1985 in literature

Events

• February 25 – Sue Limb's parodic pastiche of the Lake Poets, The Wordsmiths at Gorsemere, begins broadcasting on BBC Radio 4 in the U.K.
• 4 July – The 13-year-old Ruth Lawrence gains a first in mathematics at the University of Oxford, becoming the youngest British person ever to earn a first-class degree and the youngest known graduate of the university.
• August 11 – A memorial to the poet Hugh MacDiarmid is unveiled near his home at Langholm, Scotland.

• Microsoft Corporation releases the first version of its computer operating system: Windows 1.0.
• The compact disc is introduced to the American public by the recording industry.
• Three notable novels in English by female authors are published during the year: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Jilly Cooper's Riders, the first of the Rutshire Chronicles, and Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.

  New books

Fiction

• Isaac Asimov – Robots and Empire
• Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid's Tale
• Jean M. Auel – The Mammoth Hunters
• Iain Banks – Walking on Glass
• Clive Barker – The Damnation Game
• Greg Bear
• *Blood Music
• *Eon
• M. C. Beaton – Death of a Gossip
• Thomas Bernhard – Old Masters: a comedy
• Anthony Burgess – The Kingdom of the Wicked
• Orson Scott Card – Ender's Game
• Jilly Cooper – Rivals
• Bernard Cornwell – Sharpe's Honour
• Don DeLillo – White Noise
• Friedrich Dürrenmatt – The Execution of Justice
• Bret Easton Ellis – Less Than Zero
• Steve Erickson – Days Between Stations
• John Fowles – A Maggot
• Carlos Fuentes – The Old Gringo
• William Gaddis – Carpenter's Gothic
• Gabriel García Márquez – Love in the Time of Cholera
• Jane Gardam – Crusoe's Daughter
• Alasdair Gray – '
• Graham Greene – The Tenth Man
• Béla Hamvas – Karnevál
• Amy Hempel – Reasons to Live
• Frank Herbert – '
• Dương Thu Hương – Hành trình ngày thơ ấu
• John Irving – The Cider House Rules
• Tahar Ben Jelloun – The Sand Child
• Ernst Jünger – A Dangerous Encounter
• Garrison Keillor – Lake Wobegon Days
• Stephen King – Skeleton Crew
• László Krasznahorkai – Satantango
• Derek Lambert – The Man Who Was Saturday
• Ursula K. Le Guin – Always Coming Home
• Doris Lessing – The Good Terrorist
• H. P. Lovecraft
• *At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels
• *The Dunwich Horror and Others
• Richard A. Lupoff – Lovecraft's Book
• Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian
• Larry McMurtry – Lonesome Dove
• John D. MacDonald – The Lonely Silver Rain
• Naguib Mahfouz – Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth
• James A. Michener – Texas
• Brian Moore – Black Robe
• Bharati Mukherjee – Darkness
• Iris Murdoch – The Good Apprentice
• Orhan Pamuk – The White Castle
• Ellis Peters – An Excellent Mystery
• Caryl Phillips – The Final Passage
• Peter Pohl – Johnny, My Friend
• Guy Rewenig – Hannert dem Atlantik
• Carl Sagan – Contact
• Nava Semel – Kova Zekhukhit
• Sidney Sheldon – If Tomorrow Comes
• Patrick Süskind – Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
• Antonio Tabucchi – Little Misunderstandings of No Importance
• Sue Townsend – Rebuilding Coventry
• Anne Tyler – The Accidental Tourist
• Andrew Vachss – Flood
• Kurt Vonnegut – Galápagos
• Jeanette Winterson – Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
• Roger Zelazny – Trumps of Doom

  Children and young people

• Chester Aaron – Out of Sight, Out of Mind
• Pamela Allen – A Lion in the Night
• Chris Van Allsburg – The Polar Express
• Frank Asch – I Can Blink
• Robert Cormier – Beyond the Chocolate War
• Roald Dahl – The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
• Virginia Hamilton –
• Patricia MacLachlan – Sarah, Plain and Tall
• Laura Numeroff – If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
• Pat O'Shea – The Hounds of the Morrigan
• Cynthia Rylant – A Blue-Eyed Daisy
• Jacqueline Wilson – How to Survive Summer Camp
• Elizabeth Winthrop – The Castle in the Attic
• Bill Peet – The Kweeks of Kookatumdee

  Drama

• Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière – Mahabharata
• Christopher Hampton – Les Liaisons Dangereuses
• David Hare and Howard Brenton – Pravda
• Larry Kramer – The Normal Heart
• Wallace Shawn – Aunt Dan and Lemon
• Sam Shepard – A Lie of the Mind
• Neil Simon – Biloxi Blues
• August Wilson – Fences

