1965 in literature

Events

• March 26 – Harold Pinter's play The Homecoming receives its world première at the New Theatre, Cardiff, from the Royal Shakespeare Company under Peter Hall. Its London première follows on June 3 at the Aldwych Theatre, with Vivien Merchant, Pinter's wife at the time, appearing. It also appears in print this year.
• May 26 – The world première of A High Wind in Jamaica, a film from Richard Hughes's 1929 novel, features the future novelist Martin Amis, son of Kingsley Amis, as a teenage actor.
• June 11 – International Poetry Incarnation, a performance poetry event, takes place at London's Royal Albert Hall before an audience of 7,000, with members of the Beat Generation featuring. Adrian Mitchell reads "To Whom It May Concern".
• June 17 – The London première of Frank Marcus' farce The Killing of Sister George is among the first mainstream British plays with lesbian characters. Beryl Reid plays the title rôle. It has been previewed in April at the Bristol Old Vic.
• June 19 – J. D. Salinger's novella "Hapworth 16, 1924" takes up most of an issue of The New Yorker magazine dated today. It will be the last of his works published before his death in 2010.
• June 30 – The English novelists Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard marry at Marylebone register office in London, as his second marriage and her third.

• Authorities in East Germany obstruct the première of Heiner Müller's play Der Bau until 1980.
• The Nebula Award is conceived by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. The first award will be made next year to Frank Herbert's Dune.
• The National Library of New Zealand is formed by merging the Alexander Turnbull Library, the National Library Service and the General Assembly Library under the National Library Act of this year.

  New books

Fiction

• Lloyd Alexander – The Black Cauldron
• Cécile Aubry – Belle et Sébastien
• J. G. Ballard – The Drought
• John Bingham – A Fragment of Fear
• Ray Bradbury – The Vintage Bradbury
• John Brunner
• *The Martian Sphinx as Keith Woodcott
• *The Squares of the City
• Kenneth Bulmer – Land Beyond the Map
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan and the Castaways
• Guillermo Cabrera Infante – Tres Tristes Tigres
• John Dickson Carr – The House at Satan's Elbow
• Agatha Christie – At Bertram's Hotel
• L. Sprague de Camp
• *The Arrows of Hercules
• *The Spell of Seven
• August Derleth – The Casebook of Solar Pons
• Philip K. Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
• Margaret Drabble – The Millstone
• Ian Fleming – The Man with the Golden Gun
• Margaret Forster – Georgy Girl
• Witold Gombrowicz – Kosmos
• Winston Graham – After the Act
• Graham Greene – The Comedians
• Frank Herbert – Dune
• Arthur Hailey – Hotel
• James Leo Herlihy - Midnight Cowboy
• Bohumil Hrabal – Ostře sledované vlaky
• Bel Kaufman – Up the Down Staircase
• Danilo Kiš – Garden, Ashes
• Pierre Klossowski – Le Baphomet
• Jerzy Kosinski – The Painted Bird
• John le Carré – The Looking-Glass War
• J. M. G. Le Clézio – Le Livre des fuites
• David Lodge – The British Museum Is Falling Down
• H. P. Lovecraft – Dagon and Other Macabre Tales
• John D. MacDonald – A Deadly Shade of Gold
• Compton Mackenzie – The Stolen Soprano
• Norman Mailer – An American Dream
• Eric Malpass – Morning's at Seven
• James A. Michener – The Source
• Mudrooroo – Wild Cat Falling
• Iris Murdoch – The Red and the Green
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – The River Between
• Peter O'Donnell – Modesty Blaise
• J.B. Priestley – Lost Empires
• Raymond Queneau – Les fleurs bleues
• Françoise Sagan – La Chamade
• Ernst von Salomon – Die schöne Wilhelmine
• Muriel Spark - The Mandelbaum Gate
• Vincent Starrett – The Quick and the Dead
• Irving Stone – Those Who Love
• Rex Stout – The Doorbell Rang
• Benjamin Tammuz – חיי אליקום
• Jesús Torbado – Las corrupciones
• Jack Vance – Space Opera
• Erico Verissimo – O Senhor Embaixador
• Arved Viirlaid – Sadu jõkke
• Ion Vinea – Lunatecii
• Stephen Vizinczey – In Praise of Older Women: the amorous recollections of András Vajda
• Kurt Vonnegut – God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
• Donald Wandrei – Strange Harvest
• Marguerite Young – Miss MacIntosh, My Darling

  Children and young people

• Kir Bulychov – A Girl Nothing Can Happen To, the first work of literature about Alisa Selezneva
• Thora Colson – Rinkin of Dragon's Wood
• Susan Cooper – Over Sea, Under Stone
• Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Dragons
• Ruth Park – The Muddle-Headed Wombat in the Treetops
• Bill Peet
• *Chester the Worldly Pig
• *Kermit the Hermit
• John Rowe Townsend – Widdershins Crescent

