text:
1935 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1935.

Events

 * January – The first published portions of Yasunari Kawabata's novel Snow Country (雪国, Yukiguni) appear as standalone stories in Japan.
 * January 6 – Clifford Odets becomes the first Method-trained playwright with his first produced play, the one-act Waiting for Lefty at the former Civic Repertory Theatre in New York City. This is followed by the equally political Awake and Sing! premiered on February 19 at the city's Belasco Theatre; Till the Day I Die on March 26 at the Longacre Theatre; and Paradise Lost opening on December 9 at the same location.
 * March 20 – The London publisher Boriswood pleads guilty and is fined in Manchester's Assize Court for publishing an "obscene" book, a 1934 cheap edition of James Hanley's 1931 novel Boy.
 * May 13 – T. E. Lawrence, having left the British Royal Air Force in March, has an accident with his Brough Superior motorcycle while returning to his cottage at Clouds Hill, England, after posting books to a friend, A. E. "Jock" Chambers, and sending a telegram inviting the novelist Henry Williamson to lunch. He dies six days later. On July 29 his Seven Pillars of Wisdom is first published in an edition for general circulation.
 * June 15
 * British poet W. H. Auden contracts a marriage of convenience with exiled German anti-Nazi actress and writer Erika Mann, homosexual like him.
 * T. S. Eliot's verse drama Murder in the Cathedral is premièred at Canterbury Cathedral, the setting for the action of the play.
 * July 30 – Allen Lane founds Penguin Books, as the first mass-market paperbacks in Britain.
 * August – Open-air reading room established by New York Public Library in Bryant Park.
 * August 27 – The Federal Theatre Project is established in the United States.
 * September 5 – Michael Joseph is founded as a publisher in London.
 * November 2 – The Scottish-born thriller writer John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, is sworn in as Governor General of Canada.
 * November 7 – The British and Foreign Blind Association introduces a library of talking books for the visually impaired.
 * November 26 – Scrooge, the first feature-length talking film version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) is released in Britain. Sir Seymour Hicks reprises the title rôle, which he has performed for decades on stage.
 * unknown dates
 * The library journal Die Bucherei in Nazi Germany publishes guidelines for books to be removed from library shelves and destroyed: all those by Jewish authors, Marxist and pacifist literature, and anything critical of the state.
 * The first published edition of the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom (Les 120 journées de Sodome), written in 1785, in a scholarly edition as a literary text, is completed.
 * Fredric Warburg and Roger Senhouse retrieve the London publishers Martin Secker from receivership, as Secker & Warburg.

Fiction

 * Nelson Algren – Somebody in Boots
 * Mulk Raj Anand – Untouchable
 * Enid Bagnold – National Velvet
 * Ion Biberi – Proces (Trial)
 * Jorge Luis Borges – A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia, collected short stories)
 * Elizabeth Bowen – The House in Paris
 * Pearl S. Buck – A House Divided
 * John Bude – The Lake District Murder
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan and the Leopard Men
 * Dino Buzzati – Il segreto del Bosco Vecchio
 * Erskine Caldwell – Journeyman
 * Morley Callaghan – They Shall Inherit the Earth
 * Elias Canetti – Die Blendung
 * John Dickson Carr
 * Death-Watch
 * The Hollow Man (also The Three Coffins)
 * The Red Widow Murders (as Carter Dickson)
 * The Unicorn Murders (as Carter Dickson)
 * Agatha Christie
 * Three Act Tragedy
 * Death in the Clouds
 * Solomon Cleaver – Jean Val Jean
 * Robert P. Tristram Coffin – Red Sky in the Morning
 * J.J. Connington – In Whose Dim Shadow
 * Jack Conroy – A World to Win
 * Freeman Wills Crofts – Crime at Guildford
 * A. J. Cronin
 * Country Doctor (novella)
 * The Stars Look Down
 * H. L. Davis – Honey in the Horn
 * Cecil Day-Lewis – A Question of Proof
 * Franklin W. Dixon – The Hidden Harbor Mystery
 * Lawrence Durrell – Pied Piper of Lovers
 * E. R. Eddison – Mistress of Mistresses
 * Susan Ertz
 * Now We Set Out
 * Woman Alive, But Now Dead
 * James T. Farrell – Studs Lonigan – A Trilogy
 * Rachel Field – Time Out of Mind
 * Charles G. Finney – The Circus of Dr. Lao
 * F. Scott Fitzgerald – Taps at Reveille
 * Anthony Gilbert – The Man Who Was Too Clever
 * Graham Greene – England Made Me
 * George Wylie Henderson – Ollie Miss
 * Harold Heslop – Last Cage Down
 * Georgette Heyer
 * Death in the Stocks
 * Regency Buck
 * Christopher Isherwood – Mr Norris Changes Trains
 * Pamela Hansford Johnson – This Bed Thy Centre
 * Anna Kavan (writing as Helen Ferguson) – A Stranger Still
 * Sinclair Lewis – It Can't Happen Here
 * E. C. R. Lorac
 * Death of an Author
 * The Organ Speaks
 * August Mälk – Õitsev Meri (The Flowering Sea)
 * André Malraux – Le Temps du mépris
 * Ngaio Marsh
 * Enter a Murderer
 * The Nursing Home Murder
 * Gladys Mitchell – The Devil at Saxon Wall
 * Naomi Mitchison – We Have Been Warned
 * Alberto Moravia – Le ambizioni sbagliate
 * R. K. Narayan – Swami and Friends
 * John O'Hara
 * BUtterfield 8
 * The Doctor's Son and Other Stories
 * George Orwell – A Clergyman's Daughter
 * N. Porsenna – Se-aprind făcliile (They're Lighting Torches)
 * Ellery Queen
 * The Spanish Cape Mystery
 * The Lamp of God
 * Charles Ferdinand Ramuz – When the Mountain Fell
 * Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings – Golden Apples
 * Ernest Raymond – We, The Accused
 * Herbert Read – The Green Child
 * George Santayana – The Last Puritan
 * Dorothy L. Sayers – Gaudy Night
 * Monica Shannon – Dobry
 * Howard Spring – Rachel Rosing
 * Eleanor Smith – Tzigane
 * John Steinbeck – Tortilla Flat
 * Rex Stout – The League of Frightened Men
 * Cecil Street
 * The Corpse in the Car
 * Hendon's First Case
 * Mystery at Olympia
 * Alan Sullivan – The Great Divide
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor
 * Deathblow Hill
 * The Tinkling Symbol
 * A. A. Thomson – The Exquisite Burden
 * B. Traven – The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
 * Violet Trefusis – Broderie Anglaise
 * S. S. Van Dine – The Garden Murder Case
 * I. C. Vissarion – Învietorul de morți (Raiser of the Dead)
 * Henry Wade – Heir Presumptive
 * Stanley G. Weinbaum – The Lotus Eaters
 * Dennis Wheatley – The Eunuch of Stamboul
 * Ethel Lina White – Wax
 * P. G. Wodehouse – Blandings Castle and Elsewhere
 * Xiao Hong (蕭紅) – The Field of Life and Death (生死场, Shēng sǐ chǎng)
 * Eiji Yoshikawa (吉川 英治) – Musashi (宮本武蔵, Miyamoto Musashi)
 * Francis Brett Young – White Ladies
 * Yumeno Kyūsaku (夢野 久作) – Dogra Magra (ドグラマグラ)

Children and young people

 * Enid Bagnold – National Velvet
 * Louise Andrews Kent – He went with Marco Polo: A Story of Venice and Cathay (first of seven in "He went with" series)
 * John Masefield – The Box of Delights
 * Constantin S. Nicolăescu-Plopșor – Ceaùr. Povești oltenești (Woozy. Oltenian Stories)
 * Kate Seredy – The Good Master
 * Laura Ingalls Wilder – Little House on the Prairie

Drama

 * J. R. Ackerley – The Prisoners of War
 * Maxwell Anderson – Winterset
 * T. S. Eliot – Murder in the Cathedral
 * Federico García Lorca – Doña Rosita the Spinster (Doña Rosita la soltera)
 * Norman Ginsbury – Viceroy Sarah
 * Jean Giraudoux – The Trojan War Will Not Take Place (La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu)
 * Walter C. Hackett – Espionage
 * N.C. Hunter – All Rights Reserved
 * Ronald Jeans – The Composite Man
 * Anthony Kimmins – Chase the Ace
 * Archibald MacLeish – Panic
 * Bernard Merivale – The Unguarded Hour
 * Clifford Odets
 * Waiting for Lefty
 * Awake and Sing!
 * Lawrence Riley – Personal Appearance
 * Dodie Smith – Call It a Day
 * John Van Druten – Most of the Game
 * Emlyn Williams – Night Must Fall

Poetry

 * See 1935 in poetry

Non-fiction

 * Julian Bell, ed. – We Did Not Fight: 1914–18 Experiences of War Resisters
 * M. C. Bradbrook – Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy
 * William Henry Chamberlin – Russia's Iron Age
 * Manuel Chaves Nogales – Juan Belmonte, matador de toros: su vida y sus hazañas (translated as Juan Belmonte, killer of bulls)
 * George Dangerfield – The Strange Death of Liberal England
 * Clarence Day – Life with Father
 * Dion Fortune – The Mystical Qabalah
 * Ernest Hemingway – Green Hills of Africa
 * Anne Morrow Lindbergh – North to the Orient
 * Merkantilt biografisk leksikon
 * Polish Biographical Dictionary (Polski słownik biograficzny)
 * Iris Origo – Allegra (biography of Byron's daughter)
 * Caroline Spurgeon – Shakespeare's Imagery, and what it tells us
 * Nigel Tranter – The Fortalices and Early Mansions of Southern Scotland 1400–1650
 * J. Dover Wilson – What Happens in Hamlet
 * Thomas Wright – The Life of Charles Dickens

Births

 * January 2 – David McKee, English children's writer and illustrator (died 2022)
 * January 8 – Lewis H. Lapham, American publisher, founder of Lapham's Quarterly
 * January 14 – Labhshankar Thakar, Indian Gujarati language poet, playwright and story writer (died 2016)
 * January 18 – Jon Stallworthy, English poet and literary critic (died 2014)
 * January 27 – D. M. Thomas, English novelist, poet and translator
 * January 28 – David Lodge, English novelist and academic
 * January 30 – Richard Brautigan, American writer and poet (died 1984)
 * January 31 – Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎), Japanese novelist and essayist
 * February 18 – Janette Oke, Canadian author
 * February 22 – Danilo Kiš, Serbian novelist (died 1989)
 * February 23 – Tom Murphy, Irish playwright (died 2018)
 * March 4 – Stanisław Moskal, Polish scientist and writer (died 2019)
 * March 13
 * Kofi Awoonor, Ghanaian poet and writer (killed 2013)
 * David Nobbs, English comedy writer (died 2015)
 * March 23 – Barry Cryer, English comedy writer and performer (died 2022)
 * March 27 – Abelardo Castillo, Argentinian writer (died 2017)
 * March 31 – Judith Rossner, American novelist (died 2005)
 * April 4
 * Trevor Griffiths, English playwright and screenwriter (died 2024)
 * Michael Horovitz, German-born English poet and translator (died 2021)
 * April 6 – John Pepper Clark, Nigerian poet and playwright (died 2020)
 * April 14 – Erich von Däniken, Swiss writer on paranormal
 * April 15 – Alan Plater, English playwright and screenwriter (died 2010)
 * April 25 – Li Ao, Chinese-Taiwanese writer, social commentator, historian and independent politician (died 2018)
 * April 26 – Patricia Reilly Giff, American author and educator
 * May 1 – Julian Mitchell, English playwright and screenwriter
 * May 2 – Lynda Lee-Potter, English columnist (died 2004)
 * May 9 – Roger Hargreaves, English children's author and illustrator (died 1988)
 * May 29 – André Brink, South African novelist (died 2015)
 * June 2 – Carol Shields, American-born writer (died 2003)
 * June 4 – Shiao Yi, Taiwanese-American wuxia novelist (d. 2018)
 * June 7 – Harry Crews, American author and playwright (died 2012)
 * June 24 – Pete Hamill, American journalist and author (died 2020)
 * June 25
 * Corinne Chevallier, Algerian historian and novelist
 * Larry Kramer, American playwright, author, film producer and LGBT activist (died 2020).
 * Fran Ross, African-American satirist (died 1985)
 * June 30 – Peter Achinstein, American philosopher
 * July 11 – Günther von Lojewski, German journalist, television presenter and author (died 2023)
 * July 13 – Earl Lovelace, Trinidadian novelist and playwright
 * August 1 – Mohinder Pratap Chand, Urdu poet, writer and language advocate (died 2020)
 * August 15 – Régine Deforges, French dramatist, novelist and publisher (died 2014)
 * August 21 – Yuri Entin, Soviet and Russian poet, lyricist and playwright
 * August 22 – E. Annie Proulx, American novelist
 * September 5 – Ward Just, American novelist (died 2019)
 * September 10 – Mary Oliver, American poet (died 2019)
 * September 16 – Esther Vilar, German-Argentinian writer
 * September 17 – Ken Kesey, American novelist (died 2001)
 * October 7 – Thomas Keneally, Australian novelist and non-fiction writer
 * November 1 – Edward Said, Palestinian-American literary critic (died 2003)
 * November 7
 * Elvira Quintana, Spanish-Mexican actress, singer, and poet (died 1968)
 * Willibrordus S. Rendra, Indonesian dramatist, poet, activist, performer, actor and director (died 2009)
 * November 9 – Jerry Hopkins, American journalist and biographer (died 2018)
 * November 18
 * Sam Abrams, American poet
 * Rodney Hall, Australian author and poet
 * November 22 – Hugh C. Rae (Jessica Stirling, etc.), Scottish novelist (died 2014)
 * December 5 – Yevgeny Titarenko, Soviet writer (died 2018)
 * December 10 – Shūji Terayama (寺山 修司), Japanese avant-garde writer, film director and photographer (died 1983)
 * December 13
 * Eyvindur P. Eiríksson, Icelandic poet and novelist
 * Adélia Prado, Brazilian writer and poet
 * unknown date – Bahaa Taher, Egyptian writer

