text:
1947 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1947.

Events

 * January – The English actor-manager Geoffrey Kendal arrives in British India with his touring repertory theatre company "Shakespeareana." It will perform Shakespeare in towns and villages there for several decades.
 * January 29 – Arthur Miller's play All My Sons opens at the Coronet Theater in New York, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Ed Begley, as the writer's first Broadway success.
 * February 17 – On the death of Montserrat-born British fantasy fiction writer M. P. Shiel aged 81 in Chichester, his supposed title to the Kingdom of Redonda passes to the London poet John Gawsworth.
 * March – Landfall, a literary magazine, is founded by Charles Brasch and first published by Caxton Press (New Zealand). It will become the country's longest-established literary journal.
 * April
 * The opening night of the Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt's first play, Es steht geschrieben (It Is Written), is held in the Schauspielhaus Zürich, provoking fights among the audience.
 * The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Qumran Caves becomes public.
 * April 6 – The 1st Tony Awards for excellence in live American theater are awarded at the Waldorf Astoria New York.
 * April 24 – American novelist Willa Cather dies aged 73 of a cerebral hemorrhage in her home at 570 Park Avenue in Manhattan. On her death, her long-time domestic partner, magazine editor Edith Lewis, destroys the uncompleted manuscript of Cather's historical novel Hard Punishments according to the author's instructions.
 * May – Dorothy Parker divorces Alan Campbell for the first time.
 * May/June – The English novelist T. H. White buys a house in Saint Anne, Alderney in the Channel Islands, where he will spend the rest of his life.
 * June – Publication begins of Vice Versa magazine in Los Angeles, the first known periodical for lesbians, edited by 'Lisa Ben'.
 * June 24 – Kenneth Arnold claims to have seen nine flying saucers near Mount Rainier, Washington, starting a wave of enthusiasm in science fiction writers and scientists.
 * June 25 – Most of The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank is first published as Het Achterhuis: Dagboekbrieven 14 juni 1942 – 1 augustus 1944 ("The Annex: Diary Notes from 14 June 1942 – 1 August 1944") in Amsterdam, two years after its writer's death in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
 * July
 * Jack Kerouac begins the journey he will later chronicle in his book On the Road.
 * Pramoedya Ananta Toer begins two years' imprisonment by the Dutch authorities in Jakarta for supporting the Indonesian National Revolution. While in prison he begins his first major novel, Perburuan (The Fugitive, 1950).
 * August 24 – The first Edinburgh Festival of the Arts opens in Scotland.
 * September – The German literary association Group 47 forms.
 * September 12 – The American novelist John Dos Passos is involved in an automobile accident that kills his wife and costs him the sight in one eye.
 * November – Muriel Spark becomes editor of Poetry Review in London from this month's issue.
 * November 24 – Dalton Trumbo refuses to testify before the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Committee. Ring Lardner, Jr. attends, but refuses to answer questions. The United States House of Representatives votes 346–17 to approve citations of Contempt of Congress against all the "Hollywood Ten" screenwriters and directors who refuse to cooperate with the Committee over allegations of communist influences in the movie business. The ten are blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios the following day.
 * December 23 – Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire opens at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway in New York City, directed by Elia Kazan. It stars Jessica Tandy and Marlon Brando in his first major stage rôle.
 * Uncertain dates
 * Woody Guthrie completes his novel House of Earth. It will not be published until 2013.
 * Séamus Ó Néill's novel Tonn Tuile is the first book from the Irish language publisher Sáirséal agus Dill in Dublin.

