1977 in literature

Events

• February 20 – An episode of Doctor on the Go, co-written by Douglas Adams and Graham Chapman, marks the beginning of Adams' career as a writer for BBC radio.
• March 4 – Andrés Caicedo's novel ¡Que viva la música! is published in his hometown of Cali, Colombia. This afternoon he commits suicide by overdose, aged 25.
• July 11 – The English magazine Gay News is found guilty of blasphemous libel for publishing a homoerotic poem, "The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name" by James Kirkup, in a case at the Old Bailey in London, on behalf of Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers and Listeners Association. John Mortimer appears for the defence. It is the first such prosecution since 1921 and will be the last before the offense is abolished in 2008.
• September 15 – Christopher Tolkien, with Guy Gavriel Kay, completes and publishes his late father's work, The Silmarillion.
• Fall – Philosophy and Literature appears as an academic journal founded at Johns Hopkins University. It explores connections between literary and philosophical studies, presenting ideas on the aesthetics of literature, critical theory, and the philosophical interpretation of literature.
• October – Norman Mailer punches Gore Vidal in the face at a New York City party.
• December – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii are detained in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, Kenya, six weeks after the première of their political Kikuyu language play Ngaahika Ndeenda at the open-air Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre. While imprisoned, Ngũgĩ will write the first modern novel in Kikuyu, Devil on the Cross, on prison-issue toilet paper.

• V. S. Naipaul declines the offer of a CBE.

  New books

Fiction

• Ales Adamovich, Janka Bryl and Uladzimir Kalesnik – Я из огненной деревни
• Jorge Amado – Tieta do Agreste
• Jay Anson – The Amityville Horror
• Margaret Atwood – Dancing Girls
• Richard Bach – Illusions
• Richard Bachman – Rage
• Leland Bardwell – Girl on a Bicycle
• Caroline Blackwood – Great Granny Webster
• Gerd Brantenberg – Egalias døtre
• Terry Brooks – The Sword of Shannara
• Andrés Caicedo – ¡Que viva la música!
• J. M. Coetzee – In the Heart of the Country
• Robin Cook – Coma
• Robert Coover – The Public Burning
• Basil Copper – And Afterward, the Dark
• L. Sprague de Camp
• *The Hostage of Zir
• *The Queen of Zamba
• L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter – Conan of Aquilonia
• Michel Déon – The Foundling's War
• Philip K. Dick – A Scanner Darkly
• Joan Didion – A Book of Common Prayer
• Buchi Emecheta – The Slave Girl
• Howard Fast – The Immigrants
• Timothy Findley – The Wars
• Leon Forrest – The Bloodworth Orphans
• John Fowles – Daniel Martin
• Marilyn French – The Women's Room
• Pauline Gedge – Child of the Morning
• Günter Grass – The Flounder
• Mark Helprin – Refiner's Fire
• Shirley Hughes – Dogger
• Hammond Innes – The Big Footprints
• Erica Jong – How to Save Your Own Life
• Elias Khoury – الجبل الصغير
• Stephen King – The Shining
• Derek Lambert – Blackstone on Broadway
• John le Carré – The Honourable Schoolboy
• Ernest Lehman – The French Atlantic Affair
• Robert Ludlum – The Chancellor Manuscript
• Brian Lumley – The Horror at Oakdeene and Others
• George R. R. Martin – Dying of the Light
• Colleen McCullough – The Thorn Birds
• Larry McMurtry – Terms of Endearment
• Robert Merle – Fortune de France
• Toni Morrison – Song of Solomon
• Iris Murdoch – The Sea, the Sea
• Péter Nádas – The End of a Family Story
• Patrick O'Brian – The Mauritius Command
• Ellis Peters – A Morbid Taste for Bones
• Barbara Pym – Quartet in Autumn
• Ruth Rendell – A Judgement in Stone
• Alun Richards – Ennal's Point
• Harold Robbins – Dreams Die First
• Paul Scott – Staying On
• Erich Segal – Oliver's Story
• Irwin Shaw – Beggarman, Thief
• M. P. Shiel – Prince Zaleski and Cummings King Monk
• Sidney Sheldon – Bloodline
• Elizabeth Smart – A Bonus
• Botho Strauß – Devotion
• Remy Sylado – Gali Lobang Gila Lobang
• Craig Thomas – Firefox
• J. R. R. Tolkien – The Silmarillion
• Melvin Van Peebles – The True American, A Folk Fable
• Mario Vargas Llosa – Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
• P. G. Wodehouse – Sunset at Blandings
• Christopher Wood – James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me