Deaths

 * February 7 – Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Scottish novelist (peritonitis, born 1901)
 * February 13
 * Ioan Bianu, Romanian librarian, bibliographer and linguist (uremia, born 1856 or 1857)
 * Vernon Lee, born Violet Paget, expatriate English writer (born 1856)
 * February 28 – Tsubouchi Shōyō (坪内 逍遥), Japanese writer (born 1859)
 * April 6 – Edwin Arlington Robinson, American poet (born 1869)
 * April 11 – Anna Katharine Green, American crime writer (born 1846)
 * April 16 – Panait Istrati, Romanian novelist, short story writer and political essayist (tuberculosis, born 1884)
 * May 19 – T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), English historian and memoirist (motorcycle accident, born 1888)
 * June 29 – Hayashi Fubo, Japanese novelist (born 1900)
 * July 17 – George William Russell, Irish nationalist, poet and artist (born 1867)
 * August 11 – Sir William Watson, English poet (born 1858)
 * August 17 – Charlotte Perkins Gilman, American novelist (born 1860)
 * August 30 – Henri Barbusse, French novelist and journalist (pneumonia, born 1873)
 * September 26 – Iván Persa, Hungarian Slovene writer and priest (born 1861)
 * September 29 – Winifred Holtby, English novelist (Bright's disease, born 1898)
 * October 11 – Steele Rudd, Australian short story writer (born 1868)
 * November 4 – Ella Loraine Dorsey, American author, journalist and translator (born 1853)
 * November 28
 * Mary R. Platt Hatch, American author (born 1848)
 * Louise Manning Hodgkins, American educator, author, editor (born 1846)

 * November 29 – Mary G. Charlton Edholm, American journalist and temperance reformer (born 1854)
 * November 30 – Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese poet, philosopher and critic (cirrhosis, born 1888)
 * December 14 – Stanley G. Weinbaum, American science-fiction author (born 1902)
 * December 17 – Lizette Woodworth Reese, American poet (born 1856)
 * December 21 – Kurt Tucholsky, German journalist and satirist (drug overdose, born 1890)
 * December 28 – Clarence Day, American writer (born 1874)

Awards

 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: L. H. Myers, The Root and the Flower
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: R. W. Chambers, Thomas More
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Monica Shannon, Dobry
 * Nobel Prize in literature: not awarded
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Zoë Akins, The Old Maid
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Audrey Wurdemann, Bright Ambush
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Josephine Winslow Johnson, Now in November

title: 1935 in literature


text:
1936 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1936.

Events

 * January 8 – Jewish booksellers throughout Nazi Germany are deprived of their Reich Publications Chamber membership cards, without which no one can sell books.
 * May – The Greek poet and Communist activist Yiannis Ritsos is inspired to write his poem Epitaphios by a photograph of a dead protester at a massive tobacco workers' demonstration in Thessaloniki. It is published soon after. In August, the right-wing dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas comes to power in Greece and copies are burned publicly at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens.
 * May 16–17 – About 30 left-wing writers of the Second Polish Republic gather at the Lviv Anti-Fascist Congress of Cultural Workers.
 * August 3 – George Heywood Hill establishes the Heywood Hill bookshop in London's Mayfair.
 * August 18 – The 38-year-old Spanish dramatist, Federico García Lorca, is arrested by Francoist militia during the White Terror and never seen alive again. His brother-in-law, Manuel Fernández-Montesinos, the leftist mayor of Granada, is shot on the same day. Lorca's play The House of Bernarda Alba (La casa de Bernarda Alba), completed on June 19, will not be performed until 1945.
 * November 6 – After United States publication in 1934, the U.K. authorities decide they will not prosecute or seize copies of James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses.
 * November 23 – Life magazine begins to appear as a weekly news magazine in the United States, under the management of Henry Luce.
 * unknown dates
 * The New Theatre, Sydney, in Australia, attempts to stage Clifford Odets' anti-Nazi drama Till the Day I Die; the German Consul General in the country complains to the Commonwealth Government and the play is banned; but the theatre stages the play in private premises.
 * The first lighthearted crime novel by Scottish-born university teacher of English literature J. I. M. Stewart, writing as Michael Innes, is published: Death at the President's Lodging, set in Oxford. It introduces his long-running character Detective Inspector John Appleby of Scotland Yard.
 * The Carnegie Medal for excellence in children's literature is inaugurated by the Library Association in the United Kingdom. The first winner is Arthur Ransome for Pigeon Post.

Fiction

 * Felipe Alfau – Locos: A Comedy of Gestures
 * Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana – Layar Terkembang (With Sails Unfurled)
 * Jorge Amado – Sea of Death (Mar Morto)
 * Eric Ambler – The Dark Frontier
 * Arturo Ambrogi – El Jetón
 * Nigel Balchin – Lightbody on Liberty
 * Djuna Barnes – Nightwood
 * Henry Bellamann – The Gray Man Walks
 * Stephen Vincent Benét – "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (short story, published in The Saturday Evening Post)
 * E. C. Bentley – Trent's Own Case
 * Georges Bernanos – The Diary of a Country Priest
 * Arna Bontemps – Black Thunder
 * Mary Borden - Action for Slander
 * Marjorie Bowen – The Poisoners
 * Carol Ryrie Brink – Caddie Woodlawn
 * John Bude – The Sussex Downs Murder
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan's Quest
 * James M. Cain – Double Indemnity
 * Morley Callaghan – Now that April's Here and Other Stories
 * Karel Čapek – War with the Newts (Válka s mloky)
 * John Dickson Carr
 * The Arabian Nights Murder
 * The Punch and Judy Murders (as by Carter Dickson)
 * Willa Cather – Not Under Forty
 * Mihail Celarianu – Femeia sângelui meu (The Woman in My Blood)
 * Louis-Ferdinand Céline – Death on the Installment Plan (Mort à crédit)
 * Peter Cheyney – This Man Is Dangerous
 * Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot novels
 * The A. B. C. Murders
 * Cards on the Table
 * Murder in Mesopotamia
 * Robert P. Tristram Coffin – John Dawn
 * Freeman Wills Crofts
 * The Loss of the Jane Vosper
 * Man Overboard!
 * Warwick Deeping – No Hero–This
 * Carmen de Icaza – Cristina Guzmán
 * Henry de Montherlant – Les Jeunes Filles (The Young Girls; first part of tetralogy)
 * John Dos Passos – The Big Money
 * William Pène du Bois – Otto at Sea
 * Daphne du Maurier – Jamaica Inn
 * Walter D. Edmonds – Drums Along the Mohawk
 * Mircea Eliade – Miss Christina (Domnișoara Christina)
 * William Faulkner – Absalom, Absalom!
 * Gilbert Frankau – Farewell Romance
 * Konstantine Gamsakhurdia – Stealing the Moon (მთვარის მოტაცება)
 * Anthony Gilbert – Murder by Experts
 * Jean Giono – Joy of Man's Desiring (Que ma joie demeure)
 * Maxim Gorky (posthumous) – The Life of Klim Samgin (the final fourth volume, unfinishes, translated as The Specter)
 * Graham Greene – A Gun for Sale
 * Walter Greenwood – Standing Room Only
 * Winifred Holtby – South Riding
 * Aldous Huxley – Eyeless in Gaza
 * Michael Innes – Death at the President's Lodging
 * C. L. R. James – Minty Alley
 * Mikheil Javakhishvili – A Woman's Burden (ქალის ტვირთი, Qalis tvirti)
 * Storm Jameson
 * None Turn Back (The Mirror in Darkness III)
 * In the Second Year
 * Arthur Joseph – Dark Metropolis
 * Margaret Kennedy – Together and Apart
 * Leo Kiacheli – Gvadi Bigva
 * Jonathan Latimer – The Lady in the Morgue
 * Jean de La Varende – Leather-Nose (Nez-de-Cuir)
 * Alexander Lernet-Holenia – Baron Bagge (Der Baron Bagge)
 * Haniel Long – Interlinear to Cabeza de Vaca
 * E. C. R. Lorac
 * Crime Counter Crime
 * A Pall for a Painter
 * Post After Post-Mortem
 * Andrew Lytle – The Long Night
 * Compton Mackenzie – Figure of Eight
 * Klaus Mann – Mephisto
 * Ngaio Marsh – Death in Ecstasy
 * A. E. W. Mason – Fire Over England
 * Alan Melville – Death of Anton
 * Henry Miller – Black Spring
 * Gladys Mitchell – Dead Men's Morris
 * Margaret Mitchell – Gone with the Wind
 * Naomi Mitchison – The Fourth Pig
 * John A. Moroso – Nobody's Buddy
 * Anaïs Nin – House of Incest
 * George Orwell – Keep the Aspidistra Flying
 * John Cowper Powys – Maiden Castle
 * Premchand – Godaan (गोदान, Gōdān, The Gift of a Cow)
 * Ellery Queen – Halfway House
 * Ayn Rand – We the Living
 * Erich Maria Remarque – Three Comrades (Drei Kameraden)
 * Kate Roberts – Traed mewn cyffion (Feet in the Stocks)
 * Rafael Sabatini – The Fortunes of Captain Blood
 * Sim Hun – Sangnoksu ("Evergreen (Tree)"; serialization concludes and book publication)
 * Israel Joshua Singer – The Brothers Ashkenazi (Di brider Ashkenazy, in book format)
 * Eleanor Smith – Portrait of a Lady
 * John Steinbeck – In Dubious Battle
 * Rex Stout – The Rubber Band
 * Cecil Street
 * Death at Breakfast
 * Death in the Tunnel
 * In Face of the Verdict
 * Murder of a Chemist
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor
 * The Crimson Patch
 * Out of Order
 * Frank Thiess – Tsushima
 * Aleksey Tolstoy – «Золотой ключик, или Приключения Буратино» (The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino)
 * S. S. Van Dine – The Kidnap Murder Case
 * Vũ Trọng Phụng – Số đỏ (Dumb Luck)
 * Henry Wade – Bury Him Darkly
 * Sylvia Townsend Warner – Summer Will Show
 * Carolyn Wells – Murder in the Bookshop
 * Ethel Lina White – The Wheel Spins (later The Lady Vanishes)
 * Francis Brett Young – Far Forest

Children and young people

 * Edward Ardizzone – Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain (Journal d'un curé de campagne)
 * M. E. Atkinson – August Adventure
 * Carol Ryrie Brink – Caddie Woodlawn
 * Joanna Cannan – A Pony for Jean (first of nine Pony series books)
 * Noel Langley – The Tale of the Land of Green Ginger
 * Munro Leaf – The Story of Ferdinand
 * John A. Moroso – Nobody's Buddy
 * Carola Oman – Ferry the Fearless
 * Arthur Ransome – Pigeon Post
 * Ruth Sawyer – Roller Skates
 * Lester Basil Sinclair (as John Mystery) – Why Cows Moo
 * Noel Streatfeild – Ballet Shoes (illustrated by Ruth Gervis)
 * Barbara Euphan Todd – Worzel Gummidge (first in the Worzel Gummidge series of eleven books)
 * Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy – The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Buratino