Fiction

 * Nelson Algren – The Neon Wilderness (short stories)
 * Thomas Armstrong – King Cotton
 * Cynthia Asquith – This Mortal Coil
 * Carolyn Sherwin Bailey – Miss Hickory
 * Nigel Balchin – Lord, I Was Afraid
 * H.E. Bates – The Purple Plain
 * Marjorie Bowen – For Her to See
 * François Boyer – Les Jeux inconnus
 * Ray Bradbury – Dark Carnival (debut)
 * John Bude – Death Makes a Prophet
 * John Horne Burns – The Gallery
 * Italo Calvino – The Path to the Nest of Spiders (Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno)
 * Victor Canning – The Chasm
 * Albert Camus – The Plague (La Peste)
 * John Dickson Carr
 * The Sleeping Sphinx
 * Dr. Fell, Detective, and Other Stories
 * Peter Cheyney
 * Dance Without Music
 * Dark Interlude
 * Agatha Christie – The Labours of Hercules
 * J.J. Connington – Common Sense Is All You Need
 * Alec Coppel – A Man About a Dog
 * Thomas B. Costain – The Moneyman
 * Edmund Crispin – Swan Song
 * Johan Daisne – The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short (De man die zijn haar kort liet knippen)
 * Marcia Davenport – East Side, West Side
 * Cecil Day-Lewis – Minute for Murder
 * Hans Fallada (died February 5) – Every Man Dies Alone (Jeder stirbt für sich allein)
 * Jean Genet – Querelle de Brest
 * Anthony Gilbert – Death in the Wrong Room
 * Jean Giono – Un Roi sans divertissement
 * Winston Graham – Take My Life
 * L. P. Hartley – Eustace and Hilda
 * Robert A. Heinlein – Rocket Ship Galileo
 * James Hilton – Nothing So Strange
 * Anne Hocking – Prussian Blue
 * Dorothy B. Hughes – In a Lonely Place
 * Hammond Innes
 * Killer Mine
 * The Lonely Skier
 * Michael Innes – A Night of Errors
 * Carl Jacobi – Revelations in Black
 * Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成) – Snow Country (雪国, Yukiguni)
 * Hans Keilson – Komödie in Moll (Comedy in a Minor Key)
 * Jacques Laurent – Darling Caroline
 * Fritz Leiber, Jr. – Night's Black Agents
 * Alexander Lernet-Holenia – Twentieth of July
 * E. C. R. Lorac – Relative to Poison
 * Malcolm Lowry – Under the Volcano
 * Thomas Mann – Doctor Faustus (Doktor Faustus: Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde)
 * Gabriel García Márquez – Eyes of a Blue Dog (Ojos de perro azul)
 * Ngaio Marsh – Final Curtain
 * W. Somerset Maugham – Creatures of Circumstance (short stories)
 * Oscar Micheaux – Masquerade, a Historical Novel
 * James A. Michener – Tales of the South Pacific
 * Gladys Mitchell – Death and the Maiden
 * W. O. Mitchell – Who Has Seen the Wind?
 * Alberto Moravia – The Woman of Rome (La Romana)
 * Willard Motley – Knock On Any Door
 * Vladimir Nabokov – Bend Sinister
 * Mollie Panter-Downes – One Fine Day
 * Cesare Pavese – Il compagno
 * Gerard Reve (as Simon van het Reve) – De Avonden (The Evenings)
 * Kenneth Roberts – Lydia Bailey
 * Michael Sadleir – Forlorn Sunset
 * Samuel Shellabarger – Prince of Foxes
 * Mickey Spillane – I, the Jury
 * John Steinbeck
 * The Pearl
 * The Wayward Bus
 * Rex Stout – Too Many Women
 * Cecil Street
 * Death of an Author
 * Nothing But the Truth
 * Julian Symons – A Man Called Jones
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor (as Alice Tilton) – The Iron Clew
 * Philip Toynbee – Tea with Mrs Goodman
 * Boris Vian
 * Autumn in Peking (L'Automne à Pékin)
 * Froth on the Daydream (L'Écume des jours)
 * (as Vernon Sullivan) – The Dead All Have the Same Skin (Les Morts ont tous la même peau)
 * Evelyn Waugh – Scott-King's Modern Europe
 * Jack Williamson – With Folded Hands
 * Frank Yerby – The Vixens

Children and young people

 * Dora Birtles – Pioneer Shack
 * William Pène du Bois – The Twenty-One Balloons
 * Margaret Wise Brown – Goodnight Moon
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan and the Foreign Legion
 * Nan Chauncy – They Found a Cave
 * Rumer Godden – The Doll's House
 * Clare Hoskyns-Abrahall – Prelude (biography)
 * James Lennox Kerr (as Peter Dawlish) – Dauntless Finds Her Crew (first in the Dauntless series of at least eight books)
 * Betty MacDonald – Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (first in a series of four books)
 * Walter de la Mare – Collected Stories for Children
 * Laurence Meynell (as A. Stephen Tring) – The Old Gang
 * Arthur Ransome – Great Northern?
 * Frank Richards – Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School
 * Charles Green Shaw – It Looked Like Spilt Milk

