1961 in literature

Events

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

• Michael Halliday publishes a seminal paper on the systemic functional grammar model.

  New books

Fiction

• Brian Aldiss – The Primal Urge
• Poul Anderson – Three Hearts and Three Lions
• J. G. Ballard – The Wind From Nowhere
• James Barlow – Term of Trial
• Pat Boone – 'Twixt Twelve and Twenty
• Morley Callaghan – A Passion in Rome
• John Dickson Carr – The Witch of the Low Tide: An Edwardian Melodrama
• Jean Cau – The Mercy of God
• Sid Chaplin – The Day of the Sardine
• James Hadley Chase – A Lotus for Miss Quon
• Agatha Christie
• *Double Sin and Other Stories
• *The Pale Horse
• A. J. Cronin – The Judas Tree
• Jennifer Dawson – The Ha-Ha
• L. Sprague de Camp – The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate
• August Derleth – The Reminiscences of Solar Pons
• Cyprian Ekwensi – Jagua Nana
• Ian Fleming – Thunderball
• Gillian Freeman – The Leather Boys
• Gabriel García Márquez – No One Writes to the Colonel
• Martyn Goff – The Youngest Director
• Edward Gorey – The Curious Sofa. A Pornographic Tale
• Winston Graham – Marnie
• Vasily Grossman – Everything Flows
• Harry Harrison – The Stainless Steel Rat
• Robert A. Heinlein – Stranger in a Strange Land
• Joseph Heller – Catch-22
• Marlen Haushofer – The Wall
• Patricia Highsmith – This Sweet Sickness
• Richard Hughes -The Fox in the Attic
• Jun'ichirō Tanizaki – The Diary of a Mad Old Man
• James Kennaway – Household Ghosts
• Ismith Khan – The Jumbie Bird
• Margaret Laurence – The Stone Angel
• John le Carré – Call for the Dead
• Stanisław Lem – Solaris
• Audrey Erskine Lindop – The Way to the Lantern
• H. P. Lovecraft – The Shunned House
• Compton Mackenzie – Mezzotint
• Iris Murdoch – A Severed Head
• V. S. Naipaul – A House for Mr. Biswas
• R. K. Narayan – The Man-Eater of Malgudi
• Juan Carlos Onetti – El astillero
• Walker Percy – The Moviegoer
• Caradog Prichard – Un Nos Ola Leuad
• Harold Robbins – The Carpetbaggers
• J. D. Salinger – Franny and Zooey
• Leonardo Sciascia – Il giorno della civetta
• Muriel Spark – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
• Howard Spring – I Met a Lady
• John Steinbeck – The Winter of Our Discontent
• Irving Stone – The Agony and the Ecstasy
• Rex Stout – The Final Deduction
• Theodore Sturgeon – Some of Your Blood
• Jun'ichirō Tanizaki – Futen Rojin Nikki
• Leon Uris – Mila 18
• Rose Valland – Le Front de l'art
• H. Russell Wakefield – Strayers from Sheol
• Edward Lewis Wallant – The Pawnbroker
• Evelyn Waugh – Unconditional Surrender
• Morris West – Daughter of Silence
• Angus Wilson – The Old Men at the Zoo
• Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road

  Children and young people

• Roald Dahl – James and the Giant Peach
• L. Sprague de Camp – non-fiction
• *The Heroic Age of American Invention
• *Man and Power: The Story of Power from the Pyramids to the Atomic Age
• Barbara C. Freeman – Two-Thumb Tom
• Rumer Godden – Miss Happiness and Miss Flower
• René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo – Asterix the Gaul
• Maria Gripe – Josephine
• Norton Juster – The Phantom Tollbooth
• Bill Peet – Huge Harold
• Kin Platt – The Blue Man
• Wilson Rawls – Where the Red Fern Grows
• George Selden – The Cricket in Times Square
• Dr. Seuss – The Sneetches and Other Stories
• Elizabeth George Speare – The Bronze Bow
• John Rowe Townsend – Gumble's Yard
• Tomi Ungerer – The Three Robbers

  Drama

• John Barton – The Hollow Crown
• Samuel Beckett
• *Happy Days
• *Rough for Radio I
• *Rough for Radio II
• Emilio Carballido – Un pequeño día de ira
• Spiro Çomora – Karnavalet e Korçës
• Henry Denker – A Far Country
• Friedrich Dürrenmatt – The Physicists
• Max Frisch – Andorra
• Jean Genet – The Screens
• Girish Karnad – Yayati
• Heiner Müller – Die Umsiedlerin
• Tom Murphy – A Whistle in the Dark
• John Osborne – Luther
• Neil Simon – Come Blow Your Horn
• John Whiting – The Devils
• Tennessee Williams – The Night of the Iguana
• Wu Han – Hai Rui Dismissed from Office

  Poetry

• August Derleth editor – Fire and Sleet and Candlelight

  Non-fiction

• Alison Adburgham – A Punch History of Manners and Modes, 1841–1940
• Wayne C. Booth – The Rhetoric of Fiction
• E. H. Carr – What Is History?
• Frantz Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth
• Fritz Fischer – Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegzielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914–1918
• Georges Friedmann – The Anatomy of Work
• Ernest K. Gann – Fate Is the Hunter
• Jane Jacobs – The Death and Life of Great American Cities
• Richard Foster Jones – Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in Seventeenth Century England
• Theodora Kroeber – Ishi in Two Worlds
• R. D. Laing – Self and Others
• Marshall McLuhan –
• Louis Nizer – My Life in Court
• Karl Popper – The Poverty of Historicism
• Anant Priolkar – The Goa Inquisition
• Maxime Rodinson – Muhammad
• Bertrand Russell – Has Man a Future?
• Colin Turnbull – The Forest People
• Webster's Third New International Dictionary
• Raymond Williams – The Long Revolution
• Peter Wessel Zapffe – Indføring i litterær dramaturgi

  Births

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

• Winsome Pinnock, British playwright

  Deaths

• January 10 – Dashiell Hammett, American crime writer and screenwriter
• January 21 – Blaise Cendrars, Swiss novelist and poet
• January 30 – Dorothy Thompson, American journalist
• March 18 – E. Arnot Robertson, English novelist
• April 9 – Oliver Onions, English novelist and ghost story writer
• April 22 – Joanna Cannan, English pony book writer and detective novelist
• May 26 – William Troy, American writer and teacher
• June 2 – George S. Kaufman, American dramatist and critic
• July 1 – Louis-Ferdinand Céline, French novelist and pamphleteer
• July 2 – Ernest Hemingway, American novelist
• July 12 – Mazo de la Roche, Canadian novelist
• July 17 – Olga Forsh, Russian dramatist, novelist and memoirist
• September 27 – H.D., American poet, novelist and memoirist
• October 19 – Mihail Sadoveanu, Romanian novelist
• November 2 – James Thurber, American humorist
• December 7 – Roussan Camille, Haitian poet and journalist
• December 26 – Gertrude Minnie Faulding, English children's writer and novelist

  Awards

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