Drama

 * Pralhad Keshav Atre
 * Lagnāchi Bedi
 * Udyāchā Sansār
 * W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood – The Ascent of F6 (published English edition)
 * S. N. Behrman – End of Summer
 * Charles Bennett – Page From a Diary
 * Bertolt Brecht – Round Heads and Pointed Heads (Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe)
 * Noël Coward
 * Tonight at 8.30
 * Present Laughter
 * Mazo de la Roche and Nancy Price – Whiteoaks
 * Henry de Montherlant – Pasiphaé
 * Harley Granville-Barker – Waste (first public performance, 1927 version; originally written 1906)
 * Ian Hay – The Frog
 * George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart – You Can't Take It with You
 * Sinclair Lewis and John C. Moffitt – It Can't Happen Here (dramatisation)
 * Federico García Lorca – The House of Bernarda Alba (La casa de Bernarda Alba; written)
 * Clare Boothe Luce – The Women
 * Barré Lyndon – The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse
 * J. B. Priestley – Bees on the Boat Deck
 * Terence Rattigan – French Without Tears
 * Dorothy L. Sayers and Muriel St. Clare Byrne – Busman's Honeymoon: A Detective Comedy in Three Acts
 * Irwin Shaw – Bury the Dead
 * George Shiels
 * The Jailbird
 * The Passing Day
 * Ödön von Horváth
 * Don Juan kommt aus dem Krieg (Don Juan Comes Back From the War)
 * Figaro läßt sich scheiden (Figaro Gets a Divorce)

Poetry

 * W. H. Auden – Look, Stranger!
 * Gottfried Benn – Ausgewählte Gedichte (Selected Poems)
 * T. S. Eliot – Collected Poems 1909–35 including "Burnt Norton", first of the Four Quartets
 * Patrick Kavanagh – Ploughman, and Other Poems
 * Michael Roberts (ed.) – The Faber Book of Modern Verse
 * Dylan Thomas – Twenty-five Poems
 * W. B. Yeats (ed.) – The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892–1935

Non-fiction

 * A. J. Ayer – Language, Truth, and Logic
 * John Dickson Carr – The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey
 * Victor Hugo Green – The Negro Motorist Green Book (1st edn)
 * Graham Greene – Journey Without Maps
 * Richard Foster Jones – Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Background of The Battle of the Books
 * Carl Gustav Jung – The Idea of Redemption in Alchemy (Die Erlösungsvorstellungen in der Alchemie)
 * John Maynard Keynes – The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
 * Osbert Lancaster – Progress at Pelvis Bay
 * F. R. Leavis – Revaluation: Tradition and Development in English Poetry
 * C. S. Lewis – The Allegory of Love
 * Karl Mannheim – Ideology and Utopia
 * Edwin Muir – Scott and Scotland
 * George Orwell – "Bookshop Memories"
 * Olavi Paavolainen – Kolmannen valtakunnan vieraana (Guest of the Third Reich)
 * J. R. R. Tolkien – "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (version of a lecture)

Births

 * January 5 – Florence King, American writer (died 2016)
 * January 10 – Stephen E. Ambrose, American historian (died 2002)
 * January 28 – Ismail Kadare, Albanian novelist and poet (died 2024)
 * February 12 – Shawkat Ali, Bangladeshi writer (died 2018)
 * February 18 – Jean M. Auel, American historical novelist
 * March 1 – Jean-René Huguenin, French novelist and literary critic (died in 1962)
 * March 7 – Georges Perec, French novelist, filmmaker and essayist (died 1982)
 * March 28
 * Peter Mayer, English-born publisher (died 2018)
 * Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian writer, politician, journalist and essayist, Nobel Prize laureate
 * March 31 – Marge Piercy, American poet and activist
 * April 30 – Viktor Likhonosov, Soviet Russian writer and editor
 * May 10 – Anthea Bell, English translator (died 2018)
 * May 23 – Ian Kennedy Martin, English scriptwriter and novelist
 * May 27 – Ivo Brešan, Croatian playwright, novelist, screenwriter and satirist (died 2016)
 * June 3
 * Duff Hart-Davis, English biographer and journalist
 * Larry McMurtry, American novelist, essayist and screenwriter (died 2021)
 * June 9 – Nell Dunn, English playwright and author
 * June 18 – Dick Wimmer, American novelist (died 2011)
 * June 23 – Richard Bach, American novelist and non-fiction writer
 * June 24 – J. H. Prynne, English poet
 * June 29 – David Rudkin, English playwright
 * July 5 – Valerie Flint, English medieval historian (died 2009)
 * July 6 – Abidullah Ghazi, Indian-American author, educator and poet
 * July 22 – Tom Robbins, American novelist
 * August 8 – Jan Pieńkowski, Polish-born British children's writer and illustrator (died 2022)
 * August 24 – A. S. Byatt, English novelist (died 2023)
 * September 1 – Roderick Thorp, American novelist (died 1999)
 * September 2 – Károly Krajczár, Hungarian Slovene teacher, writer and collector (died 2018)
 * September 20 – Andrew Davies, Welsh novelist and screenwriter
 * September 26 – Victor Watson, English children's writer and academic
 * October 1 – Kailayar Sellanainar Sivakumaran, Sri Lankan writer, art and literary critic, journalist and radio and TV personality
 * October 5 – Václav Havel, Czech dramatist and first president of Czech Republic (died 2011)
 * November 4 – C. K. Williams, American poet (died 2015)
 * November 17 – John Wells, English satirical writer and actor (died 1998)
 * November 18 – Suzette Haden Elgin, American science fiction writer (died 2015)
 * November 20 – Don DeLillo, American novelist
 * November 25 – William McIlvanney, Scottish novelist, short story writer and poet (died 2015)
 * November 27 – Dahlia Ravikovitch, Israeli poet (died 2005)
 * December 1 – Ma Văn Kháng, Vietnamese writer
 * December 2 – Hebe Uhart, Argentine writer (died 2018)
 * December 5
 * James Lee Burke, American writer
 * Lewis Nkosi, Zulu writer (died 2010)
 * December 11 – Ingvar Moe, Norwegian poet, novelist and children's writer (died 1993)
 * December 17 – Frank Martinus Arion, Curaçaoan novelist and poet (died 2015)

Deaths

 * January 4 – James Churchward, British writer (born 1851)
 * January 5 – Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Spanish dramatist and novelist (born 1866)
 * January 17 – Mateiu Caragiale, Romanian novelist and poet (stroke, born 1885)
 * January 18 – Rudyard Kipling, English writer and Nobel laureate (born 1865)
 * February 7 – Elizabeth Robins Pennell, American biographer and critic based in London (born 1855)
 * February 8 – Rahel Sanzara, German dancer, actress and novelist (cancer, born 1894)
 * February 23 – Lidia Veselitskaya (V. Mikulich), Russian novelist, memoirist and translator (born 1857)
 * March 1 – Mikhail Kuzmin, Russian poet, musician and novelist (born 1872)
 * March 9 – A. de Herz, Romanian playwright and journalist (hemoptysis, born 1887)
 * March 16 – Marguerite Durand, French actress and journalist (born 1864)
 * April 30 – A. E. Housman, English poet (born 1859)
 * June 11 – Robert E. Howard, American fantasy writer (suicide, born 1906)
 * June 12:
 * M. R. James, English ghost story writer and scholar (born 1862)
 * Karl Kraus, Austrian writer and journalist (born 1874)
 * June 14 – G. K. Chesterton, English novelist, poet and Catholic apologist (born 1874)
 * June 18 – Maxim Gorky, Russian dramatist (born 1868)
 * July 25 – Donald Maxwell, English travel writer and illustrator (born 1877)
 * July 26 – F. J. Harvey Darton English children's literature historian and publisher (born 1878)
 * August 8 – Mourning Dove, Native American writer (born 1884)
 * August 15 – Grazia Deledda, Sardinian-born novelist and Nobel laureate (born 1871)
 * August 19 – Federico García Lorca, Spanish dramatist and poet (shot, born 1898)
 * August 26 – Juliette Adam, French author (born 1836)
 * October 5 – J. Slauerhoff, Dutch poet and novelist (born 1898)
 * October 9 – Harriette A. Keyser, American industrial reformer (born 1841)
 * November 12 – Stefan Grabiński, Polish horror writer (born 1887)
 * December – Emma Sheridan Fry, American actor, playwright, and drama teacher (born 1864)
 * December 10 – Luigi Pirandello, Italian dramatist and novelist (born 1867)
 * December 24 – Frances Garnet Wolseley, 2nd Viscountess Wolseley, English horticulturist and garden writer (born 1872)
 * December 27 – Kristína Royová, Slovak novelist, religious writer and poet (born 1860)
 * December 28 – John Cornford, English poet (killed in action, born 1915)
 * December 31 – Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish novelist, poet and scholar (born 1864)
 * date unknown – Bertha M. Wilson, American playwright, critic and actress (born 1874)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Arthur Ransome, Pigeon Post
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Winifred Holtby, South Riding
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Edward Sackville West, A Flame in Sunlight: The Life and Work of Thomas de Quincey
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Carol Ryrie Brink, Caddie Woodlawn
 * Nobel Prize in literature: Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
 * Prix Goncourt: Maxence Van Der Meersch, L'Empreinte de Dieu
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, Idiot's Delight
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert P. Tristram Coffin, Strange Holiness
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Harold L. Davis, Honey in the Horn

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

title: 1936 in literature


text:
1937 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1937.

Events

 * January 9 – The first issue of Look magazine goes on sale in the United States.
 * January 19 – BBC Television broadcasts The Underground Murder Mystery by J. Bissell Thomas from London, the first play to be written for television.
 * February 6 – John Steinbeck's novella of the Great Depression, Of Mice and Men, appears in the United States.
 * April – The Irish writers Elizabeth Bowen and Seán Ó Faoláin first meet, in London.
 * May 14 – BBC Television broadcasts a 30-minute excerpt of Twelfth Night, the first known television broadcast of a Shakespeare piece. The cast includes Peggy Ashcroft and Greer Garson.
 * May 21 – Penguin Books in the U.K. launches Pelican Books, a sixpenny paperback non-fiction imprint, with a two-volume edition of George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.
 * June
 * The British science fiction magazine Tales of Wonder first appears.
 * John Cowper Powys visits Sycharth, birthplace of Owain Glyndŵr, which inspires his 1940 novel Owen Glendower.
 * June 30 – The New England Quarterly prints poems by a colonial American pastor, Edward Taylor (died 1729), discovered by Thomas H. Johnson.
 * Summer – American-born writer Thomas Quinn Curtiss meets German-born novelist Klaus Mann in Europe and they start a relationship.
 * July
 * Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany is established around the Goethe Oak.
 * Rex Ingamells and other poets initiate the Jindyworobak Movement in Australian literature, in the magazine Venture.
 * The American academic librarian Randolph Greenfield Adams writes a controversial Library Quarterly essay, "Librarians as Enemies of Books", complaining of librarians downgrading books and scholarship in favor of other tasks.
 * July 4 – The Lost Colony a historical drama by Paul Green, is first performed at an outdoor theater in the place where it is set: Roanoke Island, North Carolina.
 * July 31 – Stephen Vincent Benét's post-apocalyptic short story By the Waters of Babylon, inspired by April's Bombing of Guernica, is published in the U.S. The Saturday Evening Post as "The Place of the Gods".
 * September 10 – The Soviet playwright Sergei Tretyakov commits suicide while under sentence of death at Butyrka prison in Moscow as part of the Great Purge.
 * September 21 – J. R. R. Tolkien's juvenile fantasy novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is published in England by George Allen & Unwin on the recommendation of young Rayner Unwin.
 * September 29 – The French playwright Antonin Artaud is expelled from Ireland.
 * October 6 – The fictional Mrs. Miniver appears in a column on domestic life by Jan Struther for The Times, London.
 * November 11 (Armistice Day)
 * BBC Television broadcasts Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff, 1928, set on the Western Front (World War I) in 1918, as the first full-length television adaptation of a stage play. Reginald Tate plays the lead, having long performed it in the theater.
 * Caesar, Orson Welles's modern-dress bare-stage adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, premieres as the first production of the Mercury Theatre in New York City.
 * December 21 – Dr. Seuss's first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, is published by Vanguard Press.
 * unknown dates
 * The National Library of Iran is inaugurated in Tehran.
 * The future novelist Angus Wilson becomes a book cataloguer at the British Museum Library in London.

