peter O'Toole as Hamlet, in London.
 * November – Tom Wolfe's essay "There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhhh!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh!) Around the Bend (Brummmmmmmmmmmmmmm)..." is published in Esquire magazine in the United States.
 * November 17 – Fictional hero 8 Man, created by science fiction writer Kazumasa Hirai and manga artist Jiro Kuwata, appears in print for the first time.
 * November 20–29 – A High Court case in London over the rights in Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Thunderball (1961) determines that future editions will be described as "based on a screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, and Ian Fleming".
 * unknown dates
 * Russian poet Anna Akhmatova's Requiem, an elegy on Soviet sufferings in the Great Purge, composed 1935–1961, is first published complete in book form, without her knowledge, in Munich.
 * The first modern publication by mainstream publishers in the U.K. and the United States of John Cleland's novel Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, 1748–1749) causes it to be banned for obscenity in Massachusetts, triggering a court case by its publisher, and prosecution of a London retailer.
 * Leslie Charteris publishes his last collection of stories with Simon Templar: The Saint in the Sun. All subsequent Saint books will be ghost-written by others.
 * Grace Ogot's short story "A Year of Sacrifice" (later retitled "The Rains Came") is published in Black Orpheus.

Fiction

 * J. G. Ballard
 * The Four-Dimensional Nightmare
 * Passport to Eternity
 * Simone de Beauvoir – Force of Circumstance (La Force des choses)
 * Thomas Bernhard – Frost
 * John Bingham – A Case of Libel
 * Heinrich Böll – The Clown (Ansichten eines Clowns)
 * Pierre Boulle – Planet of the Apes (La Planète des Singes)
 * Pearl S. Buck – The Living Reed
 * Anthony Burgess – Inside Mr. Enderby
 * Dino Buzzati – A Love Affair
 * Taylor Caldwell – Grandmother and the Priests
 * Morley Callaghan – That Summer in Paris
 * Victor Canning – The Limbo Line
 * John Dickson Carr – The Men Who Explained Miracles
 * Agatha Christie – The Clocks
 * Julio Cortázar – Hopscotch (Rayuela)
 * Oskar Davičo
 * Ćutnje (Silences)
 * Gladi (Hungers)
 * L. Sprague de Camp – A Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales
 * L. Sprague de Camp (as editor) – Swords and Sorcery
 * Cecil Day-Lewis – The Deadly Joker
 * Len Deighton – Horse Under Water
 * August Derleth (as Stephen Grendon) – Mr. George and Other Odd Persons
 * J.P. Donleavy – A Singular Man
 * Daphne du Maurier – The Glass-Blowers
 * Nell Dunn – Up the Junction
 * John Fowles – The Collector
 * Ian Fleming
 * On Her Majesty's Secret Service
 * Thrilling Cities
 * Jane Gaskell – The Serpent
 * Natalia Ginzburg – Family Sayings
 * Winston Graham – The Grove of Eagles
 * Günter Grass – Dog Years (Hundejahre)
 * Georgette Heyer – False Colours
 * Ismail Kadare – The General of the Dead Army (Gjenerali i Ushtrisë së vdekur)
 * James Kennaway
 * The Bells of Shoreditch
 * The Mindbenders
 * Damon Knight – First Flight: Maiden Voyages in Space and Time
 * Arthur La Bern – Brighton Belle
 * John le Carré – The Spy who Came in from the Cold
 * J. M. G. Le Clézio – Le Procès-Verbal (The Interrogation)
 * Primo Levi – La tregua (The Truce, Reawakening)
 * Liu Yichang – Jiutu (酒徒, The Drunkard, or The Alcoholic)
 * Mary McCarthy – The Group
 * John McGahern – The Barracks
 * Richard McKenna – The Sand Pebbles
 * Alistair MacLean – Ice Station Zebra
 * James A. Michener – Caravans
 * Spike Milligan – Puckoon
 * Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫) – The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (午後の曳航, The Afternoon Towing)
 * Gladys Mitchell – Adders on the Heath
 * Emily Cheney Neville – It's Like This, Cat
 * John O'Hara – Elizabeth Appleton
 * Marcel Pagnol
 * The Water of the Hills (L'Eau des collines)
 * Jean de Florette
 * Manon des Sources
 * Živojin Pavlović – Krivudava reka (Curved River, short stories)
 * Sylvia Plath (as Victoria Lucas) – The Bell Jar
 * Laurens van der Post – The Seed and the Sower
 * Thomas Pynchon – V.
 * John Rechy – City of Night
 * Susan Sontag – Benefactor
 * Muriel Spark – The Girls of Slender Means
 * Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake) – The Man With the Getaway Face
 * Rex Stout – The Mother Hunt
 * Erwin Strittmatter – Ole Bienkopp
 * Boris and Arkady Strugatsky – Dalyokaya Raduga
 * Walter Tevis – The Man Who Fell to Earth
 * Jim Thompson – The Grifters
 * Rosemary Tonks – Opium Fogs
 * Mario Vargas Llosa – The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros)
 * Jack Vance – The Dragon Masters
 * Tarjei Vesaas – Is-slottet (The Ice Palace)
 * Kurt Vonnegut – Cat's Cradle
 * Keith Waterhouse – Billy Liar
 * Charles Webb – The Graduate
 * David Weiss – Naked Came I
 * Manly Wade Wellman – Who Fears the Devil?
 * Morris West – The Shoes of the Fisherman
 * Christa Wolf – Der geteilte Himmel (Divided Heaven, They Divided the Sky)