  Drama

• Alan Ayckbourn – Relatively Speaking
• Samuel Beckett – Come and Go
• Edward Bond – Saved
• David Halliwell – Little Malcolm And His Struggle Against The Eunuchs
• John B. Keane – The Field
• Frank Marcus – The Killing of Sister George
• Sławomir Mrożek – Tango
• John Osborne – A Patriot for Me
• Nelson Rodrigues – Toda Nudez Será Castigada
• Michel Tremblay – Les Belles-Sœurs

  Poetry

• Stanley McNail – Something Breathing
• Sylvia Plath – Ariel
• Clark Ashton Smith – Poems in Prose

  Non-fiction

• Dean Acheson – Morning and Noon
• Nelson Algren – Notes from a Sea Diary: Hemingway All the Way
• Dmitri Borgmann – Language on Vacation
• Nirad C. Chaudhuri – The Continent of Circe
• Allen G. Debus – The English Paracelsians.
• Richard Feynman – The Character of Physical Law
• Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss – Awareness of Dying
• William Golding – The Hot Gates
• Alex Haley and Malcolm X – The Autobiography of Malcolm X
• Pauline Kael – I Lost It at the Movies
• Peter Laslett – The World We Have Lost: England before the Industrial Age
• H. P. Lovecraft – Selected Letters I
• P. J. Marshall – The Impeachment of Warren Hastings
• Robin Moore – The Green Berets
• Tom Wolfe – The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby

  Births

• February 1 – Louise Welsh, British writer of psychological thrillers
• February 20 – Philip Hensher, English fiction writer, critic and editor
• March 4
• *Andrew Collins, English journalist and scriptwriter
• *Anisul Hoque, Bangladeshi novelist, dramatist and journalist
• March 30 – Piers Morgan, English journalist and editor
• June 2 – Sean Stewart, American-Canadian author
• July 7 – Zoë Heller, English novelist
• July 31 – J. K. Rowling, English children's novelist
• August 1 – Sam Mendes, English theatre and film director
• September 29 – Nikolaj Frobenius, Norwegian novelist
• October 23 – Augusten Burroughs, American memoirist
• November 28 – Erwin Mortier, Belgian poet, novelist and translator writing in Flemish/Dutch
• November 29 – Lauren Child, English children's fiction writer and illustrator
• December 14 – :da:Helle Helle|Helle Helle, Danish novelist
• December 31 – Nicholas Sparks, American novelist

• Patience Agbabi, British performance poet
• Mike McCormack, Irish fiction writer
• Keith Mansfield, English novelist and publisher
• Charlotte Wood, Australian novelist

  Deaths

• January 4 – T. S. Eliot, American-born English poet and dramatist
• January 12 – Lorraine Hansberry, American journalist and dramatist
• March 13 – Fan S. Noli, Albanian bishop and poet
• May 3 – Howard Spring, Welsh-born novelist and writer
• May 5 – Edgar Mittelholzer, Guyanese-born novelist
• May 19 – Maria Dąbrowska, Polish novelist, essayist and playwright
• June 5
• *Thornton Burgess, American children's author
• *Eleanor Farjeon, English children's writer and poet
• June 13 – Martin Buber, Austrian-born Jewish philosopher
• July 8 – Thomas Sigismund Stribling, American novelist
• July 9 – Jacques Audiberti, French Absurdist dramatist, poet and novelist
• July 28 – Rampo Edogawa, Japanese author and critic
• July 30 – Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Japanese novelist
• July 31 – John Metcalfe, English novelist and short story writer
• August 1 – Percy Lubbock, English essayist, critic and biographer
• August 6 – Aksel Sandemose, Danish novelist
• August 8 – Shirley Jackson, American horror novelist and short story writer
• August 17 – Jack Spicer, American poet
• September 17 – John Davy Hayward, English literary editor and bibliophile
• October 8 – Thomas B. Costain, Canadian popular historian
• October 15 – Randall Jarrell, American poet
• October 30 – Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., American historian
• November 8 – Dorothy Kilgallen, American journalist
• November 20 – Katharine Anthony, American biographer
• November 24 – Betty Miller, Irish-born Jewish writer
• December 16 – W. Somerset Maugham English novelist, dramatist and short story writer

  Awards

• Nobel Prize for literature – Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov

  Canada

• See 1965 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

  France

• Prix Goncourt: J. Borel, L'Adoration
• Prix Médicis: René-Victor Pilhes, La Rhubarbe

  United Kingdom

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Philip Turner, The Grange at High Force
• Eric Gregory Award: John Fuller, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Norman Talbot
• Newdigate prize: Peter Jay
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Muriel Spark, The Mandelbaum Gate
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: The Later Years 1803–1850
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Philip Larkin

  United States

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Criticism: Walter Lippmann
• Hugo Award: Fritz Leiber, The Wanderer
• Nebula Award: Frank Herbert, Dune
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Maia Wojciechowska, Shadow of a Bull
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Frank D. Gilroy, The Subject Was Roses
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Shirley Ann Grau – The Keepers Of The House
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: John Berryman: 77 Dream Songs

  Elsewhere

• Miles Franklin Award: Thea Astley, The Slow Natives
• Alfaguara Prize: Jesús Torbado, Las corrupciones
• Premio Nadal: E. Cabalero Calderón, El buen salvaje
• Viareggio Prize: Goffredo Parise, Il Padrone