Fiction

 * Felix Aderca – Orașele înecate (Sunken Cities)
 * Eric Ambler – Uncommon Danger
 * Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay – Chander Pahar (চাঁদের পাহড়, Mountain of the Moon)
 * Vicki Baum – Love and Death in Bali (Liebe und Tod auf Bali)
 * Anthony Berkeley – Trial and Error
 * Georges Bernanos – Mouchette
 * Ion Biberi – Oameni în ceață (People in the Fog)
 * Phyllis Bottome – The Mortal Storm
 * John Bude – The Cheltenham Square Murder
 * Morley Callaghan – More Joy in Heaven
 * John Dickson Carr (as Carter Dickson) – The Ten Teacups
 * Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot stories
 * Death on the Nile
 * Dumb Witness
 * Murder in the Mews
 * Stuart Cloete – Turning Wheels
 * J.J. Connington – A Minor Operation
 * Murray Constantine – Swastika Night
 * Freeman Wills Crofts – Found Floating
 * A. J. Cronin – The Citadel
 * James Curtis – There Ain't No Justice
 * Ludovic Dauș – O jumătate de om (Half a Man)
 * Cecil Day-Lewis – There's Trouble Brewing
 * Isak Dinesen – Out of Africa
 * Pierre Drieu La Rochelle – Rêveuse bourgeoisie
 * Lawrence Durrell (as Charles Norden) – Panic Spring
 * Hans Fallada – Wolf Among Wolves (Wolf unter Wölfen)
 * Max Frisch – An Answer from the Silence (Antwort aus der Stille)
 * Zona Gale – Light Woman
 * Anthony Gilbert
 * The Man Who Wasn't There
 * Murder Has No Tongue
 * Witold Gombrowicz – Ferdydurke
 * Sadegh Hedayat – The Blind Owl (بوف کور, Boof-e koor)
 * Ernest Hemingway – To Have and Have Not
 * Robert Hichens – Daniel Airlie
 * Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitlock – The Far-Distant Oxus
 * Zora Neale Hurston – Their Eyes Were Watching God
 * Michael Innes – Hamlet, Revenge!
 * Margaret Irwin – The Stranger Prince
 * Franz Kafka (posthumously translated by Willa and Edwin Muir) – The Trial (first English translation of Der Process)
 * Irmgard Keun – After Midnight (Nach Mitternacht)
 * Kalki Krishnamurthy – Kalvaninn Kaadhali
 * Halldór Laxness – Ljós heimsins (The Light of the World) – Part I, Heimsljós (World Light)
 * Alexander Lernet-Holenia
 * Der Mann im Hut
 * Mona Lisa
 * Meyer Levin – The Old Bunch
 * E. C. R. Lorac
 * Bats in the Belfry
 * These Names Make Clues
 * Ngaio Marsh – Vintage Murder
 * A. E. W. Mason – The Drum
 * Cameron McCabe – The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor
 * Compton Mackenzie – The East Wind of Love (first in The Four Winds of Love series of six books)
 * W. Somerset Maugham – Theatre
 * Oscar Millard – Uncensored
 * Gladys Mitchell – Come Away, Death
 * R. K. Narayan – The Bachelor of Arts
 * Elliot Paul – Life and Death of a Spanish Town
 * Robert Prechtl – Titanic
 * Ellery Queen – The Door Between
 * "Kurban Said" – Ali and Nino (Ali und Nino)
 * Ruth Sawyer – Roller Skates
 * Dorothy L. Sayers – Busman's Honeymoon
 * Margery Sharp – The Nutmeg Tree
 * Bruno Schulz – Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą)
 * Naoya Shiga (志賀 直哉) – A Dark Night's Passing (暗夜行路, An'ya Kōro)
 * "Siburapha" – Behind the Painting (ข้างหลังภาพ, Khang Lang Phap)
 * Olaf Stapledon – Star Maker
 * John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
 * Rex Stout – The Red Box
 * Cecil Street
 * Death at the Club
 * Death in the Hopfields
 * Death on the Board
 * Murder in Crown Passage
 * Proceed with Caution
 * Antal Szerb – Journey by Moonlight (Utas és holdvilág)
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor
 * Figure Away
 * Octagon House
 * Beginning with a Bash (as by Alice Tilton)
 * Henry Wade – The High Sheriff
 * Mika Waltari – A Stranger Came to the Farm (Vieras mies tuli taloon)
 * Ethel Lina White – The Elephant Never Forgets
 * Charles Williams – Descent into Hell
 * Virginia Woolf – The Years
 * Francis Brett Young
 * Portrait of a Village
 * They Seek a Country

Children and young people

 * Enid Blyton – The Adventures of the Wishing-Chair
 * C. S. Forester – The Happy Return (also as Beat to Quarters)
 * Eve Garnett – The Family from One End Street
 * Hergé – The Broken Ear (L'Oreille cassée)
 * Kornel Makuszyński – Argument About Basia (Awantura o Basię)
 * Carola Oman – Robin Hood
 * Arthur Ransome – We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea
 * Kate Seredy – The White Stag
 * Dr. Seuss – And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
 * J. R. R. Tolkien – The Hobbit
 * Laura Ingalls Wilder – On the Banks of Plum Creek
 * Henry Winterfeld (as Manfred Michael) – Timpetill – Die Stadt ohne Eltern (Timpetill – Parentless City, translated 1963 as Trouble at Timpetill)

Drama

 * Bertolt Brecht with Margarete Steffin – Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar (adapted from J. M. Synge's Señora Carrar's Rifles)
 * Karel Čapek – The White Disease (Bílá nemoc)
 * Paul Vincent Carroll – Shadow and Substance
 * Jeffrey Dell – Blondie White
 * Reginald Denham and Edward Percy Smith – The Last Straw
 * Ian Hay – The Gusher
 * Margaret Kennedy – Autumn
 * Arthur Kober – "Having Wonderful Time"
 * Richard Llewellyn – Poison Pen
 * W.P. Lipscomb – Thank You, Mr. Pepys!
 * Robert McLellan – Jamie the Saxt
 * Robert Morley – Goodness, How Sad
 * J. B. Priestley – Time and the Conways
 * Walter Charles Roberts – Red Harvest
 * Gerald Savory – George and Margaret
 * Dodie Smith – Bonnet Over the Windmill
 * John Van Druten – Gertie Maude
 * Louis Verneuil – The Train for Venice
 * Hella Wuolijoki writing as Juhani Tervapää – Juurakon Hulda
 * John Ferguson, editor – Seven Famous One-Act Plays (published)

Poetry

 * David Jones – In Parenthesis (part prose)
 * Isaac Rosenberg (killed in action 1918) – Collected Works

Non-fiction

 * Hilaire Belloc – The Crusades: the World's Debate
 * Alf K. Berle and L. Sprague de Camp – Inventions and Their Management
 * Robert Byron – The Road to Oxiana
 * Jean Giono – Les Vraies Richesses
 * Napoleon Hill – Think and Grow Rich
 * Carl Jung – Dream Symbols of the Individuation Process
 * Walter Lippmann – The Good Society
 * John Neal – American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood's Magazine (1824-1825) (edited by Fred Lewis Pattee)
 * Manuel Chaves Nogales – A sangre y fuego: Héroes, bestias y mártires de España (Fire and sword: heroes, beasts and martyrs of Spain)
 * George Orwell – The Road to Wigan Pier
 * Eric Partridge – A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English
 * N. Porsenna – Regenerarea neamului românesc (Regeneration of the Romanian People)
 * A. L. Zissu – Logos, Israel, Biserica (Logos, Israel, The Church)

Births

 * January 1 – John Fuller, English poet
 * January 7 – Ian La Frenais, English television comedy writer
 * January 8 – Leon Forrest, African-American novelist and essayist (died 1997)
 * January 9 – Judith Krantz, American novelist (died 2019)
 * January 13 – Jean D'Costa, Jamaican children's novelist
 * January 14 – J. Bernlef, born Hendrik Jan Marsman, Dutch poet, novelist and translator (died 2012)
 * January 22 – Joseph Wambaugh, American mystery novelist and non-fiction writer
 * January 23 – Juan Radrigán, Chilean playwright (died 2016)
 * February 11 – Maryse Condé, Guadeloupe historical fiction writer
 * February 20 – George Leonardos, Greek journalist and novelist
 * February 21 – Jilly Cooper, English novelist and journalist
 * February 27 – Peter Hamm, German poet, author, journalist, editor and literary critic (died 2019)
 * March 14 – Jan Karon (Janice Wilson), American novelist and children's writer
 * March 15 – Valentin Rasputin, Russian writer (died 2015)
 * March 20 - Lois Lowry, American children's and young-adult writer
 * April 10 – Bella Akhmadulina, Russian poet (died 2010)
 * April 29 – Jill Paton Walsh (Gillian Bliss), English novelist (died 2020)
 * May 8 – Thomas Pynchon, American novelist
 * May 13
 * Roch Carrier, Canadian novelist and short-story writer
 * Roger Zelazny, American writer of fantasy and science fiction (died 1995)
 * June 1 – Colleen McCullough, Australian novelist (died 2015)
 * June 16 – Erich Segal, American novelist (died 2010)
 * July 3 – Tom Stoppard (Tomáš Straussler), Czech-born English dramatist
 * July 6 – Bessie Head, South African-born Botswanan fiction writer (died 1986)
 * August 3 – Peter van Gestel, Dutch writer (died 2019)
 * August 5 – Carla Lane (Romana Barrack), English comedy writer (died 2016)
 * August 19
 * Richard Ingrams, English editor
 * Alexander Vampilov, Russian dramatist (drowned 1972)
 * September 5 – Dick Clement, English television comedy writer
 * October 4 – Jackie Collins, English-born romance novelist (died 2015)
 * October 7 – Christopher Booker, English journalist and editor (died 2019)
 * November 9
 * Roger McGough, English poet
 * S. Abdul Rahman, Tamil poet (died 2017)
 * November 17 – Peter Cook, English comedian, satirist and writer (died 1995)
 * December 11 – Jim Harrison, American novelist and poet (died 2016)
 * December 22
 * David F. Case, American novelist and short story writer
 * Charlotte Lamb (Sheila Holland, Sheila Coates, etc.), English romantic novelist (died 2000)
 * unknown date – Parijat (Bishnu Kumari Waiba), Nepalese novelist and poet (died 1993)

Deaths

 * January 5 – Alberto de Oliveira, Brazilian poet (born 1857)
 * January 11 – Emma A. Cranmer, American author, reformer, suffragist (born 1858)
 * February 19
 * Edward Garnett, English critic (born 1868)
 * Horacio Quiroga, Uruguayan short story writer (suicide, born 1878)
 * March 7 – Tomas O'Crohan, Irish Gaelic writer and fisherman (born 1856)
 * March 8 – Albert Verwey, Dutch poet (born 1865)
 * March 15 – H. P. Lovecraft, American horror writer (intestinal cancer, born 1890)
 * March 25 – John Drinkwater, English poet and dramatist (born 1882)
 * May 20 – Frederic Taber Cooper, American editor and writer (born 1864)
 * June 4 – W. F. Harvey, English horror-story writer (born 1885)
 * June 13 – William F. Lloyd, English-born Newfoundland journalist and prime minister (born 1864)
 * June 19 – J. M. Barrie, Scottish novelist and dramatist (born 1860)
 * June 22 – Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Malagasy poet (suicide, born 1901 or 1903)
 * July 18 – Julian Bell, English poet (killed in Spanish Civil War, born 1908)
 * July 29 — Ella Maria Ballou, American writer (born 1852)
 * August 11 – Edith Wharton (Edith Newbold Jones), American novelist and short-story writer (born 1862)
 * August 14 – H. C. McNeile (Sapper), English novelist and soldier (born 1888)
 * September 13 – Ellis Parker Butler, American humorist, novelist and essayist (born 1869)
 * October 13 – Dmitrii Milev, Soviet Moldovan shorty story writer and critic (shot, born 1887)
 * October 15 – Samuil Lehtțir, Soviet Moldovan poet, critic and literary theorist (shot, born 1901)
 * October 16 – Jean de Brunhoff, French children's author and illustrator (born 1899)
 * November 3 – Mykola Kulish, Ukrainian writer (shot with many other Ukrainian intellectuals at Sandarmokh, born 1892)
 * November 3 – Mykola Zerov, Ukrainian poet, translator, classical and literary scholar and critic (shot at Sandarmokh, born 1890)
 * November 3 – Valerian Pidmohylny, Ukrainian writer, (shot at Sandarmokh, born 1901)
 * November 3 – Hryhorii Epik, Ukrainian writer and journalist (shot at Sandarmokh, born 1901)
 * November 3 – Myroslav Irchan, Ukrainian storywriter and playwright (shot at Sandarmokh, born 1897)
 * October 17 – Florence Dugdale, English children's writer, widow of Thomas Hardy (cancer, born 1879)
 * October 22 – Chūya Nakahara (中原 中也), Japanese poet (meningitis, born 1907)
 * October 31 – Ralph Connor, Canadian novelist (born 1860)
 * c. December – Filimon Săteanu, Soviet Moldovan poet (shot, born 1907)
 * December 9 – Frances Nimmo Greene, American novelist, short story writer, children's writer, playwright (born 1867)
 * December 24 – Elizabeth Haldane, Scottish author, philosopher and suffragist (born 1862)
 * December 26
 * Ivor Gurney, English war poet and composer (tuberculosis, born 1890)
 * Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller, American novelist (born 1850)