Drama

 * Jean Anouilh – Invitation to the Castle (L'Invitation au Château)
 * Pralhad Keshav Atre – Moruchi Mavshi (adaptation of Charley's Aunt)
 * Ugo Betti – Ispezione (The Inquiry)
 * Maurice Clavel – Les Incendiaires
 * William Douglas-Home
 * The Chiltern Hundreds
 * Now Barabbas
 * Jean Genet – The Maids (Les Bonnes)
 * Patrick Hastings – The Blind Goddess
 * Ian Hay
 * Hattie Stowe
 * Off the Record
 * Noel Langley and Robert Morley – Edward, My Son
 * Arthur Miller – All My Sons
 * Ena Lamont Stewart – Men Should Weep
 * John Van Druten – The Druid Circle
 * A.R. Whatmore – She Wanted a Cream Front Door
 * Tennessee Williams – A Streetcar Named Desire

Poetry

 * Kingsley Amis – Bright November
 * Cairo poets, edited by Keith Bullen and John Cromer – Salamander: A Miscellany of Poetry
 * Aimé Césaire – Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land; expanded in book format)
 * August Derleth (editor) – Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre
 * Abba Kovner – Ad Lo-Or (Until No-Light)
 * Philip Larkin – A Girl in Winter
 * Louis MacNeice – The Dark Tower
 * Shinoe Shōda (正田 篠枝) – Sange

Non-fiction

 * Simone de Beauvoir – The Ethics of Ambiguity (Pour une Morale de l'ambiguïté)
 * Cleanth Brooks – The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
 * L. Sprague de Camp – The Evolution of Naval Weapons
 * Bernard DeVoto – Across the Wide Missouri
 * Benjamin Fondane (posthumous) – Baudelaire et l'expérience du gouffre
 * Anne Frank (posthumous) – The Diary of a Young Girl
 * George Gamow – One Two Three... Infinity
 * Jacquetta Hawkes and Christopher Hawkes – Prehistoric Britain
 * Primo Levi – If This Is a Man (Se questo è un uomo)
 * Walter Lippmann – The Cold War
 * George Orwell – Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool
 * Nicolae Petrescu-Comnen – Preludi del grande dramma
 * Samuel Putnam – Paris Was Our Mistress: Memoirs of a Lost & Found Generation
 * Franz Rosenthal – The Technique and Approach of Muslim Scholarship
 * Hugh Trevor-Roper – The Last Days of Hitler
 * A. L. Zissu – Nu există cult mozaic (No Such Thing as a Mosaic Religion)

Births

 * January 14 – Richard Laymon, American suspense novelist (died 2001)
 * February 3 – Paul Auster, American novelist (died 2024)
 * February 9 – Eamon Duffy, Irish church historian and academic
 * March 22 – James Patterson, American novelist and short story writer
 * April 3 – Srikrishna Alanahalli, Indian novelist and poet (died 1989)
 * April 12 – Tom Clancy, American novelist (died 2013)
 * April 18 – Kathy Acker (Karen Lehmann), American novelist and poet (died 1997)
 * April 24 – Astrid Roemer, Suriname-born Dutch novelist, poet and playwright
 * April 28 – Humayun Azad, Bangladeshi author, poet, scholar and linguist (died 2004)
 * May 10 – Thomas Tessier, American writer of horror novels and short stories
 * May 12 – Catherine Yronwode, American author and illustrator
 * May 27 – Felix Dennis, English publisher and poet (died 2014)
 * June 5 – David Hare, English playwright
 * June 19 – Salman Rushdie, Indian novelist writing in English
 * June 22 – Octavia E. Butler, American science fiction writer (died 2006)
 * July 2 – Jürg Amann, Swiss dramatist (died 2013)
 * July 18 – Dermot Healy, Irish novelist and poet (died 2014)
 * July 23 – Gardner Dozois, American science fiction author and editor (died 2018)
 * August 14 - Danielle Steel, American romance novelist
 * August 23 – Willy Russell, English dramatist
 * September 8 – Marianne Wiggins, American novelist
 * September 21 – Stephen King, American novelist
 * October 14 – Tomás de Mattos, Uruguayan writer and librarian (died 2016)
 * October 19 – Giorgio Cavazzano, Italian comics artist and illustrator
 * October 26 – Trevor Joyce, Irish poet
 * November 6 – Michelle Magorian, English children's author
 * November 14 – P. J. O'Rourke, American political satirist and journalist (died 2022)
 * November 28 – Gustav Hasford, American marine, novelist, journalist, poet and book thief (died 1993)
 * December 26 – Jean Echenoz, French novelist
 * unknown dates
 * Jaume Cabré, Catalan Spanish novelist and screenwriter
 * Shahid Nadeem, Pakistani playwright
 * Borka Pavićević, Montenegrin dramatist and columnist (died 2019)

