1966 in literature

Events

• February – The Nottingham-based chain of pharmacy stores Boots UK closes the last of its circulating "Booklovers' Library" branches.
• February 10 – Author Jacqueline Susann has her first novel, Valley of the Dolls, published. From a friend she obtains a list of the bookstores on whose sales figures The New York Times relies for its bestseller list. She then uses her own money to buy large quantities of her book at these stores, causing it to head the list. Valley of the Dolls incidentally comes to rank among the best-selling novels of all time.
• February 14 – Dissident writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky are sentenced to hard labour for "anti-Soviet activity".
• March 9 – J. R. R. Tolkien writes to Roger Verhulst expressing concerns about a proposed book about him by W. H. Auden, saying, "I regard such things as premature impertinences.... I cannot believe that they have a usefulness to justify the distaste and irritation given to the victim," but adding: "I owe Mr. Auden a debt of gratitude for the generosity with which he has supported and encouraged me since the first appearance of The Lord of the Rings."
• March 21 – In a landmark obscenity case, Memoirs v. Massachusetts, the Supreme Court of the United States rules that the hitherto banned novel Fanny Hill does not meet the Roth Standard for obscenity.
• June 14 – The Roman Curia abolishes the Index Librorum Prohibitorum of books banned by the Catholic Church, after 427 years.
• June 16 – Blackwell's opens the 930 m² Norrington Room in their main bookshop in Broad Street, Oxford.
• June 23 – Octopussy and The Living Daylights appears as the final collection of James Bond short stories by the character's creator, Ian Fleming, who died in 1964.
• July 24 – The poet and critic Frank O'Hara is hit by a dune buggy on Fire Island beach. He dies of his injuries the following day.
• August 24 – Tom Stoppard's tragicomedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is first played, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Despite small audiences, Stoppard's reputation is made by a review by Ronald Bryden in The Observer.
• September 8 – The first UNESCO International Literacy Day is celebrated.
• September 9 – New Beacon Books, the first Caribbean publishing house in England, releases its first title, Foundations by John La Rose.
• October 21 – Jacques Derrida delivers a lecture, La Structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines, to a structuralism colloquium at Johns Hopkins University, giving international prominence to his work on literary theory.
• November 3–4 – The 1966 flood of the Arno in Florence causes severe damage to libraries, including the National Central Library and Gabinetto Vieusseux.
• November 28 – Truman Capote's Black and White Ball is held in New York City. The guest of honor, the Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, later says: "Truman called me up that summer and said, 'I think you need cheering up. And I'm going to give you a ball.'...I was...sort of baffled....I felt a little bit like Truman was going to give the ball anyway and that I was part of the props."
• December – Moskva magazine begins the first publication of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, begun in 1928 but left incomplete on the author's death in 1940. It appears in two parts with portions, omitted or altered.

• The first modern revival of a play by Bhāsa, Madhyamavyayoga, directed by Shanta Gandhi, is performed in a Hindi translation.

  New books

Fiction

• Chinua Achebe – A Man of the People
• Robert H. Adleman – The Devil's Brigade
• Lloyd Alexander – The Castle of Llyr
• Elechi Amadi – The Concubine
• Kingsley Amis – The Anti-Death League
• Isaac Asimov – Fantastic Voyage
• Margaret Atwood
• *The Circle Game
• *Expeditions
• *Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein
• Louis Auchincloss – The Embezzler
• Nigel Balchin – In the Absence of Mrs. Petersen
• J. G. Ballard
• *The Crystal World
• *The Impossible Man
• Henry Bauchau – La Déchirure
• John Bingham – The Double Agent
• Paul Bowles – Up Above the World
• Ray Bradbury – S Is for Space
• Truman Capote – In Cold Blood
• John Dickson Carr – Panic in Box C
• Angela Carter – Shadow Dance
• Agatha Christie – Third Girl
• James Clavell – Tai-Pan
• Robert Crichton – The Secret of Santa Vittoria
• August Derleth and Mark Schorer – Colonel Markesan and Less Pleasant People
• Philip K. Dick
• *The Crack in Space
• *Now Wait for Last Year
• *The Unteleported Man
• Allen Drury – Capable of Honor
• Friedrich Dürrenmatt – Der Meteor
• Shusaku Endo – Silence
• Ian Fleming – Octopussy and The Living Daylights
• John Fowles – The Magus
• Robert A. Heinlein – The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
• Aidan Higgins – Langrishe, Go Down
• Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp – Conan the Adventurer
• Daniel Keyes – Flowers for Algernon
• Anatoly Kuznetsov –
• J. M. G. Le Clézio – Le Déluge
• José Lezama Lima – Paradiso
• Audrey Erskine Lindop – I Start Counting
• H. P. Lovecraft and Divers Hands – The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces
• John D. MacDonald – One Fearful Yellow Eye
• Compton Mackenzie – Paper Lives
• Alistair MacLean – When Eight Bells Toll
• Larry McMurtry – Last Picture Show
• Bernard Malamud – The Fixer
• Marga Minco – Een leeg huis
• Grace Ogot – The Promised Land
• Anthony Powell – The Soldier's Art
• Thomas Pynchon – The Crying of Lot 49
• Seabury Quinn – Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder
• Gerard Reve – Nader tot U
• Jean Rhys – Wide Sargasso Sea
• Karl Ristikivi – Rõõmulaul
• Giorgio Scerbanenco
• *A Private Venus
• *Traitors to All
• Leonardo Sciascia – A ciascuno il suo
• Paul Scott – The Jewel in the Crown
• Adela Rogers St. Johns – Tell No Man
• Krishna Sobti – Mitro Marjani
• Rex Stout – Death of a Doxy
• William Styron – The Confessions of Nat Turner
• Jacqueline Susann – Valley of the Dolls
• Leslie Thomas – The Virgin Soldiers
• Roderick Thorp – The Detective
• Jack Vance – The Eyes of the Overworld
• Mario Vargas Llosa – The Green House
• Patrick White – The Solid Mandala
• Roger Zelazny
• *The Dream Master
• *This Immortal