Children and young people

 * Rev. W. Awdry – Stepney the "Bluebell" Engine (eighteenth in The Railway Series of 42 books by him and his son Christopher Awdry)
 * Nina Bawden – The Secret Passage
 * Norman Bridwell – Clifford the Big Red Dog (first in a series of 80 books)
 * Hester Burton – Time of Trial
 * Paul Gallico – The Day the Guinea-Pig Talked
 * Rumer Godden – Little Plum
 * Edward Gorey – The Gashlycrumb Tinies
 * Ted Hughes – How the Whale Became
 * Norton Juster – The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics
 * Clive King – Stig of the Dump
 * Madeleine L'Engle – A Wrinkle in Time
 * Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Giants
 * Sterling North – Rascal
 * Peggy Parish – Amelia Bedelia
 * Bill Peet – The Pinkish, Purplish, Bluish Egg
 * Feodor Stepanovich Rojankovsky – The Cow Went Over The Mountain
 * Charles M. Schulz – Happiness Is a Warm Puppy
 * Maurice Sendak – Where the Wild Things Are
 * Dr. Seuss – Hop on Pop
 * Donald J. Sobol – Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective (first in a series of 29 books)
 * Rosemary Sutcliff – Sword at Sunset
 * Colin Thiele – Storm Boy

Drama

 * Arthur Adamov – La Politique des restes (The Politics of Rubbish)
 * Alan Ayckbourn – Mr. Whatnot
 * John Barton and Peter Hall (adapted from Shakespeare) – The War of the Roses
 * Samuel Beckett – Play (première in German as Spiel)
 * Emilio Carballido – ¡Silencio Pollos pelones, ya les van a echar su maíz!
 * René de Obaldia – Le Satyre de la Villette
 * Václav Havel – The Garden Party (Zahradní slavnost)
 * Rolf Hochhuth – The Deputy (Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel)
 * John Mortimer – A Voyage Round My Father (original radio version)
 * Bill Naughton
 * Alfie
 * All in Good Time
 * Barry Reckord – Skyvers
 * Charles Wood – Cockade
 * Theatre Workshop – Oh, What a Lovely War!

Poetry

 * T. S. Eliot – Collected Poems 1909–1962 (selected by author, published on 75th birthday)
 * Lionel Kearns – Songs of Circumstance
 * H. P. Lovecraft – Collected Poems
 * Rosemary Tonks – Notes on Cafés and Bedrooms

Non-fiction

 * Nelson Algren – Who Lost an American? (travel book)
 * Hannah Arendt
 * Eichmann in Jerusalem
 * On Revolution
 * James Baldwin – The Fire Next Time
 * Thomas B. Costain – William the Conqueror
 * L. Sprague de Camp – The Ancient Engineers
 * Milovan Đilas – Montenegro
 * Richard P. Feynman – Six Easy Pieces
 * Robert Newton Flew (died 1962) – Jesus and His Way. A study of the ethics of the New Testament
 * Shelby Foote – The Civil War: A Narrative – Vol. 2: Fredicksburg to Meridian
 * Betty Friedan – The Feminine Mystique
 * W. L. Guttsman – The British Political Elite
 * Jules Henry – Culture Against Man
 * Richard Hofstadter – Anti-intellectualism in American Life
 * C. L. R. James – Beyond a Boundary
 * Martin Luther King Jr. – Letter from Birmingham Jail
 * H. P. Lovecraft – Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity
 * William H. McNeill – The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community
 * Jessica Mitford – The American Way of Death
 * Margaret Murray – My First Hundred Years (autobiography)
 * Iris Origo – The World of San Bernardino
 * Stanisław Ossowski – Class Structure in the Social Consciousness (Struktura klasowa w społecznej świadomości, 1957)
 * W. G. Runciman – Social Science and Political Theory
 * E. P. Thompson – The Making of the English Working Class
 * UNESCO – History of Mankind – Vol. 1