 * December 29 – Don Marquis, American poet (stroke, born 1878)
 * unknown date — Clara H. Hazelrigg, American author, educator and reformer (born 1859)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Eve Garnett, The Family From One End Street
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Neil M. Gunn, Highland River
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Lord Eustace Percy, John Knox
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Ruth Sawyer, Roller Skates
 * Nobel Prize in literature: Roger Martin du Gard
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, You Can't Take It with You
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Frost, A Further Range
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
 * King's Gold Medal for Poetry: W. H. Auden

title: 1937 in literature


text:
1938 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1938.

Events

 * January
 * The John Dos Passos trilogy U.S.A. is published, containing his novels The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936).
 * Samuel Beckett is stabbed in the chest in Paris and nearly killed.
 * February 21 – The gay American writer and composer Paul Bowles marries the lesbian American writer Jane Auer at a Reformed Church in Manhattan.
 * March 7 – Samuel Beckett's first completed novel Murphy is published in London.
 * July 11 – The first live drama adaptation in Orson Welles' The Mercury Theatre on the Air series on CBS Radio in the United States is broadcast: Bram Stoker's Dracula.
 * August – Muslims protest in London against passages they see as disrespectful to their religion in H. G. Wells' A Short History of the World (1922).
 * September 13 – The first production in Britain of a play by Bertolt Brecht, Mrs Carrar's Rifles, opens at the Unity Theatre, London.
 * October 30 – Orson Welles' radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds (with script by Howard Koch) is broadcast in The Mercury Theatre on the Air series.
 * December 24 – Jorge Luis Borges is injured in an accident and develops blood poisoning. While recovering the following year he will write the first short story in his later characteristic style.
 * Uncertain dates
 * The first complete performance of both parts of Goethe's Faust (1808/32) is given at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.
 * The avant-garde musician and theoretician Pierre Schaeffer begins his writing career as an essayist for a number of French musical journals.

Fiction

 * Margery Allingham – The Fashion in Shrouds
 * Eric Ambler
 * Cause for Alarm
 * Epitaph for a Spy
 * Vladimir Bartol – Alamut
 * Anthony Berkeley – Not to Be Taken
 * Elizabeth Bowen – The Death of the Heart
 * Lynn Brock – The Silver Sickle Case
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan and the Forbidden City
 * Taylor Caldwell – Dynasty of Death
 * Victor Canning – Mr. Finchley Goes to Paris
 * John Dickson Carr
 * The Four False Weapons, Being the Return of Bencolin
 * To Wake the Dead
 * The Crooked Hinge
 * The Judas Window (as Carter Dickson)
 * Death in Five Boxes (as Carter Dickson)
 * Peter Cheyney
 * Can Ladies Kill?
 * The Urgent Hangman
 * Agatha Christie
 * Hercule Poirot's Christmas
 * Appointment with Death
 * Albert Cohen – Nailcruncher
 * Freeman Wills Crofts
 * Antidote to Venom
 * The End of Andrew Harrison
 * J.J. Connington
 * For Murder Will Speak
 * Truth Comes Limping
 * René Daumal – A Night of Serious Drinking (La Grande Beuverie)
 * Cecil Day-Lewis – The Beast Must Die
 * John Dos Passos – The Big Money (completing the U.S.A. trilogy)
 * Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca
 * Lawrence Durrell – The Black Book
 * Mircea Eliade – Marriage in Heaven (Nuntă în cer)
 * William Faulkner – The Unvanquished
 * Rachel Field – All This and Heaven Too
 * C. S. Forester
 * A Ship of the Line
 * Flying Colours
 * Anthony Gilbert – Treason in My Breast
 * Julien Gracq – The Castle of Argol (Au château d'Argol)
 * Robert Graves – Count Belisarius
 * Graham Greene – Brighton Rock
 * Walter Greenwood
 * Only Mugs Work
 * The Secret Kingdom
 * Xavier Herbert – Capricornia
 * Robin Hyde – The Godwits Fly (semi-autobiographical)
 * Michael Innes – Lament for a Maker
 * Margaret Kennedy – The Midas Touch
 * Alan Kennington – She Died Young
 * Emilio Lussu – Un anno sull'altopiano
 * C. S. Lewis – Out of the Silent Planet
 * Norman Lindsay – Age of Consent
 * Ngaio Marsh
 * Artists in Crime
 * Death in a White Tie
 * Gladys Mitchell – St Peter's Finger
 * Vladimir Nabokov
 * The Gift (Дар)
 * Invitation to a Beheading (Приглашение на казнь; serialization concludes)
 * E. Phillips Oppenheim – The Colossus of Arcadia
 * Kate O'Brien – Pray for the Wanderer
 * John O'Hara – Hope of Heaven
 * Ellery Queen
 * The Devil to Pay
 * The Four of Hearts
 * Graciliano Ramos – Vidas Secas (Barren Lives)
 * Ayn Rand – Anthem
 * Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings – The Yearling
 * Clayton Rawson – Death from a Top Hat
 * Joseph Roth – The Emperor's Tomb
 * Jean-Paul Sartre – Nausea (La Nausée)
 * Georges Simenon
 * The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By
 * Marie of the Port
 * Esphyr Slobodkina – Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business
 * Eleanor Smith – The Spanish House
 * Howard Spring – My Son, My Son
 * John Steinbeck – The Long Valley
 * Rex Stout – Too Many Cooks
 * Cecil Street
 * The Bloody Tower
 * Death at Low Tide
 * Invisible Weapons
 * Kressmann Taylor – Address Unknown (short story)
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor
 * The Annulet of Gilt
 * Banbury Bog
 * The Cut Direct (as by Alice Tilton)
 * Murder at the New York World's Fair (as by Freeman Dana)
 * B. Traven – The Bridge in the Jungle
 * S. S. Van Dine – The Gracie Allen Murder Case
 * František Bernard Vaněk – Na krásné samotě
 * Henry Wade – Released for Death
 * Winifred Watson – Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
 * Evelyn Waugh – Scoop
 * Ethel Lina White – Step in the Dark
 * T. H. White – The Sword in the Stone
 * Gale Wilhelm – Torchlight to Valhalla
 * Francis Brett Young – Dr. Bradley Remembers

Children and young people

 * BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford) – Wild Lone: The Story of a Pytchley Fox
 * Claire Huchet Bishop – The Five Chinese Brothers
 * Enid Blyton – The Secret Island
 * Eleanor Graham – The Children Who Lived in a Barn
 * Joan Kahn – "Ladies and Gentlemen," said the Ringmaster
 * Eric Knight – Lassie Come-Home
 * Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings – The Yearling
 * Kate Seredy – The White Stag
 * Noel Streatfeild – The Circus Is Coming
 * T. H. White – The Sword in the Stone
 * John F. C. Westerman – John Wentley Takes Charge (first in the John Wentley trilogy)
 * Ursula Moray Williams – Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse

Drama

 * Jean Anouilh – Thieves' Carnival (Le Bal des Voleurs)
 * Robert Ardrey – Casey Jones
 * Paul Claudel – L'Histoire de Tobie et de Sara (The History of Tobit and Sara, first version)
 * M. J. Farrell – Spring Meeting
 * Patrick Hamilton – Gaslight
 * H.M. Harwood – The Innocent Party
 * Esther McCracken – Quiet Wedding
 * Kaj Munk – Han sidder ved Smeltediglen (He sits by the melting pot)
 * Michael Pertwee – Death on the Table
 * J. B. Priestley – When We Are Married
 * Robert E. Sherwood – Abe Lincoln in Illinois
 * Dodie Smith – Dear Octopus
 * Stephen Spender – Trial of a Judge
 * Lesley Storm – Tony Draws a Horse
 * Arnold Sundgaard
 * Spirochete: A History
 * with Marc Connelly – Everywhere I Roam
 * Rodolfo Usigli – El gesticulador
 * Theodore Ward – Big White Fog
 * Thornton Wilder – Our Town
 * Emlyn Williams – The Corn is Green
 * Tennessee Williams – Not About Nightingales (written; first performed 1998)
 * W. B. Yeats – Purgatory

Poetry

 * Alfred Kreymborg – The Planets: A Modern Allegory (radio play in verse)
 * Mary Pettibone Poole – A Glass Eye at a Keyhole

Non-fiction

 * Crane Brinton – The Anatomy of Revolution
 * Hall Caine (died 1931) – Life of Christ
 * Cyril Connolly – Enemies of Promise
 * Geoffrey Faber – The Romance of a Bookshop 1904–1938
 * Robert Newton Flew – Jesus and His Church. A study of the idea of the Ecclesia in the New Testament
 * Edgar Innes Fripp (died 1931) – Shakespeare, Man and Artist
 * Elie Halévy – The Era of Tyrannies
 * Agnes Hunt – This Is My Life (autobiography of pioneer orthopedic nurse)
 * C. L. R. James – The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
 * Claude Scudamore Jarvis – Desert and Delta. An account of modern Egypt
 * Jomo Kenyatta – Facing Mount Kenya
 * Anne Morrow Lindbergh – Listen! The Wind
 * Robert McAlmon – Being Geniuses Together, 1920–1930
 * Thomas Mann – The Coming Victory of Democracy
 * George Orwell – Homage to Catalonia
 * Nichita Smochină – Republica Moldovenească a Sovietelor (The Moldavian Republic of Soviets)
 * Derek A. Traversi – An Approach to Shakespeare
 * H. G. Wells – World Brain
 * Virginia Woolf – Three Guineas