  Poetry

• Carol Ann Duffy – Standing Female Nude

  Non-fiction

• Svetlana Alexievich – U voyny — ne zhenskoye litso
• Bill Bryson – The Palace under the Alps and Over 200 Other Unusual, Unspoiled and Infrequently Visited Spots in 16 European Countries
• Roger Caron – Bingo! The Horrifying Eyewitness Account of a Prison Riot
• Allen Carr – The Easy Way to Stop Smoking
• Timothy J. Cooney - Telling Right From Wrong
• Michael Denton – '
• Elaine Dundy – Elvis and Gladys
• Julien Gracq – The Shape of a City
• G. L. Harriss – Henry V: The Practice of Kingship
• Ernest Hemingway – The Dangerous Summer
• David Lowenthal – The Past Is a Foreign Country
• Walter A. McDougall – '
• Tim O'Brien – The Nuclear Age
• Priscilla Beaulieu Presley – Elvis and Me
• David Robinson –
• Oliver Sacks – The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
• Roger Scruton – Thinkers of the New Left
• Gary Soto – Living Up the Street

  Births

• April 24 – Alexander Zeldin, British playwright and director
• September 24 – Eleanor Catton, New Zealand novelist
• September 30 – Téa Obreht, Yugoslav-born American novelist writing in English

  Deaths

• January 1 – Sigerson Clifford, Irish poet, playwright, and civil servant
• January 5 – Alexis Rannit, Estonian-born American poet and critic
• February 6 – James Hadley Chase, English thriller novelist
• February 19 – Carl Joachim Hambro, Norwegian novelist, essayist and philologist
• March 15 – Radha Krishna Choudhary, Indian historian and philosopher
• April 4 – Kate Roberts, Welsh writer
• April 7 – Carl Schmitt, German political theorist
• April 17 – Basil Bunting, English poet
• April 25 – Uku Masing, Estonian religious philosopher, linguist and writer
• May 12 – Josephine Miles, American poet and literary critic
• May 18 – Hedley Bull, Australian economist
• May 25 – Robert Nathan, American novelist and poet
• June 8 – Hu Feng, Chinese novelist
• June 16 – Ernst Orvil, Norwegian novelist, poet and playwright
• July 16 – Heinrich Böll, German novelist, Nobel laureate
• July 29 – Judah Waten, Australian novelist
• August 14 – Alfred Hayes, English-born American novelist, poet and screenwriter
• August 30 – Taylor Caldwell, English-born American novelist
• September 17 – Fran Ross, African American satirist
• September 22 – D. J. Opperman, South African Afrikaans poet
• October 1 – E. B. White, American children's writer and writer on style
• October 11 – Alex La Guma, South African novelist and political activist
• October 24 – László Bíró, Hungarian journalist and inventor
• October 31 – Nikos Engonopoulos, Greek poet
• November 3 – J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, English historian
• November 4 – Hilda Vaughan, Welsh novelist and short story writer
• November 11 – James Hanley, English-born novelist and dramatist of Irish extraction
• November 16 – Gulshan Nanda, Indian novelist and screenwriter
• November 25
• *Geoffrey Grigson, English poet and critic
• *Elsa Morante, Italian novelist
• November 27 – Fernand Braudel, French historian
• December 2 – Philip Larkin, English poet
• December 7 – Robert Graves, English novelist, poet and critic

  Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Claude Simon

  Australia

• The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: no award given out this year
• C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Kevin Hart, Your Shadow; Rosemary Dobson, The Three Fates
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, Kevin Hart, Your Shadow
• Mary Gilmore Prize: Doris Brett, The Truth about Unicorns
• Miles Franklin Award: Christopher Koch, The Doubleman

  Canada

• See 1985 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

  France

• Prix Goncourt: Yann Queffélec, Les Noces barbares
• Prix Médicis French: Michel Braudeau, Naissance d'une passion
• Prix Médicis International: Joseph Heller, God Knows

  Spain

• Miguel de Cervantes Prize: Gonzalo Torrente Ballester

  United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Keri Hulme, The Bone People
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Kevin Crossley-Holland, Storm
• Cholmondeley Award: Dannie Abse, Peter Redgrove, Brian Taylor
• Eric Gregory Award: Graham Mort, Adam Thorpe, Pippa Little, James Harpur, Simon North, Julian May
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Robert Edric, Winter Garden
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: David Nokes, Jonathan Swift: A Hypocrite Reversed
• Newdigate Prize: Robert Twigger
• Whitbread Best Book Award: Douglas Dunn, Elegies

  United States

• Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Liz Rosenberg, The Fire Music
• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry, Robert Penn Warren
• Frost Medal: Robert Penn Warren
• Nebula Award: Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Robin McKinley, The Hero and the Crown
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: James Lapine for book; Stephen Sondheim for music and lyrics, Sunday in the Park With George
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Alison Lurie – Foreign Affairs
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Carolyn Kizer: Yin
• Whiting Awards :

  Elsewhere

• Premio Nadal: Pau Faner Coll – Flor de sal