Deaths

 * January 19 – Manuel Machado, Spanish poet (born 1874)
 * February 1 – J. D. Beresford, English short-story writer (born 1873)
 * February 4 – Margaret Cameron, American novelist, humorist, playwright, non-fiction writer (born 1867)
 * February 5 – Hans Fallada, German novelist (born 1893)
 * February 11 – E. M. Hull, English romance novelist (born 1880)
 * February 15 – Margaret Marshall Saunders, Canadian author (born 1861)
 * March 12 – Winston Churchill, American novelist (born 1871)
 * March 13 – Angela Brazil, English school-story writer for girls (born 1868)
 * April 24 – Willa Cather, American novelist (born 1873)
 * April 30 – Anna Wickham (Edith Alice Mary Harper), English poet (suicide, born 1883)
 * May 21
 * Flora Thompson, English semi-autobiographical novelist (born 1876)
 * E. C. Vivian (Charles Henry Cannell), English genre novelist (born 1882)
 * June 6 – James Agate, English author and critic (born 1877)
 * June 17 – Maxwell Perkins, American literary editor (born 1884)
 * August 5 – Herbert Asquith, English poet and novelist (born 1881)
 * August 30 – Jessie Wilson Manning, American author and lecturer (born 1855)
 * September 25 – Afevork Ghevre Jesus, Ethiopian author writing in Amharic (born 1868)
 * September 26 – Hugh Lofting, English-born children's writer (born 1886)
 * September 15 – Richard Le Gallienne, English writer and poet (born 1866)
 * October 13
 * William Le Queux, English-born French novelist and writer (born 1864)
 * Sidney Webb, English political economist (born 1859)
 * November 12 – Baroness Orczy (Emma Orczy), Hungarian novelist writing in English (born 1865)
 * November 14 – Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes, Anglo-French novelist and biographer writing in English (born 1868)
 * November 20 – Wolfgang Borchert, German author and playwright (liver failure, born 1921)
 * December 7 – Tristan Bernard, French playwright and novelist (born 1866)
 * December 15 – Arthur Machen, Welsh journalist, novelist and short-story writer (born 1863)
 * December 30 – Alfred North Whitehead, English mathematician and philosopher (born 1861)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Walter de la Mare, Collected Stories for Children
 * Frost Medal: Gustav Davidson
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: L. P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Rev. C. C. E. Raven, English Naturalists from Neckham to Ray
 * Knight Bachelor: Ralph Richardson
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, Miss Hickory
 * Nobel Prize for literature: André Gide
 * Premio Nadal: Miguel Delibes, La sombra del ciprés es alargada
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Lowell: Lord Weary's Castle
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Robert Penn Warren – All the King's Men

title: 1947 in literature


text:
Lech (river)

The Lech (Licus, Licca) is a river in Austria and Germany. It is a right tributary of the Danube 255 km in length with a drainage basin of 3919 km2. Its average discharge at the mouth is 115 m3/s. Its source is located in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, where the river rises from lake Formarinsee in the Alps at an altitude of 6120 ft. It flows in a north-north-easterly direction and crosses the German border, forming the Lechfall, a 12 m waterfall; afterwards the river enters a narrow gorge (the Lechschlucht). Leaving the Alps, it enters the plains of the Allgäu at Füssen at an elevation of 2580 ft in the German state of Bavaria, where it used to be the location of the boundary with Swabia. The river runs through the city of Füssen and through the Forggensee, a man-made lake which is drained in winter. Here, it forms rapids and a waterfall.

The river flows further northwards through a region called the Lechrain, and passes the cities of Schongau, Landsberg, Augsburg (where it receives the Wertach) and Rain before entering the Danube just below Donauwörth at an elevation of 1330 ft. It is not navigable, owing to its torrential character and the gravel beds which choke its channel. There are extensive views of the Lech valley from Neuschwanstein Castle, near Füssen.