Births

 * January 2 – Hans Herbjørnsrud, Norwegian short story writer (died 2023}}
 * January 5 – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (also known as James Ngigi), Kenyan novelist
 * January 6 – Mario Rodríguez Cobos ("Silo"), Argentine author and spiritualist (died 2010)
 * January 20 – Liz Calder, English publisher and editor
 * February 7 – Andrea Newman, English novelist and screenwriter (died 2019)
 * February 9 – Jovette Marchessault, French Canadian writer and artist (died 2012)
 * February 12
 * Judy Blume, American children's author
 * Tor Obrestad, Norwegian novelist, poet and documentary writer (died 2020)
 * February 22 – Ishmael Reed, American poet, essayist and novelist
 * March 1 – Michael Kurland, American author of sci-fi and detective fiction
 * March 14 – Eleanor Bron, English humorous writer and actress
 * March 24 – Ian Hamilton, English critic, biographer and poet (died 2001)
 * March 27 – Hansjörg Schneider, Swiss novelist (died 2016)
 * April 20 – Chiung Yao, Taiwanese romance novelist
 * April 25 – John Nagenda, Ugandan writer and sportsman (died 2023)
 * April 30 – Larry Niven, American sci-fi author
 * May 13 – Norma Klein, American author (died 1989)
 * May 15 – Nancy Garden, American author (died 2014)
 * May 16 – Marco Aurelio Denegri, Peruvian literature critic, television host and sexologist (died 2018)
 * May 25
 * Raymond Carver, American short-story writer and poet (died 1988)
 * Margaret Forster, English novelist and biographer (died 2016)
 * May 26 – Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Russian novelist and playwright
 * June 5 – M. K. Wren (Martha Kay Renfroe), American novelist (died 2016)
 * June 16 – Joyce Carol Oates, American novelist
 * June 24 – Lawrence Block, American crime fiction writer
 * June 26 – Maria Velho da Costa, Portuguese writer (died 2020)
 * July 15 – Josephine Cox, English novelist (died 2020)
 * July 19
 * Nicholas Bethell, English historian and politician (died 2007)
 * Dom Moraes, Indian poet and columnist (died 2004)
 * Tom Raworth, English poet (died 2017)
 * Mary-Kay Wilmers, American-born editor
 * July 28 – Robert Hughes, Australian critic and historian (died 2012)
 * August 15 – Janusz Zajdel, Polish writer (died 1985)
 * August 21 – Mudrooroo (Colin Johnson), Australian novelist (died 2019)
 * August 30 – Dorota Terakowska, Polish writer and journalist, author of fantasy books for children and young adults (died 2004)
 * September 3 – Caryl Churchill, English dramatist
 * September 12 – Richard Booth, Welsh bookseller (died 2019)
 * September 15 – Charles L. Mee, American dramatist
 * September 18 – Poornachandra Tejaswi, Kannada writer (died 2007)
 * September 19 – Keorapetse Kgositsile, South African Poet Laureate (died 2018)
 * October 12 – Anne Perry (Juliet Marion Hulme), English historical novelist (died 2023)
 * October 13 – Hugo Young, English journalist (died 2003)
 * October 17 – Les Murray, Australian poet (died 2019)
 * October 19 – Allan Massie, Singapore-born Scottish writer
 * November 3 – Terrence McNally, American playwright (died 2020)
 * November 4 – Daniel Snowman, English non-fiction writer and historian
 * December 14 – Leonardo Boff (Genézio Darci Boff), Brazilian philosopher and theologian
 * December 21 – Frank Moorhouse, Australian journalist, author and screenwriter (died 2022)
 * December 31 – Basudeb Dasgupta, Bengali novelist (died 2005)
 * unknown date – Gabriel Ruhumbika, Tanzanian novelist

Deaths

 * January 4 – Paola Drigo, Italian writer (born 1876)
 * January 16 – Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (Sarat Chandra Chattergee), Bengali novelist (born 1876)
 * January 19 – Branislav Nušić, Serbian novelist and dramatist (born 1864)
 * January 29 – Armando Palacio Valdés, Spanish novelist and critic (born 1853)
 * February 13 – Momčilo Nastasijević, Serbian poet, novelist and dramatist (born 1894)
 * March 6 – Eva Allen Alberti, American dramatics teacher (born 1856)
 * March 27 – Helen M. Winslow, American editor, author and publisher (born 1851)
 * March 31 – Willem Kloos, Dutch poet and critic (born 1859)
 * April 19 – Sir Henry Newbolt, English poet (born 1862)
 * April 21 – Lady Ottoline Morrell, English literary hostess (born 1873)
 * May 26 – James Forbes, Canadian American dramatist and screenwriter (born 1871)
 * June 9 – Ovid Densusianu, Romanian poet, philologist, and literary historian (born 1873)
 * June 26
 * James Weldon Johnson, American politician, poet and activist (born 1871)
 * E. V. Lucas, English essayist and biographer, 70
 * July 21 – Owen Wister, American Western fiction writer and historian (born 1860)
 * August 7 – Konstantin Stanislavski, Russian theatre director (born 1863)
 * August 26 – Millosh Gjergj Nikolla, Albanian poet and writer (tuberculosis, born 1911)
 * September 15 – Thomas Wolfe, American novelist (tuberculosis, born 1900)
 * October 3 – Olivia Shakespear, British novelist, playwright and patron of the arts (born 1863)
 * October 27 – Lascelles Abercrombie, English poet and literary critic (born 1881)
 * December 13 – Virginia Frazer Boyle, American author and poet (born 1863)
 * December 23 – Robert Herrick, American realist novelist (born 1868)
 * December 25 – Karel Čapek, Czech science fiction author and dramatist (pneumonia, born 1890)
 * December 27 – Osip Mandelstam, Russian poet and essayist (in detention, born 1891)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Noel Streatfeild, The Circus Is Coming
 * Hawthornden Prize – David Jones, In Parenthesis
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: C. S. Forester, A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Sir Edmund Chambers, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Kate Seredy, The White Stag
 * Newdigate prize: Michael Thwaites
 * Nobel Prize in literature: Pearl S. Buck
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Thornton Wilder, Our Town
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Marya Zaturenska, Cold Morning Sky
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: John Phillips Marquand, The Late George Apley

title: 1938 in literature


text:
1939 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1939.

Events

 * Early – The Pocket Books mass-market paperback imprint is launched in the United States. The first of the nationally distributed titles is James Hilton's Lost Horizon.
 * January
 * American literary magazine The Kenyon Review is founded and edited by John Crowe Ransom.
 * The American pulp science fiction magazine Startling Stories appears, edited by Mort Weisinger. It includes The Black Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum as lead novel.
 * Eando Binder's story "I, Robot" appears in the U.S. science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.
 * The Criterion, a British literary quarterly, is founded and edited by T. S. Eliot.
 * W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood set sail from England for the United States.
 * January/February – Poetry London: a Bi-Monthly of Modern Verse and Criticism, founded and edited by Tambimuttu (with Dylan Thomas and others), is first published.
 * February 6 – Raymond Chandler's California private detective Philip Marlowe is introduced in his first full-length work of crime fiction, The Big Sleep, which reworks elements from earlier short stories. It is published by Alfred A. Knopf in the United States.
 * March – Isaac Asimov's first published short story, "Marooned off Vesta", appears in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine.
 * March 4 – BBC Television broadcasts one of the first specially written television plays, Condemned To Be Shot by R. E. J. Brooke (perhaps the actor Reginald Brooke), live from its London studios at Alexandra Palace. The production notably uses a camera as the first-person view by the play's unseen central character.
 * March 31 – 20th Century Fox releases a film version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, first of a Sherlock Holmes film series starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson.
 * April 13 – The United Artists film version of Wuthering Heights, starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, is released.
 * May – Jorge Luis Borges' first short story in his later characteristic style, "Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote", is published in the Buenos Aires literary magazine Sur.
 * May 4 – James Joyce's last work, Finnegans Wake, is published in full by Faber and Faber in London.
 * May 15 – Russian writer Isaac Babel is arrested by the NKVD at his dacha as part of the Great Purge in the Soviet Union, and incarcerated in the Lubyanka Building in Moscow.
 * c. August – Ernest Vincent Wright publishes his lipogrammatic novel Gadsby, "a story of over 50,000 words without using the letter 'E'", in Los Angeles a few months before his death on October 7.
 * August
 * Mikhail Bulgakov, while secretly working on The Master and Margarita, prepares the propaganda play Batumi, to romanticize events in Joseph Stalin's youth. The project is shelved by Stalin himself once Bulgakov announces he will interview witnesses personally.
 * Robert A. Heinlein's first published short story, "Life-Line", appears in Astounding Science-Fiction.
 * Before September – After a pledge drive led by Renaud de Jouvenel and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, the Romanian poet Benjamin Fondane is naturalized French and in September conscripted into the French Army, to serve in the Phony War.
 * September 2 – Jean-Paul Sartre is conscripted into the French Army, where he will serve as a meteorologist.
 * September 3 – Yorkshire-born novelist and playwright J. B. Priestley reads the first installment of his novel Let the People Sing, a celebration of local democracy specially written for radio, on BBC Home Service radio in the UK, the day war is declared.
 * September 18 – The Polish painter, playwright and novelist Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (born 1885) commits suicide after the Soviet invasion of Poland.
 * September/October – Famous Fantastic Mysteries, a pulp magazine reprinting American science fiction and fantasy, begins publication in New York.
 * Fall – Frank Herbert lies about his age to get his first job as a local newspaper reporter.
 * November – The teenage Brendan Behan is arrested in Liverpool for possessing explosives.
 * November 8 – Lindsay and Crouse's stage adaptation of Clarence Day's Life with Father opens at the Empire Theatre (42nd Street) in New York. Running until 12 July 1947, it becomes the all-time longest-running non-musical play in Broadway theatre.
 * November/December – Captain Marvel makes his first appearance, in Whiz Comics #2 (cover date February 1940).

New books
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!—From Finnegans Wake

Fiction

 * Eric Ambler – The Mask of Dimitrios
 * Sholem Asch – The Nazarene
 * William Attaway – Let Me Breathe Thunder
 * H. E. Bates – My Uncle Silas (short stories)
 * Anthony Berkeley
 * As for the Woman
 * Death in the House
 * Arna Wendell Bontemps – Drums at Dusk
 * Phyllis Bottome – Danger Signal
 * Marjorie Bowen – Blanche Fury
 * Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon – The Elephant is White
 * Lynn Brock
 * Fourfingers
 * The Riddle of the Roost
 * John Brophy – Gentleman of Stratford
 * Pearl S. Buck – The Patriot
 * Victor Canning
 * Fountain Inn
 * The Viaduct
 * Karel Čapek (posthumously) – Život a dílo skladatele Foltýna (Life and Work of the Composer Foltýn, translated as The Cheat, unfinished)
 * Joyce Carey – Mister Johnson
 * John Dickson Carr
 * The Black Spectacles
 * The Problem of the Wire Cage
 * The Reader is Warned (as Carter Dickson)
 * Drop to His Death (with John Rhode)
 * Aimé Césaire – "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal" (in Volontés, August)
 * Raymond Chandler – The Big Sleep
 * James Hadley Chase – No Orchids for Miss Blandish
 * Peter Cheyney – Dangerous Curves
 * Agatha Christie
 * Murder is Easy
 * The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
 * Ten Little Niggers
 * J.J. Connington – The Counsellor
 * Freeman Wills Crofts – Fatal Venture
 * Jeffrey Dell – Nobody Ordered Wolves
 * Pierre Drieu La Rochelle – Gilles
 * John Fante – Ask the Dust
 * William Faulkner – If I Forget Thee Jerusalem (The Wild Palms/Old Man)
 * Vardis Fisher – Children of God
 * Zona Gale – Magna
 * Konstantine Gamsakhurdia – The Right Hand of the Grand Master (დიდოსტატის კონსტანტინეს მარჯვენა)
 * Anthony Gilbert
 * The Clock in the Hatbox
 * The Bell of Death
 * F.L. Green – On the Night of the Fire
 * Henry Green – Party Going
 * Yaroslav Halan – The Mountains are Smoking
 * Ernest Hemingway – The Snows of Kilimanjaro
 * Rayner Heppenstall – The Blaze of Noon
 * Anne Hocking – Old Mrs. Fitzgerald
 * Zora Neale Hurston – Moses, Man of the Mountain
 * Aldous Huxley – After Many a Summer
 * Michael Innes – Stop Press
 * Christopher Isherwood – Goodbye to Berlin
 * James Joyce – Finnegans Wake
 * Alan Kennington – The Night Has Eyes
 * Arthur Koestler – The Gladiators
 * Richard Llewellyn – How Green Was My Valley
 * H. P. Lovecraft – The Outsider and Others
 * Ngaio Marsh – Overture to Death
 * Somerset Maugham – Christmas Holiday
 * Henry Miller – Tropic of Capricorn
 * Gladys Mitchell – Printer's Error
 * Christopher Morley – Kitty Foyle
 * Ian Niall (as John McNeillie) – Wigtown Ploughman
 * Anaïs Nin – Winter of Artifice
 * Flann O'Brien – At Swim-Two-Birds
 * John O'Hara – Files on Parade
 * Juan Carlos Onetti – El pozo (The Pit)
 * E. Phillips Oppenheim – Sir Adam Disappeared
 * George Orwell – Coming Up for Air
 * Ellery Queen – The Dragon's Teeth
 * Katherine Anne Porter – Pale Horse, Pale Rider
 * Clayton Rawson – The Footprints on the Ceiling
 * Seymour Reit – The Friendly Ghost
 * Mary Renault – Purposes of Love
 * Jean Rhys – Good Morning, Midnight
 * Jean-Paul Sartre – The Wall
 * Dorothy L. Sayers – In the Teeth of the Evidence
 * Pierre Schaeffer – Chlothar Nicole (Clotaire Nicole)
 * John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
 * Gladys Bronwyn Stern – The Woman in the Hall
 * Rex Stout – Some Buried Caesar
 * Jan Struther – Mrs. Miniver
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor – Cold Steal (as Alice Tilton)
 * Dalton Trumbo – Johnny Got His Gun
 * S. S. Van Dine – The Winter Murder Case
 * Simon Vestdijk – Sint Sebastiaan (first book chronologically in the Anton Wachter cycle)
 * Elio Vittorini – Conversations in Sicily (Conversazione in Sicilia)
 * Nathanael West – The Day of the Locust
 * Dorothy Whipple – The Priory
 * Ernest Vincent Wright – Gadsby
 * Francis Brett Young – The City of Gold
 * Marguerite Yourcenar – Coup de Grâce

