1946 in literature

Events

• January – The Penguin Classics imprint is launched in the U.K. under the editorship of E. V. Rieu, whose translation of the Odyssey is the first of the books published, and will be the country's best-selling book over the next decade.
• January 5 – The Estonian writer Jaan Kross is arrested and imprisoned by the occupying Soviet authorities.
• February – The poet Ezra Pound, brought back to the United States on treason charges, is found unfit to face trial due to insanity and sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C., where he remains for 12 years.
• May 20 – The English poet W. H. Auden becomes a United States citizen.
• May 22 – George Orwell leaves London to spend much of the next 18 months on the Scottish island of Jura, working on his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. This year his Animal Farm becomes book of the year in the United States.
• August 18 – The Assamese poet Amulya Barua is killed aged 24 in communal violence while studying at the University of Calcutta. His only collection of poems, Achina, is published posthumously.
• October 1 – The English première of J. B. Priestley's drama An Inspector Calls shows at the New Theatre, London. It stars Ralph Richardson.
• October 9 – The Broadway première of Eugene O'Neill's drama The Iceman Cometh, set in 1912, is held at the Martin Beck Theatre, New York City.
• November 7 – Walker Percy, a U.S. writer of philosophical novels, marries Mary Bernice Townsend.
• November 8 – The English novelist and diarist Christopher Isherwood becomes a U.S. citizen.
• December 18
• *Brendan Behan is released from internment in the Republic of Ireland under an amnesty.
• *Damon Runyon's ashes are scattered over New York City from an airplane piloted by Eddie Rickenbacker.
• December 23 – Giovannino Guareschi publishes the first story about the priest Don Camillo in his magazine Candido.
• December 26 – David Lean's film of Great Expectations is released in England.

• The publisher August Aimé Balkema produces his first book in South Africa, Vyjtig Gedigte by the poet C. Louis Leipoldt.
• The American writer and theologian Frederick Buechner resumes his B.A. degree course at Princeton University after war service.

  New books

Fiction

• Jorge Amado – Seara Vermelha
• Francis Ambrière – The Long Holiday
• Miguel Ángel Asturias – El Señor Presidente
• René Barjavel – The Tragic Innocents
• Simone de Beauvoir – All Men are Mortal
• Algernon Blackwood – The Doll and One Other
• Jorge Luis Borges – Deutsches Requiem
• Tadeusz Borowski – This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
• Ivan Bunin – Dark Avenues
• John Dickson Carr
• *He Who Whispers
• *My Late Wives
• Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo – Los que aman, odian
• Agatha Christie – The Hollow
• A. E. Coppard – Fearful Pleasures
• Edmund Crispin – The Moving Toyshop
• Kenneth Fearing – The Big Clock
• Adonias Filho – Os servos da morte
• Errol Flynn – Showdown
• Pat Frank – Mr. Adam
• Carlo Emilio Gadda – That Awful Mess on Via Merulana
• Stella Gibbons – Westwood
• William Lindsay Gresham – Nightmare Alley
• Ruth Guimarães – Água Funda
• João Guimarães Rosa – Sagarana
• Thomas Heggen – Mister Roberts
• Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas, editors – Adventures in Time and Space
• George Wylie Henderson – Jule
• William Hope Hodgson – The House on the Borderland and Other Novels
• Robert E. Howard – Skull-Face and Others
• Christopher Isherwood – The Berlin Stories
• Cläre Jung – Aus der Tiefe rufe ich
• Nikos Kazantzakis – Zorba the Greek
• Arthur Koestler – Thieves in the Night
• Philip Larkin – Jill
• Lois Lenski – Strawberry Girl
• Frank Belknap Long – The Hounds of Tindalos
• W. Somerset Maugham – Then and Now
• Carson McCullers – Member of the Wedding
• Oscar Micheaux – The Story of Dorothy Stanfield
• Mervyn Peake – Titus Groan
• Isaac Rosenfeld – Passage from Home
• Anya Seton – The Turquoise
• Margit Söderholm – All the World's Delights
• Rex Stout – The Silent Speaker
• Tugelbay Sydykbekov – Bizdin zamandyn kišileri
• Phoebe Atwood Taylor
• *The Asey Mayo Trio
• *Punch with Care
• Charles Tazewell – The Littlest Angel
• Gore Vidal – Williwaw
• A. E. van Vogt – Slan
• Boris Vian
• *I Spit on Your Graves
• *Vercoquin and the Plankton
• H. Russell Wakefield – The Clock Strikes Twelve
• Mervyn Wall – The Unfortunate Fursey
• Robert Penn Warren – All the King's Men
• Eudora Welty – Delta Wedding
• Henry S. Whitehead – West India Lights
• Kiichirō Yamate – Momotarō-zamurai
• Ivan Yefremov – The Land of Foam
• Seishi Yokomizo – The Honjin Murders

  Children and young people

• W. V. Awdry – Thomas the Tank Engine
• Carolyn Sherwin Bailey – Miss Hickory
• Nancy Barnes – Wonderful Year
• Enid Blyton – First Term at Malory Towers
• Godfried Bomans
• *De Avonturen van Pa Pinkelman
• *Sprookjes
• Jan Brzechwa – Academy of Mr. Kleks
• Gertrude Crampton – Scuffy the Tugboat
• Ernest Elmore – Snuffly Snorty Dog
• C. S. Forester – Lord Hornblower
• William Glynne-Jones – Brecon Adventure
• Elizabeth Goudge – The Little White Horse
• Graham Greene – The Little Train
• Racey Helps – Footprints in the Snow
• Tove Jansson – Comet in Moominland
• Madeleine L'Engle – Ilsa
• Astrid Lindgren – Pippi Goes on Board
• Sheila Stuart – Alison's Highland Holiday
• Ivy Wallace – Pookie
• T. H. White – Mistress Masham's Repose

  Drama