Etymology
Inscriptions from 8/7 B. C. prove that the river name is first mentioned in the Celtic tribe name Licates. The river itself is called Likios or Likias in the 2nd century. Around the year 570 the name Licca is found in records. In the 8th century, names such as Lecha and Lech appeared. The term Licus is still used in 1059.

The name stands in analogy to the Welsh word llech ("stone slab") and the Breton word lec'h ("gravestone"). In this context, the meaning of the word "Lech" is explained as "the stony".

History
On more than one occasion, historic events have been decided on the banks of this river.

 * In 278 Roman emperor Probus vanquished a larger invasion force of Burgundians and Vandals, which had been raiding the Roman province of Rhaetia.
 * At Lechfeld, a stony plain between the Lech and the Wertach near Augsburg, Otto I defeated the Magyars in August 955.
 * In the Battle of Rain in April 1632, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden defeated and mortally wounded Johan Tzerclaes, Count of Tilly.

Hydroelectric power plants
Currently, there are 33 hydroelectric power plants on the Lech. The power plants are listed beginning at the headwaters:

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

title: Lech (river)


text:
1948 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1948.

Events

 * January 6 – The poet Pablo Neruda speaks out in the Senate of Chile against political repression and is forced into hiding.
 * January 28 – A debate between Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston on the existence of God is broadcast by the BBC.
 * February 5 – A private assembly of 50 major literary and artistic figures listens to a recording of Antonin Artaud's play Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de dieu (To Have Done With the Judgment of God), whose broadcast on French radio three days earlier has been prohibited.
 * February 17–November 24 – Venezuelan novelist Rómulo Gallegos serves as his country's first correctly elected President, until overthrown in a military coup.
 * March 21 – Halldor Laxness's The Atom Station (Atómstöðin) sells out all copies on its first day of publication.
 * May – Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1944) is first performed as a student production, in English, at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota. This year also sees the première of Brecht's adaptation of Antigone, at the Chur Stadttheater in Switzerland, with Helene Weigel in the title rôle.
 * May 4 – Sir Laurence Olivier's film of Shakespeare's Hamlet is shown. It will be the first British film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
 * c. June 1 – The first volume of Winston Churchill's The Second World War (1948–1953) is published.
 * September 8 – Terence Rattigan's one-act plays The Browning Version and Harlequinade are first performed at the Phoenix Theatre (London).
 * September 17 – The Irish poet W. B. Yeats, who died at Menton, France, in 1939, is reburied at Drumcliffe, County Sligo, "Under bare Ben Bulben's head", having been moved from the original burial place, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, on the Irish Naval Service corvette LÉ Macha. His grave at Drumcliffe, with an epitaph from "Under Ben Bulben", one of his final poems ("Cast a cold Eye/On Life, on Death./Horseman, pass by"), becomes a place of literary pilgrimage.
 * November 13 – Alice's Adventures Under Ground, the original manuscript of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, bought by a group of American Anglophiles in 1946, is presented by Luther H. Evans (Librarian of Congress) to the British Museum Library.
 * unknown dates
 * The 20th and last edition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum is published by the Holy See.
 * The London publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson is founded by George Weidenfeld and Nigel Nicolson.
 * The Pulitzer Prize for the Novel is renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
 * The Palatino serif typeface, designed by Hermann Zapf, is released by the Mergenthaler Linotype Company.