Children and young people

 * Ludwig Bemelmans – Madeline (first in an eponymous series of seven books)
 * Enid Blyton – The Enchanted Wood
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan the Magnificent
 * Lavinia R. Davis – Hobby Horse Hill
 * Hardie Gramatky – Little Toot
 * Carolyn Haywood – "B" is for Betsy (first in Betsy series)
 * Robert Lawson – Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin By His Good Mouse Amos
 * Hilda Lewis – The Ship That Flew
 * Lucy Maud Montgomery – Anne of Ingleside
 * Violet Needham – The Black Riders (first in the Stormy Petrel series)
 * Carola Oman – Alfred, King of the English
 * Arthur Ransome – We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea
 * Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings – The Yearling
 * Joan G. Robinson – A Stands for Angel
 * Felix Salten – Bambis Kinder, eine Familie in Walde (Bambi's Children)
 * Alison Uttley – A Traveller in Time
 * Laura Ingalls Wilder – By the Shores of Silver Lake
 * Ursula Moray Williams – Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse
 * Boris Zhitkov – What I Saw («Что я видел», Što ya videl)

Drama

 * Philip Barry – The Philadelphia Story
 * Bertolt Brecht
 * Life of Galileo (Leben des Galilei; completed)
 * Mother Courage and Her Children (Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder; written)
 * Mikhail Bulgakov – Batumi (left unfinished)
 * T. S. Eliot – The Family Reunion
 * Jean Giraudoux – Ondine
 * Ian Hay – Little Ladyship
 * Frank Harvey – Saloon Bar
 * Lillian Hellman – The Little Foxes
 * N.C. Hunter – Grouse in June
 * George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart – The Man Who Came to Dinner
 * Joseph Kesselring – Arsenic and Old Lace
 * Clare Boothe Luce – Margin of Error
 * Barré Lyndon – The Man in Half Moon Street
 * J. B. Priestley – Johnson Over Jordan
 * William Saroyan – The Time of Your Life

Poetry

 * W. H. Auden
 * Journey to a War (with diary entries and nonfiction prose by Christopher Isherwood; March 16)
 * "September 1, 1939" (in The New Republic (U.S.) October 18)
 * Vladimir Cavarnali – Răsadul verde al inimii stelele de sus îl plouă (The Heart's Green Seedling Is Rained upon by the Stars Above)
 * Aimé Césaire – Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook on a Return to the Native Land)
 * T. S. Eliot – Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
 * José Gorostiza – Muerte sin fin (Death without End)
 * Javier del Granado – Rosas Pálidas (Pale Roses)
 * Changampuzha Krishna Pillai – Rahtapuspangal
 * Christopher Smart – Jubilate Agno (as Rejoice in the Lamb: A Song from Bedlam, edited by W. F. Stead; completed by 1763)

Non-fiction

 * Adrian Bell – Men and the Fields
 * Lord David Cecil – The Young Melbourne and the Story of his Marriage with Caroline Lamb
 * Savitri Devi – A Warning to the Hindus
 * Norbert Elias – The Civilizing Process (Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation)
 * Mary Lascelles – Jane Austen and Her Art
 * Erwin Panofsky – Studies in Iconology
 * Ed Ricketts – Between Pacific Tides
 * Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des hommes)
 * Ronald Syme – The Roman Revolution
 * Bill W. and Dr. Bob – The Big Book
 * Gamel Woolsey – Death's Other Kingdom

Births

 * January 10 – Jared Carter, American poet and author
 * January 12 – Jacques Hamelink, Dutch poet, novelist and literary critic, best known for short stories (died 2021)
 * January 29 – Germaine Greer, Australian-born feminist author
 * February 19 – Erin Pizzey, English novelist and founder of world's first domestic violence shelter
 * February 25 – Gerald Murnane, Australian novelist
 * March 15 – Alicia Freilich, Venezuelan novelist
 * March 20 - Robert Swindells, English children's and young-adult writer
 * March 25 – Toni Cade Bambara, African-American writer (died 1995)
 * April 10 – Penny Vincenzi, née Hannaford, English novelist (died 2018)
 * April 12 – Alan Ayckbourn, English dramatist
 * April 13 – Seamus Heaney, Irish poet (died 2013)
 * April 22 – Jason Miller, American playwright and actor (died 2001)
 * May 4 – Amos Oz, né Klausner, Israeli author (died 2018)
 * June 5 – Margaret Drabble, English novelist
 * June 14 – Penelope Farmer, English children's writer
 * June 15 – Brian Jacques, English writer (died 2011)
 * July 2 – Ferdinand Mount, English journalist and novelist
 * August 1 – Robert James Waller, American novelist (died 2017)
 * September 6 – Dan Cragg, American science-fiction author
 * September 16 – Breyten Breytenbach, South African writer and painter
 * September 9 – Ed Victor, American-born literary agent (died 2017)
 * September 24 – Jacky Gillott, English novelist (suicide 1980)
 * October 6 – Melvyn Bragg, English novelist, critic and broadcast presenter
 * October 7 – Clive James, Australian writer, humorist and television personality (died 2019)
 * October 8 – Harvey Pekar, American memoirist and graphic-novel scriptwriter (died 2010)
 * October 9 – John Pilger, Australian-born journalist and documentary filmmaker
 * October 28 – Giulio Angioni, Italian writer and anthropologist (died 2017)
 * October 29 – Malay Roy Choudhury, Bengali poet, novelist and creator of the Indian Hungry generation literary and cultural movement
 * November 17 – Auberon Waugh, English journalist and novelist (died 2001)
 * November 18 – Margaret Atwood, Canadian novelist and poet
 * November 25 – Shelagh Delaney, English dramatist (died 2011)
 * December 3 – Lee Israel, American biographer and literary forger (died 2014)
 * December 11 – Thomas McGuane, American writer
 * December 18 – Michael Moorcock, English science fiction writer

Deaths

 * January 8 – Caton Theodorian, Romanian dramatist and novelist (born 1871)
 * January 27 - Lewis Jones, Welsh miners' leader and novelist (born 1897)
 * January 28 – W. B. Yeats, Irish poet (born 1865)
 * February 2 – Amanda McKittrick Ros, Irish novelist and poet noted for her purple prose (born 1860)
 * February 5 – Teresa Mañé, Spanish teacher, editor and writer (born [1865)
 * February 18 – Okamoto Kanoko (岡本 かの子, Ohnuki Kano), Japanese tanka poet (born 1889)
 * February 22 – Antonio Machado, Spanish poet (born 1875)
 * March 7 – Ludwig Fulda, German playwright and poet, suicide (born 1862)
 * March 23 – Richard Halliburton, American travel writer (born 1900)
 * April 5 – Sibyl Marvin Huse, French-born American author and teacher (born 1866).
 * April 11 – S. S. Van Dine (Willard Huntington Wright), American crime novelist and art critic (born 1888)
 * May 23 – Margarete Böhme, German novelist (born 1867)
 * May 27 – Joseph Roth, Austrian novelist (born 1894)
 * June 5 – Solomon Cleaver, Canadian storyteller and novelist (born 1855)
 * June 13 – Volter Kilpi, Finnish novelist (born 1874)
 * June 14 – Vladislav Khodasevich, Russian poet and critic (born 1886)
 * June 26 – Ford Madox Ford (Ford Hermann Hueffer), English novelist (born 1873)
 * July 5 – Mrs. O. F. Walton, English writer of Christian children's books (born 1849)
 * July 8 – Havelock Ellis, English sexual psychologist and writer (born 1859)
 * August 7 – Leonard Merrick, English novelist (born 1864)
 * August 15 – Federico Gamboa, Mexican diplomat and writer (born 1864)
 * August 20 – Agnes Giberne, English children's writer (born 1845)
 * August 23
 * Sidney Howard, American writer (born 1891)
 * Robin Hyde (Iris Guiver Wilkinson), South African-born New Zealand poet and novelist, suicide (born 1905)
 * August 31 – Wilhelm Bölsche, German journalist, editor and science writer (born [1861)
 * September 6 – Arthur Rackham, English book illustrator (born 1867)
 * September 7 – Kyōka Izumi, Japanese author (b. 1873)
 * September 19 – Ethel M. Dell, English romantic novelist (born 1881)
 * October 23 – Zane Grey, American western novelist (born 1872)
 * October 29 – Dwight B. Waldo, American educator and historian (born 1864)
 * November – Pedro Nolasco Cruz Vergara, Chilean literary critic, novelist, writer, and politician (born 1857)
 * November 6 – Eliza D. Keith, American educator, author, and journalist (born 1854)
 * December 2 – Llewelyn Powys, English novelist and autobiographer (born 1884)
 * December 13 – Frances Brackett Damon (Percy Larkin), American writer (born 1857)
 * unknown dates
 * Anna Braden, American author, editor, elocutionist (born 1858)
 * Mary Frances Dowdall, English novelist and non-fiction writer (born 1876)
 * Culai Neniu, Moldovan folklorist and dramatist (shot; born 1905)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Eleanor Doorly, The Radium Woman
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Aldous Huxley After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: David C. Douglas, English Scholars
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Enright, Thimble Summer
 * Nobel Prize in literature: Frans Eemil Sillanpää
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, Abe Lincoln in Illinois
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: John Gould Fletcher, Selected Poems
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

title: 1939 in literature


text:
1940 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1940.

Events

 * January – The English literary magazine Horizon first appears in London, with Cyril Connolly, Peter Watson and Stephen Spender contributing.
 * February – The Canadian writer Robertson Davies leaves the Old Vic repertory company in the U.K.
 * March 11 – Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck and six others leave Monterey for the Gulf of California on a marine invertebrate collecting expedition.
 * April – Máirtín Ó Cadhain is interned by the Irish government at Curragh Camp, as a member of the Irish Republican Army.
 * May 14 – The Battle of the Netherlands ends with the surrender of the main Dutch forces to Nazi German invaders. This evening, the gay Dutch Jewish writer Jacob Hiegentlich takes poison, dying four days later aged 33.
 * June 5 – The English novelist J. B. Priestley broadcasts his first Sunday evening radio Postscript, "An excursion to hell", on the BBC Home Service in the U.K., marking the role of pleasure steamers in the Dunkirk evacuation, which ended the day before.
 * July
 * Jean-Paul Sartre is taken prisoner by the Germans. Léopold Sédar Senghor also becomes a prisoner of war this year. P. G. Wodehouse is interned by the Germans as an enemy alien.
 * American science fiction and fantasy pulp magazine Fantastic Novels begins its first run.
 * July 26 – A movie adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is released, with Aldous Huxley as a screenwriter.
 * September – In Uriage-les-Bains, Vichy France, Emmanuel Mounier and the Esprit circle establish a school of government and philosophy attuned to Catholic social teaching. Initially endorsing the Révolution nationale, Uriage is put off by Vichy's collaboration with Germany, and blends into the Christian left.
 * September 10 – Virginia Woolf's London house at 37 Mecklenburgh Square is destroyed by bombing. On October 18 she sees the ruins of her previous home, 52 Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, similarly destroyed.
 * October
 * Graham Greene's London house on Clapham Common Northside is destroyed by bombing, an event reflected in his novels The Ministry of Fear (1943) and The End of the Affair (1951).
 * Philip Larkin enters St John's College, Oxford.
 * October 4 – Brian O'Nolan's first "Cruiskeen Lawn" humorous column is published in The Irish Times (Dublin). In the second column he assumes the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen. The original columns are composed in Irish. He continues the column until the year of his death in 1966.
 * December – Penguin Books launches its Puffin Books children's imprint in the United Kingdom with War on Land by James Holland.
 * December 21 – F. Scott Fitzgerald dies of a heart attack aged 44 in the apartment of Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, leaving his novel The Last Tycoon unfinished. The following day, his friend and fellow novelist and screenwriter, Nathanael West, is killed aged 37 in an automobile accident in California.
 * December 29 – Heavy bombing causes a Second Great Fire of London, destroying the premises of Simpkin, Marshall, the U.K.'s largest book wholesaler, and of many publishers also in the Paternoster Row area, including Longman, together with some 25,000 volumes in the Guildhall Library's stores and a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in a jewelled binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe (1939). On dawn patrol as a fighter pilot, Douglas Blackwood sees his family's publishing business, William Blackwood, burning.
 * December 31 – Echternacher Anzeiger, a Luxembourg newspaper, ends publication.
 * unknown dates
 * The Russian poet Anna Akhmatova's collection From Six Books appears in the Soviet Union, but distribution is soon suspended, copies pulped and remaining issues prohibited.
 * Wills & Hepworth of Loughborough begins publishing Ladybird Books in the United Kingdom in a new format, with Bunnykin's Picnic Party: a story in verse for children with illustrations in colour.