Births

 * January 3 – Alex Wheatle, black British young adult fiction writer
 * January 11 – Jan Arnald (Arne Dahl), Swedish novelist and critic
 * January 18 – Peter Stamm, Swiss writer, dramatist and journalist
 * January 30 – Thomas Brezina, Austrian author
 * March 1 – Miss Shangay Lily, Spanish drag queen, writer, actor, and director (died 2016)
 * March 26 – Natsuhiko Kyogoku (京極 夏彦), Japanese mystery writer
 * April 27 – Russell T Davies, Welsh television writer
 * April 28 – Beate Grimsrud, Norwegian novelist and playwright (died 2020)
 * May 5 – Scott Westerfeld, American young-adult novelist
 * May 8 – Robin Jarvis, English novelist
 * May 19 – Michael Symmons Roberts, English poet
 * May 24 – Michael Chabon, American author
 * May 26 – Simon Armitage, English poet laureate
 * June 18 – Adam Hargreaves, children’s author
 * June 23 – Liu Cixin (刘慈欣), Chinese speculative fiction writer
 * June 25 – Yann Martel, Canadian author
 * August 6 – Xurxo Borrazás, Spanish writer and translator
 * August 13 – Valerie Plame, American writer and spy novelist
 * August 15 – Jan Sonnergaard, Danish short-story writer (died 2016)
 * September 2 – Thor Kunkel, German novelist
 * September 4 – Louise Doughty, English novelist and radio dramatist
 * September 6 – Alice Sebold, American novelist
 * September 12 – Michael McElhatton, Irish actor and writer
 * September 15 – Stephen C. Spiteri, Maltese military historian
 * October 8 – Nick Earls, Australian novelist and children's writer
 * October 20 – Gisela Kozak, Venezuelan writer and essayist
 * October 23 – Gordon Korman, Canadian-American children's and young adult author
 * October 25 – Dominic Dromgoole, English theatre director and writer
 * November 12 – Damon Galgut, South African novelist and playwright
 * December 23 – Donna Tartt, American novelist
 * unknown dates
 * Jeff Abbott, American genre novelist
 * Joanna Briscoe, English novelist
 * Don Paterson, Scottish poet, writer and musician

Deaths

 * January 6 – Stark Young, teacher, playwright, novelist, painter, literary critic and essayist (b. 1881)
 * January 8 – Kay Sage, American poet (suicide, born 1898)
 * January 13 – Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Spanish dramatist (born 1888)
 * January 14 – Gustav Regler, German Socialist novelist (born 1898)
 * January 29 – Robert Frost, American poet (born 1874)
 * February 4 – Brinsley MacNamara (John Weldon), Irish novelist and playwright (born 1890)
 * February 8 – Ernst Glaeser, German writer (born 1902)
 * February 11 – Sylvia Plath, American poet and novelist (suicide, born 1932)
 * February 14 – Hilda Vīka, Latvian poet and novelist (born 1897)
 * February 18 – Beppe Fenoglio, Italian writer (born 1887)
 * February 24 – Herbert Asbury, American journalist and writer (born 1889)
 * March 4 – William Carlos Williams, American writer (born 1883)
 * March 11
 * Deirdre Cash (Criena Rohan), Australian novelist (born 1924)
 * James Lennox Kerr (Peter Dawlish, Gavin Douglas), Scottish novelist and children's writer (born 1899)
 * March 26 – Jean Bruce, French writer (born 1921)
 * March 29 – Pola Gojawiczyńska, Polish writer (born 1896)
 * April 14 – Kodō Nomura, Japanese novelist and music critic (born 1882)
 * April 25 – Christopher Hassall, English actor, dramatist, librettist, lyricist and poet (born 1912)
 * May 12 – A. W. Tozer, American religious writer and pastor (born 1897)
 * May 28 – Ion Agârbiceanu, Romanian writer and pastor (born 1882)
 * June 3 – Nâzım Hikmet Ran, Turkish poet, playwright and novelist (heart attack, born 1892)
 * June 17 – John Cowper Powys, English novelist (born 1872)
 * August 1 – Theodore Roethke, American poet (heart attack, born 1908)
 * August 14 – Clifford Odets, American dramatist (cancer, born 1906)
 * August 27 – W. E. B. Du Bois, American writer, scholar and activist (born 1868)
 * September 3 – Louis MacNeice, Irish poet (pneumonia, born 1907)
 * September 9 – Ernst Kantorowicz, German historian (born 1895)
 * September 28 – Marie Linde, South African novelist (born 1894)
 * October 11 – Jean Cocteau, French poet, novelist and short story writer (born 1889)
 * October – Jolán Földes, Hungarian novelist and playwright (born 1902)
 * November 13 – Margaret Murray, Indian-born English archeologist and historian (born 1863)
 * November 22
 * Mary Findlater, Scottish novelist (born 1866)
 * Aldous Huxley, English novelist (cancer, born 1894)
 * C. S. Lewis, Irish novelist and children's and religious writer (renal failure, born 1898)
 * December 25 – Tristan Tzara (Samuel Rosenstock), Romanian-born French poet and essayist (born 1896)

Awards

 * American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry: William Carlos Williams
 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Hester Burton, Time of Trial
 * Eric Gregory Award: Ian Hamilton, Stewart Conn, Peter Griffith, David Wevill
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Gerda Charles, A Slanting Light
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Georgina Battiscombe, John Keble: A Study in Limitations
 * Miles Franklin Award: Sumner Locke Elliott, Careful, He Might Hear You
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
 * Nobel Prize for literature – Giorgos Seferis
 * Premio Nadal: Manuel Mejía Vallejo, El día señalado
 * Prix Goncourt: Armand Lanoux, Quand la mer se retire
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
 * Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: William Faulkner – The Reivers
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: William Carlos Williams: Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems
 * Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: William Plomer

title: 1963 in literature