1970 in literature

Events

• January 16 – The Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus opens with a performance of Georg Büchner's Dantons Tod.
• June 17 – The première of David Storey's play Home at the Royal Court Theatre, London, is directed by Lindsay Anderson and stars Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson.
• July 7 – The English publisher Sir Allen Lane dies. On August 21 his paperback imprint Penguin Books is acquired by Pearson.
• August 27 – England's Royal Shakespeare Company introduces a revolutionary production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Peter Brook, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.
• November 20 – The playwright Fadil Paçrami becomes Chairman of the Parliament of Albania.
• November 25 – In Tokyo, the Japanese author and Tatenokai militia leader Yukio Mishima and others take over the headquarters of the Japan Self-Defense Forces in an attempted coup d'état. Mishima's speech commits seppuku when he fails to sway the public to his right-wing politics, which include restoring the powers of the Emperor.
• December 5 – Dario Fo premières his play Accidental Death of an Anarchist at Varese in Italy.

• Len Deighton's Bomber, set in 1943, appears this year in England as the first novel written on a word processor, an IBM MT/ST.
• The novel Deliverance of this year, by the American poet James Dickey, will be named in 2001 among the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by an editorial board of the American Modern Library.
• The English novelist Antony Burgess in Malta delivers an inflammatory lecture, "Obscenity and the Arts", that leads to him leaving the island. He has begun on a novel that will become Earthly Powers.
• An unexpurgated edition of John Cleland's Fanny Hill appears in the U.K. without legal challenge.
• Bohumil Hrabal's books Domácí úkoly and Poupata are suppressed by the communist authorities in Czechoslovakia.
• Magdalena Mouján's story "Gu ta Gutarrak" in Basque is suppressed by the authorities in Francoist Spain.

  New books

Fiction

• Dritëro Agolli – Komisari Memo
• Poul Anderson – Tau Zero
• Thomas Berger – Vital Parts
• Thomas Bernhard – The Lime Works
• Pierre Berton – The National Dream
• Jim Bouton – Ball Four
• Melvyn Bragg – A Place in England
• John Braine – Stay with Me Till Morning
• Wallace Breem – Eagle in the Snow
• Jimmy Breslin – The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight
• Taylor Caldwell – Great Lion of God
• John Dickson Carr – The Ghosts' High Noon
• Agatha Christie – Passenger to Frankfurt
• Robertson Davies – Fifth Business
• L. Sprague de Camp
• *The Reluctant Shaman and Other Fantastic Tales
• *Warlocks and Warriors
• Samuel R. Delany – The Fall of the Towers
• Michel Déon – Les Poneys sauvages
• James Dickey – Deliverance
• José Donoso – The Obscene Bird of Night
• Lawrence Durrell – Nunquam
• Vincent Eri – The Crocodile
• Nuruddin Farah – From a Crooked Rib
• J. G. Farrell – Troubles
• Juan Goytisolo – Count Julian
• Anne Hébert – Kamouraska
• Ernest Hemingway – Islands in the Stream
• Susan Hill – I'm the King of the Castle
• Pamela Hansford Johnson – The Honours Board
• Uwe Johnson – Anniversaries. From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl
• Anna Kavan – Julia and the Bazooka
• Jaan Kross – Between Three Plagues
• Halldór Laxness – Innansveitarkronika
• Ira Levin – This Perfect Day
• Mario Levrero – :es:La ciudad |La ciudad
• H. P. Lovecraft – The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions
• John D. MacDonald – The Long Lavender Look
• Eric Malpass – Oh My Darling Daughter
• Yukio Mishima – The Decay of the Angel
• Brian Moore – Fergus
• Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye
• Larry Niven – Ringworld
• John Jay Osborn, Jr. – The Paper Chase
• Mary Renault – Fire from Heaven
• Kurban Said – Ali and Nino
• Erich Segal – Love Story
• Sidney Sheldon – The Naked Face
• Clark Ashton Smith – Other Dimensions
• Manuel Scorza – Drums for Rancas
• Muriel Spark – The Driver's Seat
• Mary Stewart – The Crystal Cave
• Alan Sillitoe – A Start in Life
• Leon Uris – QB VII
• Jack Vance – The Pnume
• Gore Vidal – Two Sisters
• Patrick White – The Vivisector
• Venedikt Yerofeyev – Moscow-Petushki
• Roger Zelazny – Nine Princes in Amber''

  Children and young people

• Richard Bach – Jonathan Livingston Seagull
• Nina Bawden – The Birds on the Trees
• Judy Blume – Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret
• John Burningham – Mr Gumpy's Outing
• Betsy Byars – Summer of the Swans
• John Christopher – The Guardians
• Roald Dahl – Fantastic Mr Fox
• Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen – The God Beneath the Sea
• Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Devils and Demons
• Dr. Seuss – Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?
• Ruth Park
• *The Muddle-Headed Wombat in the Springtime
• *The Muddle-Headed Wombat on the River
• Bill Peet
• *The Whingdingdilly
• *The Wump World
• Maurice Sendak – In the Night Kitchen
• Isaac Bashevis Singer – A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw
• E. B. White – The Trumpet Of The Swan