Fiction

 * Ilse Aichinger – Die größere Hoffnung (The Greater Hope, translated as Herod's Children)
 * Martha Albrand – After Midnight
 * Jerzy Andrzejewski – Ashes and Diamonds
 * Charlotte Armstrong – The Chocolate Cobweb
 * Isaac Asimov – The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline (short story)
 * Nigel Balchin – The Borgia Testament
 * René Barjavel – Le Diable l'emporte
 * Alexander Baron – From the City, From the Plough
 * Hervé Bazin – Viper in the Fist (Vipère au Poing)
 * Henry Bellamann – Parris Mitchell of King's Row
 * Elizabeth Bowen – The Heat of the Day
 * Christianna Brand – Death of Jezebel
 * Jocelyn Brooke
 * The Military Orchid
 * The Scapegoat
 * Pearl S. Buck – Peony
 * Gerald Butler – Slippery Hitch
 * Taylor Caldwell – Melissa
 * Victor Canning – Panther's Moon
 * Truman Capote – Other Voices, Other Rooms
 * Al Capp – The Life and Times of the Shmoo
 * John Dickson Carr (as Carter Dickson) – The Skeleton in the Clock
 * John Paddy Carstairs – Solid! Said the Earl
 * Adolfo Bioy Casares – The Celestial Plot (La trama celeste) (short stories)
 * Willa Cather (died 1947) – The Old Beauty and Others (short stories, including "The Best Years")
 * Peter Cheyney – Dark Wanton
 * Agatha Christie
 * Taken at the Flood
 * The Rose and the Yew Tree (as by Mary Westmacott)
 * The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
 * James Gould Cozzens – Guard of Honor
 * Edmund Crispin
 * Buried for Pleasure
 * Love Lies Bleeding
 * A. J. Cronin – Shannon's Way
 * Osamu Dazai – No Longer Human
 * L. Sprague de Camp – Divide and Rule
 * L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt – The Carnelian Cube
 * August Derleth – Not Long for this World
 * Lord Dunsany – The Fourth Book of Jorkens
 * Howard Fast – My Glorious Brothers
 * William Faulkner – Intruder in the Dust
 * Gaito Gazdanov – The Specter of Alexander Wolf (serialization completed)
 * F.L. Green – Mist on the Waters
 * Henry Green – Concluding
 * Graham Greene – The Heart of the Matter
 * Giovannino Guareschi – Mondo Piccolo: Don Camillo (The Little World of Don Camillo)
 * Hella Haasse (anonymously) – Oeroeg
 * L. P. Hartley – The Travelling Grave and Other Stories
 * Marguerite Henry – King of the Wind
 * Georgette Heyer – The Foundling
 * Zora Neale Hurston – Seraph on the Suwanee
 * Aldous Huxley – Ape and Essence
 * Hammond Innes – Maddon's Rock
 * Shirley Jackson
 * The Road Through the Wall
 * "The Lottery" (short story)
 * "Charles" (short story)
 * Anna Kavan – The House of Sleep
 * Patrick Kavanagh – Tarry Flynn
 * Yasunari Kawabata – Snow Country (雪国, Yukiguni, completed version)
 * Arthur La Bern – Paper Orchid
 * Halldór Laxness – The Atom Station
 * Alexander Lernet-Holenia – The Count of Saint Germain
 * Audrey Erskine Lindop – Soldiers' Daughters Never Cry
 * Ross Lockridge Jr. – Raintree County
 * E. C. R. Lorac
 * Death Before Dinner
 * Part for a Poisoner
 * Norman Mailer – The Naked and the Dead
 * Thomas Mann – Joseph and His Brothers
 * Leopoldo Marechal – Adam Buenosayres
 * Ana María Matute – Los Abel
 * W. Somerset Maugham – Catalina
 * Gladys Mitchell – The Dancing Druids
 * C. L. Moore – The Mask of Circe
 * Alan Moorehead – The Rage of the Vulture
 * Zoe B. Oldenbourg – The World Is Not Enough
 * Alan Paton – Cry, the Beloved Country
 * Ellery Queen – Ten Days' Wonder
 * Seabury Quinn – Roads
 * Anya Seton – The Hearth and the Eagle
 * Irwin Shaw – The Young Lions
 * Nevil Shute – No Highway
 * B. F. Skinner – Walden Two
 * Clark Ashton Smith – Genius Loci and Other Tales
 * Dodie Smith – I Capture the Castle
 * William Gardner Smith – Last of the Conquerors
 * Howard Spring – There Is No Armour
 * Robert Standish – Elephant Walk
 * Rex Stout – And Be a Villain
 * Cecil Street
 * The Paper Bag
 * The Telephone Call
 * Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar – A Mind at Peace (Huzur, serial publication)
 * Josephine Tey – The Franchise Affair
 * Gore Vidal – The City and the Pillar
 * Mika Waltari – The Adventurer (Mikael Karvajalka)
 * Donald Wandrei – The Web of Easter Island
 * Evelyn Waugh – The Loved One
 * Stanley G. Weinbaum – The Black Flame
 * Dorothy West – The Living is Easy
 * Thornton Wilder – The Ides of March
 * Brock Williams – Uncle Willie and the Bicycle Shop
 * Herman Wouk – City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder
 * Frank Yerby – The Golden Hawk