  Children and young people

• Richard Adams – The Plague Dogs
• Sandra Boynton – Hippos Go Berserk!
• Helen Cresswell – The Bagthorpe Saga
• Willi Glasauer – Le Journal Enseveli
• Rumer Godden – The Rocking Horse Secret
• Diana Wynne Jones – Charmed Life
• Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Enchantments and Curses
• C. L. Moore – Black God's Shadow
• Bill Peet – Big Bad Bruce
• Maurice Sendak – Seven Little Monsters
• Barbara Smucker – Underground to Canada
• Peter Spier – Noah's Ark

  Drama

• Robert Bolt – State of Revolution
• Roger Hall – Middle-Age Spread
• Tony Harrison – The Mysteries
• Mike Leigh – Abigail's Party
• Heiner Müller – Die Hamletmaschine
• Mary O'Malley – Once a Catholic
• Dennis Potter – Brimstone and Treacle
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii – Ngaahika Ndeenda

  Poetry

• Frank Belknap Long – In Mayan Splendor

  Non-fiction

• Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. – '
• Bruce Chatwin – In Patagonia
• Robert Coles – Children of Crisis
• *vol. 4, Eskimos, Indians, Chicanos
• *vol. 5, '
• Esther Deans – Esther Deans' Gardening Book: Growing Without Digging
• Len Deighton – '
• Patrick Leigh Fermor – A Time Of Gifts
• Jim Fixx – The Complete Book of Running
• Michael Herr – Dispatches
• Edith Holden – The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady
• R. C. Majumdar – The History and Culture of the Indian People, vol. 11
• Bharati Mukherjee and Clark Blaise – Days and Nights in Calcutta
• V. S. Naipaul – '
• David M. Potter – The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861
• E. F. Schumacher – A Guide for the Perplexed
• A. T. Q. Stewart – The Narrow Ground: Aspects of Ulster 1609–1969
• Lawrence Stone – The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800
• Peter Ustinov – Dear Me

  Births

• February 21 – Jonathan Safran Foer, American novelist
• August 24 – John Green, American author and YouTube vlogger
• October 16 – Laura Wade, English playwright
• September 15 – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian novelist
• November 12 – Richelle Mead, American young-adult novelist

• Tena Štivičić, Croatian playwright

  Deaths

• January 14 – Anaïs Nin, French-Cuban erotic novelist and diarist
• February 27 – John Dickson Carr, American crime novelist
• March 4
• *Andrés Caicedo, Colombian novelist and cinéaste
• *Alexandru Ivasiuc, Romanian novelist
• March 15 – Hubert Aquin, French Canadian novelist, essayist and political activist )
• April 7 – Jim Thompson, American fiction writer
• April 11 – Jacques Prévert, French poet and screenwriter
• May 9 – James Jones, American novelist
• July 2 – Vladimir Nabokov, Russian/American novelist
• August 26 – H. A. Rey, German-born American children's writer and illustrator
• September 4 – E. F. Schumacher, German-born economist
• September 12 – Robert Lowell, American poet
• October 27 – James M. Cain, American novelist and newspaperman
• November 10 – Dennis Wheatley, English occult novelist
• November 30
• *Miloš Crnjanski, Serbian poet and novelist
• *Terence Rattigan, English dramatist
• December 9 – Clarice Lispector, Brazilian novelist
• December 22 – Frank Thiess, German novelist

• William Glynne-Jones, Welsh novelist and children's writer
• Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Argentine comic book writer
• Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari, Punjabi novelist

  Awards

• Nobel Prize in Literature: Vicente Aleixandre

  Canada

• 1977 Governor General's Awards

  France

• Prix Goncourt: Didier Decoin, John l'enfer
• Prix Médicis French: Michel Butel, L'Autre Amour
• Prix Médicis International: Héctor Bianciotti, Le Traité des saisons – Argentina

  Spain

• Premio Miguel de Cervantes: Alejo Carpentier

  United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Paul Mark Scott, Staying On
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Gene Kemp, The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler
• Eric Gregory Award: Tony Flynn, Michael Vince, David Cooke, Douglas Marshall, Melissa Murray
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: George Painter, Chateaubriand: Volume 1 – The Longed-For Tempests
• Knighthood for services to the theatre: Peter Hall
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Norman Nicholson
• Whitbread Best Book Award: Beryl Bainbridge, Injury Time

  United States

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for the Novel, Saul Bellow
• Nebula Award: Frederik Pohl, Gateway
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Mildred D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
• Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science: Gerard K. O'Neill,
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Michael Cristofer, The Shadow Box
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: James Merrill, Divine Comedies
• Pulitzer Prize for History: David M. Potter: The Impending Crisis, 1841-1861.
• Pulitzer Prize for Biography: John E. Mack: A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence

  Rest of the World

• Miles Franklin Award: Ruth Park, Swords and Crowns and Rings
• Premio Nadal: José Asenjo Sedano, Conversación sobre la guerra
• Viareggio Prize: Davide Lajolo, Veder l'erba dalla parte delle radici