  Children and young people

• Nina Bawden – The Witch's Daughter
• Roald Dahl – The Magic Finger
• Leon Garfield – Devil-in-the-Fog
• Charles Keeping – Charley, Charlotte and the Golden Canary
• Clive King – The 22 Letters
• Ruth Park
• *The Muddle-Headed Wombat at School
• *The Muddle-Headed Wombat in the Snow
• Bill Peet
• *Capyboppy
• *Farewell to Shady Glade
• Otfried Preußler – The Little Ghost
• Tomi Ungerer – Moon Man
• Eduard Uspensky – Crocodile Gena and His Friends
• Jill Paton Walsh – Hengest's Tale

  Drama

• Edward Albee – A Delicate Balance
• Barbara Garson – MacBird!
• Günter Grass – Die Plebejer proben den Aufstand
• Gwenlyn Parry – Saer Doliau
• Tom Stoppard – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
• Zdeněk Svěrák, Jiří Šebánek and Ladislav Smoljak – Akt
• Luis Valdez – Quinta Temporada

  Poetry

• Seamus Heaney – Death of a Naturalist
• Anne Sexton – Live or Die

  Non-fiction

• Geoffrey Blainey – '
• Dictionary of Canadian Biography, volume 1.
• Truman Capote – In Cold Blood
• William Crossing – The Dartmoor Worker
• L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp – Spirits, Stars, and Spells
• Edward Jay Epstein – Inquest
• Margery Fish – An All the Year Garden
• Michel Foucault – The Order of Things
• Ernst H. Gombrich – Norm and Form. Studies in the Art of the Renaissance
• A. E. Hotchner – Papa Hemingway
• P. J. Kavanagh – The Perfect Stranger
• Mark Lane – Rush to Judgment
• Alasdair MacIntyre – A Short History of Ethics
• Nancy Mitford – The Sun King
• María Moliner – Diccionario de uso del español
• Anaïs Nin – The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume I: 1931–1934
• Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. – A Thousand Days
• Hunter S. Thompson – '
• Frances Yates – The Art of Memory

  Births

• February 24 – Alain Mabanckou, Francophone Congolese novelist
• March 4 – Dav Pilkey, American author and illustrator
• April 12 – Jim Duffy, Irish political writer
• April 15 – Cressida Cowell, English children's writer
• April 20 – David Chalmers, Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist
• April 26 – Natasha Trethewey, American poet
• July 4 – Brian Selznick, American children's writer and illustrator
• July 21 – Sarah Waters, Welsh novelist
• October 19 – David Vann, Alaskan-born fiction writer and sailor
• November 17 – Jane Holland, English poet and novelist
• September 24 – Rhys Hughes, Welsh short-story writer
• December 27 – Chris Abani, Nigerian poet and novelist
• December 29 – Christian Kracht, Swiss novelist and journalist

• Helen Zahavi, English novelist and translator

  Deaths

• January 18 – Kathleen Norris, American novelist
• February 12 – Elio Vittorini, Italian novelist
• March 10 – Frank O'Connor, Irish short-story writer
• April 1 – Brian O'Nolan, Irish satirist
• April 2 – C. S. Forester, English historical novelist
• April 10 – Evelyn Waugh, English novelist, biographer and travel writer
• April 13 – Georges Duhamel, French novelist
• June 7
• *Yoshishige Abe, Japanese philosopher and politician
• *Jean Arp, Alsatian poet, sculptor and painter
• June 10 – Henry Treece, English children's historical novelist and poet
• June 30 – Margery Allingham, English crime novelist
• July 20 – Anne Beffort, Luxembourg literary writer and biographer
• July 25 – Frank O'Hara, American poet
• August 2 or 3 – Tristan Klingsor, French fantaisiste poet, painter and musician
• August 6 – Cordwainer Smith, American science fiction author
• August 12 – Artur Alliksaar, Estonian poet
• September 14- Dorothy Whipple, English novelist and children's writer
• September 25 – Mina Loy, English-born poet and artist
• September 28 – André Breton, French Surrealist poet and author
• October 30 – Yórgos Theotokás, Greek novelist
• November 26 – Siegfried Kracauer, German journalist and critic
• December 23 – Heimito von Doderer, Austrian author

  Awards

• Alfaguara Prize: Manuel Vicent, Pascua y naranjas
• Cholmondeley Award: Ted Walker, Stevie Smith
• Eric Gregory Award: Robin Fulton, Seamus Heaney, Hugo Williams
• See 1966 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
• Hugo Award: Frank Herbert, Dune and Roger Zelazny, ...And Call Me Conrad
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Christine Brooke-Rose, Such, and Aidan Higgins, Langrishe, Go Down
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Geoffrey Keynes, The Life of William Harvey
• Miles Franklin Award: Peter Mathers, Trap
• Nebula Award : Samuel R. Delany, Babel–17 and Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Borton de Treviño, I, Juan de Pareja
• Nobel Prize in Literature: Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Nelly Sachs
• Premio Nadal: Vicente Soto, La zancada
• Prix Goncourt: Edmonde Charles-Roux, Oublier Palerme
• Prix Médicis: Marie-Claire Blais, Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Katherine Anne Porter, Collected Stories
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Richard Eberhart, Selected Poems
• Viareggio Prize: Alfonso Gatto, La storia delle vittime