  Drama

• Ama Ata Aidoo – Anowa
• Robert Bolt – Vivat! Vivat Regina!
• Dario Fo – Accidental Death of an Anarchist
• Michael Frayn – The Two of Us
• Trevor Griffiths – Occupations
• Christopher Hampton – The Philanthropist
• Lorraine Hansberry – Les Blancs
• Welcome Msomi – uMabatha
• Terence Rattigan – A Bequest to the Nation
• Anthony Shaffer – Sleuth
• Alexander Vampilov – Duck Hunting
• Derek Walcott – Dream on Monkey Mountain

  Poetry

• L. Sprague de Camp – Demons and Dinosaurs
• Ted Hughes – Crow

  Non-fiction

• Theodor W. Adorno – Aesthetic Theory
• Hannah Arendt – On Violence
• Roland Barthes – S/Z
• Dee Brown – Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
• James MacGregor Burns – '
• Henri Charrière – Papillon
• Elizabeth David – Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen
• Edward De Bono – Lateral Thinking: creativity step by step
• August Derleth – '
• Michel Foucault – Les Mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines
• Germaine Greer – The Female Eunuch
• Helene Hanff – 84 Charing Cross Road
• Arthur Janov – The Primal Scream
• Christopher Lloyd – The Well-Tempered Garden
• Norman Mailer – Of a Fire on the Moon
• Dumas Malone – Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801-1805
• Mahathir bin Mohamad – The Malay Dilemma
• Kate Millet – Sexual Politics
• Nancy Mitford – Frederick the Great
• Robin Morgan –
• Harold Perkin – The Age of the Railway
• J. B. Priestley – The Edwardians
• Albert Speer – Inside the Third Reich
• Alvin Toffler – Future Shock

  Births

• January 25 – Stephen Chbosky, American novelist and screenwriter
• March 6 – Simona Vinci, Italian fiction writer
• March 12 – Dave Eggers, American writer, editor and publisher
• March 20 – Michele Jaffe, American author
• March 26 – Martin McDonagh, British-born Irish playwright
• May 20 – Dorthe Nors, Danish fiction writer
• May 26 – Alex Garland, English novelist
• June 6 – Sarah Dessen, American novelist
• July 22 – Doug Johnstone, Scottish crime fiction writer
• September 10 – Phaswane Mpe, South African novelist
• September 16 – Nick Sagan, American novelist and screenwriter
• October 27 – Jonathan Stroud, English fantasy writer
• November 7 – Chris Adrian, American novelist
• November 24 – Marlon James, Jamaican novelist
• November 27 – Han Kang, South Korean novelist

• Nathan Englander, American fiction writer
• Neel Mukherjee, Indian novelist
• Faruk Šehić, Bosnian poet and fiction writer

  Deaths

• January 10 – Charles Olson, American modernist poet
• January 29 – B. H. Liddell Hart, English military historian
• February 2 – Bertrand Russell, English philosopher
• February 20 – Sophie Treadwell, American dramatist and journalist
• March 11 – Erle Stanley Gardner, American writer
• March 21 – Marlen Haushofer, Austrian novelist
• March 29 – Vera Brittain, English novelist, memoirist and poet
• April 11 – John O'Hara, American novelist
• May 12 – Nelly Sachs, Jewish German poet and dramatist
• June 2 – Giuseppe Ungaretti, Italian modernist poet and writer
• June 3 – Ruth Sawyer, American children's writer and novelist
• June 7 – E. M. Forster, English novelist
• June 16 – Elsa Triolet, French novelist
• July 15 – Eric Berne, Canadian-born psychiatrist and author
• September 1 – François Mauriac, French novelist
• September 28 – John Dos Passos, American novelist
• October 18 – Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Irish language writer
• November 23 – Alf Prøysen, Norwegian author, musician and children's writer
• November 25 – Yukio Mishima, Japanese author

• Racey Helps, English children's author and illustrator

  Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Canada

• See 1970 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

  France

• Prix Goncourt: Michel Tournier, Le Roi des Aulnes
• Prix Médicis French: Camille Bourniquel, Sélinonte ou la Chambre impériale
• Prix Médicis International: Luigi Malerba, Saut de la mort

  United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen, The God Beneath the Sea
• Cholmondeley Award: Kathleen Raine, Douglas Livingstone, Edward Brathwaite
• Eric Gregory Award: Helen Frye, Paul Mills, John Mole, Brian Morse, Alan Perry, Richard Tibbitts
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Lily Powell, The Bird of Paradise
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Roy Fuller

  United States

• Hugo Award: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
• Nebula Award: Larry Niven, Ringworld
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: William H. Armstrong, Sounder
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Charles Gordone, No Place To Be Somebody
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Jean Stafford, Collected Stories
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Richard Howard, Untitled Subjects

  Elsewhere

• Miles Franklin Award: Dal Stivens, A Horse of Air
• Alfaguara Prize: Carlos Droguett, Todas esas muertes
• Premio Nadal: Jesús Fernández Santos, Libro de las memorias de las cosas
• Viareggio Prize: Nello Saito, Dentro e fuori