1948 in literature

Events

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

  New books

Fiction

• Ilse Aichinger – Die größere Hoffnung
• Bertil Almqvist – Barna Hedenhös: bilder från stenåldern
• Jerzy Andrzejewski – Ashes and Diamonds
• Isaac Asimov – "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline"
• Nigel Balchin – The Borgia Testament
• René Barjavel – Le Diable l'emporte
• Alexander Baron – From the City, From the Plough
• Hervé Bazin – Viper in the Fist
• Henry Bellamann – Parris Mitchell of King's Row
• Elizabeth Bowen – The Heat of the Day
• Jocelyn Brooke
• *The Military Orchid
• *The Scapegoat
• Pearl S. Buck – Peony
• Taylor Caldwell – Melissa
• Truman Capote – Other Voices, Other Rooms
• Al Capp – The Life and Times of the Shmoo
• John Dickson Carr – The Skeleton in the Clock
• Adolfo Bioy Casares – The Celestial Plot
• Agatha Christie
• *Taken at the Flood
• *The Rose and the Yew Tree
• *The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
• James Gould Cozzens – Guard of Honor
• Edmund Crispin – Love Lies Bleeding
• A. J. Cronin – Shannon's Way
• Osamu Dazai – No Longer Human
• L. Sprague de Camp – Divide and Rule
• L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt – The Carnelian Cube
• August Derleth – Not Long for this World
• Lord Dunsany – The Fourth Book of Jorkens
• Howard Fast – My Glorious Brothers
• William Faulkner – Intruder in the Dust
• Henry Green – Concluding
• Graham Greene – The Heart of the Matter
• Giovannino Guareschi – Mondo Piccolo: Don Camillo
• Hella Haasse – Oeroeg
• L. P. Hartley – The Travelling Grave and Other Stories
• Marguerite Henry – King of the Wind
• Georgette Heyer – The Foundling
• Zora Neale Hurston – Seraph on the Suwanee
• Aldous Huxley – Ape and Essence
• Hammond Innes – Maddon's Rock
• Shirley Jackson
• *The Road Through the Wall
• *"The Lottery"
• *"Charles"
• Anna Kavan – The House of Sleep
• Patrick Kavanagh – Tarry Flynn
• Halldór Laxness – The Atom Station
• Alexander Lernet-Holenia – The Count of Saint Germain
• Audrey Erskine Lindop – Soldiers' Daughters Never Cry
• Ross Lockridge, Jr. – Raintree County
• Norman Mailer – The Naked and the Dead
• Thomas Mann – Joseph and His Brothers
• Leopoldo Marechal – Adam Buenosayres
• Ana María Matute – Los Abel
• W. Somerset Maugham – Catalina
• C. L. Moore – The Mask of Circe
• Zoe B. Oldenbourg – The World Is Not Enough
• Alan Paton – Cry, the Beloved Country
• Ellery Queen – Ten Days' Wonder
• Seabury Quinn – Roads
• Anya Seton – The Hearth and the Eagle
• Irwin Shaw – The Young Lions
• Nevil Shute – No Highway
• B. F. Skinner – Walden Two
• Clark Ashton Smith – Genius Loci and Other Tales
• Dodie Smith – I Capture the Castle
• William Gardner Smith – Last of the Conquerors
• Rex Stout – And Be a Villain
• Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar – A Mind at Peace
• Josephine Tey – The Franchise Affair
• Gore Vidal – The City and the Pillar
• Mika Waltari – The Adventurer
• Donald Wandrei – The Web of Easter Island
• Evelyn Waugh – The Loved One
• Stanley G. Weinbaum – The Black Flame
• Dorothy West – The Living is Easy
• Thornton Wilder – The Ides of March
• Herman Wouk –

  Children and young people

• Hans Fischer – Pitschi. Das Kätzchen, das immer etwas anderes wollte. Eine traurige Geschichte, die aber gut aufhört
• Antonia Forest – Autumn Term
• Ruth Stiles Gannett – My Father's Dragon
• Marguerite Henry – King of the Wind
• Lorna Hill – Marjorie and Co.
• Tove Jansson – Trollkarlens hatt
• Astrid Lindgren – Pippi in the South Seas
• Dr. Seuss – Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose
• Rosemary Tonks – On Wooden Wings: The Adventures of Webster
• Geoffrey Trease – The Hills of Varna
• Elfrida Vipont – The Lark in the Moon

  Drama