Children and young people

 * Bertil Almqvist – Barna Hedenhös: bilder från stenåldern (The Hedenhös Family: Pictures from the Stone Age)
 * Rev. W. Awdry – James the Red Engine (third in The Railway Series of 42 books by him and his son Christopher Awdry)
 * Hans Fischer – Pitschi. Das Kätzchen, das immer etwas anderes wollte. Eine traurige Geschichte, die aber gut aufhört
 * Antonia Forest – Autumn Term (first in the Marlow series of ten books)
 * Ruth Stiles Gannett – My Father's Dragon
 * Robert A. Heinlein - "Space Cadet"
 * Marguerite Henry – King of the Wind (Newbery Medal)
 * Lorna Hill – Marjorie and Co. (first in the Marjorie series of six books)
 * Tove Jansson – Trollkarlens hatt (The Magician's Hat, translated as Finn Family Moomintroll)
 * Astrid Lindgren – Pippi in the South Seas (Pippi Långstrump i Söderhavet)
 * Dr. Seuss – Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose
 * Rosemary Tonks – On Wooden Wings: The Adventures of Webster
 * Geoffrey Trease – The Hills of Varna (also as Shadow of the Hawk)
 * Elfrida Vipont – The Lark in the Moon

Drama

 * Bertolt Brecht – Antigone, The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Mr Puntila and his Man Matti (Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti, first performed)
 * Robertson Davies – Overlaid
 * Witold Gombrowicz – The Marriage (first published, in Spanish translation)
 * Kenneth Horne – A Lady Mislaid
 * Margaret Kennedy – Happy with Either
 * Junji Kinoshita – Yūzuru (Twilight Crane)
 * Dudley Leslie and J. Lee Thompson – The Human Touch
 * Terence Rattigan – The Browning Version and Harlequinade
 * Jean-Paul Sartre – Dirty Hands (Les Mains sales)
 * Vernon Sylvaine - One Wild Oat
 * John Van Druten – Make Way for Lucia
 * Arthur Watkyn – For Better, for Worse
 * Kerala women's Malayalam collective – Thozhil Kendrathilekku (To the Workplace!)

Poetry

 * Sukanta Bhattacharya (died 1947) – Chharpatra (ছাড়পত্র, "Certificate")
 * Olga Kirsch – Mure van die Hart
 * Derek Walcott – 25 Poems

Non-fiction

 * Winston Churchill – The Gathering Storm (The Second World War, vol. 1)
 * T. S. Eliot – Notes Towards the Definition of Culture
 * Robert Graves – The White Goddess
 * Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey – Cheaper by the Dozen
 * Richard Hofstadter – The American Political Tradition
 * F. R. Leavis – The Great Tradition
 * Betty MacDonald – The Plague and I
 * Dumas Malone – Jefferson and His Time: Jefferson the Virginian
 * Thomas Merton – The Seven Storey Mountain
 * A. A. Milne – The Norman Church
 * Anthony Powell – John Aubrey and His Friends
 * Paul Samuelson – Economics
 * John Steinbeck (photographs by Robert Capa) – A Russian Journal