Fiction

 * Eric Ambler – Journey into Fear
 * Thomas Armstrong – The Crowthers of Bankdam
 * Frank Baker – Miss Hargreaves
 * Pridi Banomyong – The King of the White Elephant
 * Giorgio Bassani – Una città di pianura
 * Henry Bellamann – Kings Row
 * Pierre Benoit – The Environs of Aden
 * Phyllis Bottome – Heart of a Child
 * Marjorie Bowen – The Crime of Laura Sarelle
 * Karin Boye – Kallocain
 * Lynn Brock – The Stoat
 * John Brophy – Green Ladies
 * Douglas Brown and Christopher Serpell – Loss of Eden: a cautionary tale
 * Heðin Brú – Feðgar á ferð (The Old Man and His Sons)
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs – Synthetic Men of Mars
 * Gerald Butler – Kiss the Blood Off My Hands
 * Dino Buzzati – The Tartar Steppe (Il deserto dei Tartari)
 * Arthur Calder-Marshall – The Way to Santiago
 * Erskine Caldwell – Trouble in July
 * Taylor Caldwell – The Earth is the Lord's
 * Victor Canning – Mr. Finchley Takes the Road
 * Joyce Carey – Charley is My Darling
 * John Dickson Carr
 * The Department of Queer Complaints
 * The Man Who Could Not Shudder
 * And So To Murder (as Carter Dickson)
 * Murder in the Submarine Zone (as Carter Dickson)
 * Adolfo Bioy Casares – The Invention of Morel (La invención de Morel)
 * Willa Cather – Sapphira And The Slave
 * Raymond Chandler – Farewell, My Lovely
 * Peter Cheyney
 * You Can't Keep the Change
 * You'd Be Surprised
 * Agatha Christie
 * Sad Cypress
 * One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
 * Walter Clark – The Ox-bow Incident
 * J.J. Connington – The Four Defences
 * Freeman Wills Crofts – Golden Ashes
 * James Daugherty – Daniel Boone
 * Georges Duhamel – Les Maîtres
 * Mircea Eliade – The Secret of Dr. Honigberger (Secretul doctorului Honigberger; published with Nights at Serampore)
 * Margita Figuli – Three Chestnut Horses
 * Anthony Gilbert – Dear Dead Woman
 * Graham Greene – The Power and the Glory
 * Ernest Hemingway – For Whom the Bell Tolls
 * Georgette Heyer – The Corinthian
 * Anne Hocking – The Wicked Flee
 * Dorothy B. Hughes – The So Blue Marble
 * Hammond Innes
 * The Trojan Horse
 * Wreckers Must Breathe
 * Michael Innes
 * The Secret Vanguard
 * There Came Both Mist and Snow
 * Anna Kavan – Asylum Piece (short stories)
 * Arthur Koestler – Darkness at Noon
 * E. C. R. Lorac – Death at Dyke's Corner
 * Marie Belloc Lowndes – The Christine Diamond
 * Carson McCullers – The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
 * Ngaio Marsh – Death at the Bar
 * W. Somerset Maugham – The Mixture as Before (short stories)
 * Gladys Mitchell – Brazen Tongue
 * Nancy Mitford – Pigeon Pie
 * John O'Hara – Pal Joey
 * E. Phillips Oppenheim – Last Train Out
 * Raymond Postgate – Verdict of Twelve
 * John Cowper Powys – Owen Glendower
 * Clayton Rawson -- The Headless Lady
 * Michael Sadleir – Fanny by Gaslight
 * Mikhail Sholokov – The Don Flows Home to the Sea (English translation of part 2 of Тихий Дон – Tikhii Don, The Quiet Don)
 * C. P. Snow – George Passant (first in the Strangers and Brothers series)
 * Christina Stead – The Man Who Loved Children
 * Rex Stout
 * Over My Dead Body
 * Where There's a Will
 * Cecil Street
 * Death on the Boat Train
 * Death Takes a Flat
 * Mr. Westerby Missing
 * Murder at Lilac Cottage
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor
 * The Criminal C. O. D.
 * The Deadly Sunshade
 * The Left Leg (as Alice Tilton)
 * Dylan Thomas – Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (short stories)
 * Luis Trenker – Captain Ladurner
 * Sachchidananda Vatsyayan – Shekhar: Ek Jivani
 * Henry Wade – Lonely Magdalen
 * Ethel Lina White – While She Sleeps
 * Richard Wright – Native Son
 * Francis Brett Young – Mr. Lucton's Freedom
 * Xiao Hong (蕭紅) – Ma Bole (马伯乐)

Children and young people

 * Enid Blyton – The Naughtiest Girl in the School
 * Godfried Bomans – Eric in the Land of the Insects (Erik of het klein insectenboek)
 * Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire – Abraham Lincoln
 * Doris Gates – Blue Willow
 * Dorothy Kunhardt – Pat the Bunny
 * Phyllis Matthewman – Chloe Takes Control (first in the Danewood series of seven books)
 * Arthur Ransome – The Big Six
 * Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings – When the Whippoorwill
 * Dr. Seuss – Horton Hatches the Egg
 * Armstrong Sperry – Call It Courage
 * Jakob Streit – Beatuslegenden
 * Geoffrey Trease – Cue for Treason
 * John R. Tunis – The Kid from Tomkinsville
 * Laura Ingalls Wilder – The Long Winter

Drama

 * Jean Anouilh – Léocadia
 * Ugo Betti – Il cacciatore di anitre (The Duck Hunter)
 * Peter Blackmore – The Blue Goose
 * Bertolt Brecht – Mr Puntila and his Man Matti (Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti, written)
 * Agatha Christie – Peril at End House
 * Jean Cocteau – Le Bel indifférent
 * Hermann Heuvers – Hosokawa Gracia Fujin
 * Artturi Järviluoma – Pohjalaisia
 * Terence Rattigan and Anthony Goldsmith – Follow My Leader (first performed)
 * Lawrence Riley – Return Engagement
 * George Shiels – The Rugged Path
 * Vernon Sylvaine – Nap Hand
 * John Van Druten –
 * Leave Her to Heaven
 * Old Acquaintance
 * Emlyn Williams
 * The Corn Is Green
 * The Light of Heart

Non-fiction

 * Mortimer J. Adler – How to Read a Book
 * "Cato" (Michael Foot, Frank Owen, and Peter Howard) – Guilty Men
 * George Gamow – The Birth and Death of the Sun
 * G. H. Hardy – A Mathematician's Apology
 * Bernard Leach – A Potter's Book
 * C. S. Lewis – The Problem of Pain
 * Karl Mannheim – Man and Society in the Age of Reconstruction
 * Arthur Marder – The Anatomy of British Sea Power: a history of British naval policy in the pre-Dreadnought era, 1880–1905
 * A. A. Milne – War with Honour
 * Malcolm Muggeridge – The Thirties
 * Hugh Trevor-Roper – Archbishop Laud, 1573–1645
 * Edmund Wilson – To the Finland Station

Births

 * January 4 – Gao Xingjian (高行健), Chinese novelist
 * January 15 – Ted Lewis, English novelist (died 1982)
 * January 23 – Mario Levrero, Uruguayan novelist (died 2004)
 * February 6 – Tom Brokaw, American television journalist and author
 * February 8 – Ted Koppel, American journalist
 * February 9
 * J. M. Coetzee, South African novelist
 * Seamus Deane, Irish poet and novelist (died 2021)
 * March 16 – Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian writer and film director (died 2018
 * March 23 – Ama Ata Aidoo, Ghanaian playwright (died 2023)
 * March 28 – Russell Banks, American novelist and poet (died 2023)
 * April 6 - Homero Aridjis, Mexican poet, novelist and environmentalist
 * April 13 – J. M. G. Le Clézio, French novelist
 * April 15 – Jeffrey Archer, English novelist, politician and perjurer
 * April 24 – Sue Grafton, American detective novelist (died 2017)
 * May 1 – Bobbie Ann Mason, American novelist, short story writer, essayist and literary critic
 * May 7 – Angela Carter, English novelist (died 1992)
 * May 8 – Peter Benchley, American novelist (died 2006)
 * May 13 – Bruce Chatwin, English novelist and travel writer (died 1989)
 * May 24 – Joseph Brodsky, Russian-born American poet and essayist (died 1996)
 * May 28 – Maeve Binchy, Irish novelist (died 2012)
 * July 17 – Tim Brooke-Taylor, English comedy writer and performer (died 2020)
 * July 31 – Fleur Jaeggy, Swiss-Italian fiction writer
 * September 1 – Annie Ernaux, French author and Nobel laureate
 * September 3 – Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist (died 2015)
 * September 14 – Ventseslav Konstantinov, Bulgarian writer and translator (died 2019)
 * October 11 – David McFadden, Canadian poet, fiction and travel writer (died 2018)
 * October 15 – Fanny Howe, American poet, novelist and short story writer
 * October 20 – Robert Pinsky, American poet
 * November 15 – René Avilés Fabila, Mexican writer (died 2016)
 * November 20 – Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, American Indologist and translator
 * December 5 – Peter Pohl, Swedish novelist
 * December 29 – Brigitte Kronauer, German novelist (died 2019)
 * Stan Grant, Wiradjuri Australian writer

Deaths

 * January 1 – Panuganti Lakshminarasimha Rao, Indian writer (born 1865)
 * January 5 – Humbert Wolfe, British poet and epigrammist (born 1885)
 * January 27 – Isaak Babel, Russian journalist and dramatist (executed, born 1894)
 * February 11 – John Buchan, Scottish novelist (born 1875)
 * February 29
 * E. F. Benson, English novelist, biographer, memoirist and short-story writer (born 1867)
 * Emma Shaw Colcleugh, American author (born 1846)
 * March 7 – Edwin Markham, American poet (born 1852)
 * March 10 – Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian novelist and playwright (born 1891)
 * March 11 – John Monk Saunders, American writer (born 1897)
 * March 12 – Florence White, English food writer (born 1863)
 * March 16
 * Sir Thomas Little Heath, English classicist and translator (born 1861)
 * Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish children's writer and Nobel laureate (born 1858)
 * April 13 – Mary Bathurst Deane, English novelist (born 1843)
 * June 1 – Jan F. E. Celliers, South African Afrikaans-language poet, essayist, dramatist and critic (born 1865)
 * June 10 – Marcus Garvey, Jamaican journalist and publisher (born 1887)
 * June 20 – Charley Chase, American screenwriter (born 1893)
 * June 21 – Hendrik Marsman, Dutch poet (born 1899)
 * August 4 – Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Russian-born Zionist leader, novelist and poet (heart attack, born 1880)
 * August 7 – T. O'Conor Sloane, American editor (born 1851)
 * September 8 – Constantin Banu, Romanian politician, journalist, cultural promoter and aphorist (born 1873)
 * September 26 – W. H. Davies, Welsh poet (born 1871)
 * November 27 – Nicolae Iorga, Romanian historian, politician, culture critic, poet and playwright (assassinated, born 1871)
 * December 21 – F. Scott Fitzgerald, American novelist (born 1896)
 * December 22 – Nathanael West, American screenwriter and satirist (born 1903)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Kitty Barne, Visitors from London
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Charles Morgan, The Voyage
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Hilda F. M. Prescott, Spanish Tudor: Mary I of England
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: James Daugherty, Daniel Boone
 * Nobel Prize in literature: not awarded
 * Prix Goncourt: Francis Ambrière, Les grandes vacances (awarded in retrospect)
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Mark Van Doren, Collected Poems
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
 * King's Gold Medal for Poetry: Michael Thwaites

title: 1940 in literature