Births

 * January 1 – Lynn Abbey (Marilyn Lorraine Abbey), American writer
 * January 2 – Joyce Wadler, American writer and memoirist
 * January 20 – Nigel Williams, English author, playwright and screenwriter
 * February 3 – Henning Mankell, Swedish crime novelist, children's author and dramatist (died 2015)
 * February 5 – Christopher Guest, English-American writer, actor and director
 * February 15 – Art Spiegelman, American cartoonist
 * February 19 – Clive Sinclair, English short-story writer
 * February 28 – Mike Figgis, English writer, director and composer
 * February 29
 * Hermione Lee, English biographer
 * Patricia A. McKillip, American fantasy and science fiction novel author
 * March 4 – James Ellroy, American crime fiction author
 * March 17 – William Gibson, American-born speculative novelist
 * March 28 – Iman Budhi Santosa, Indonesian poet
 * April 4 – Patricia A. McKillip, American science fiction, horror and fantasy author
 * April 21 – Clare Boylan, Irish novelist (died 2006)
 * April 28 – Terry Pratchett, English comic fantasy author (died 2015)
 * May 31 – Svetlana Alexievich, Belarusian writer of literary reportage, Nobel Prize in Literature recipient
 * June 14 – Laurence Yep, American author
 * June 16 – F. van Dixhoorn, Dutch poet
 * June 21 – Andrzej Sapkowski, Polish fantasy author
 * July 22 – Susan Eloise Hinton, American young-adult author
 * August 2 – Snoo Wilson, English playwright and screenwriter (died 2013)
 * August 8 – Miranda Seymour, English novelist and biographer
 * August 24 – Alexander McCall Smith, Scottish writer
 * August 28 – Vonda N. McIntyre, American science fiction writer (died 2019)
 * August 29 – Nick Darke, Cornish playwright (died 2005)
 * September 2 – Manfred Böckl, German novelist and writer of popular history
 * September 16 – Julia Donaldson, English author and children's writer
 * September 20 – George R. R. Martin (George Raymond Martin), American fantasy author
 * October 5 – Zoran Živković, Serbian author and academic
 * October 6 – Zakes Mda (Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda), South African novelist, poet and playwright
 * October 9 – Ciaran Carson, Northern Irish poet and novelist
 * October 17 – Robert Jordan (James Oliver Rigney, Jr), American fantasy author (died 2007)
 * October 18 – Ntozake Shange (Paulette L. Williams), African American playwright, poet and novelist (died 2018)
 * December 20 – Abdulrazak Gurnah, Zanzibar-born novelist, Nobel Prize in Literature recipient
 * unknown dates
 * Wolf Erlbruch, German children's book illustrator and writer
 * Ibrahim Kuni, Libyan novelist
 * Suzanne Robert, French Canadian novelist (died 2007)
 * Edward Rutherfurd (Francis Edward Wintle), English novelist

Deaths

 * January 2 – Vicente Huidobro, Chilean poet (b. 1893)
 * March 6 – Ross Lockridge Jr., American author (suicide, born 1914)
 * March 10 – Zelda Fitzgerald, American novelist (killed in fire, born 1900)
 * April 22 – Prosper Montagné, French chef and food author (born 1865)
 * May 5 – Sextil Pușcariu, Romanian linguist, philologist and journalist (heart failure, born 1877)
 * May 20 – Victor Ido, Dutch East Indian journalist, novelist and dramatist (born 1869)
 * May 22 – Claude McKay, Jamaican American writer (born 1889)
 * June 16 – Holbrook Jackson, English journalist, writer, publisher and bibliophile (born 1874)
 * June 21 – Alice Brown, American novelist, poet and dramatist (born 1857)
 * July 3 – Phelps Putnam, American poet (born 1894)
 * July 4 – Monteiro Lobato, Brazilian fiction writer, particularly for children (born 1882)
 * July 5 – Georges Bernanos, French novelist (born 1888)
 * July 21 – J.-H. Rosny jeune (Séraphin Justin François Boex), French science fiction writer (born 1859)
 * July 27 – Susan Glaspell, American dramatist and novelist (born 1876)
 * August 3 – Venetia Stanley, English correspondent (cancer, born 1887)
 * August 19 – Frederick Philip Grove, German-born Canadian novelist and essayist (born 1879)
 * August 25 – Gordon Bottomley, English poet, writer of verse drama (born 1874)
 * September 8 – Thomas Mofolo, Sotho novelist (born 1876)
 * September 9 – Lajos Bíró, Hungarian novelist, dramatist and screenwriter (born 1880)
 * September 20 – Husain Salaahuddin, Maldivian writer (born 1881)
 * October 12 – Alfred Kerr, German theatre critic (suicide, born 1867)
 * December 13 – Michael Roberts, English poet and critic (born 1902)
 * unknown date – Eraclie Sterian, Romanian science writer and playwright (born 1872)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Richard Armstrong, Sea Change
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Percy A. Scholes, The Great Dr Burney
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: William Pene du Bois, The Twenty-One Balloons
 * Nobel Prize for literature: Thomas Stearns Eliot
 * Premio Nadal: Sebastián Juan Arbó, Sobre las piedras grises
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
 * Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: James A. Michener – Tales of the South Pacific
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: W. H. Auden: The Age of Anxiety

title: 1948 in literature