1960 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1960.
– Mervyn Griffith-Jones prosecuting in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case
Events
- February–October – Astounding magazine is renamed Analog.
- Spring – August Derleth launches the poetry magazine, Hawk and Whippoorwill in the United States.
- March 22 – Joan Henry's play Look on Tempests is premièred at the Comedy Theatre in London's West End, as the first play dealing openly with homosexuality to be passed for performance by the Lord Chamberlain in Britain.
- April 27 – Harold Pinter's play The Caretaker is premièred at the Arts Theatre Club in London's West End, transferring to the Duchess Theatre the following month, where it runs for 444 performances before departing from London for Broadway, Pinter's first significant commercial success. Alan Bates and Donald Pleasence star in the original production.
- July 11 – Harper Lee's Southern Gothic Bildungsroman To Kill a Mockingbird is published in the United States. She completes no later novel before her death in 2016.
- September 5 – Welsh poet Waldo Williams is imprisoned for six weeks for non-payment of income tax.
- October 3 – The Lilly Library is opened on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington, based on the collections of Josiah K. Lilly, Jr.
- October 6 and December 16 – Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, receives full screenwriting credit for his work on the films Spartacus and Exodus, released in the United States on these dates.
- c. October – Vasily Grossman submits his novel Life and Fate for publication, resulting in confiscation of the manuscript and all related material by the KGB in the Soviet Union.
- November – Rita Rait-Kovaleva's Russian translation of The Catcher in the Rye is published in the Soviet literary magazine Inostrannaya Literatura as Над пропастью во ржи.
- November 2 – R v Penguin Books Ltd: Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover in the United Kingdom.
- November 8 – Richard Wright delivers a polemical lecture, "The Situation of the Black Artist and Intellectual in the United States", to students and members of the American Church in Paris, a few weeks before his death there from heart attack aged 52.
- November 10 – Lady Chatterley's Lover sells 200,000 copies in one day following its publication in the U.K. since being banned in 1928.
- November 17 – Michael Foot is re-elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom and relinquishes the editorship of Tribune.
- November 19 – American novelist Norman Mailer stabs his wife, the artist Adele Morales.
- November 24 – Raymond Queneau founds Oulipo in France.
- Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal invents the artificial language Lincos, intended for communication with extraterrestrial intelligence.
- Francophone African scholar Djibril Tamsir Niane publishes the novelization Soundjata, ou l'Epopée du Manding in Paris, the first extended transcription of the 13th-century Epic of Sundiata from Mandinka oral tradition and its first translation into a Western language.
New books
Fiction
- Chinua Achebe – No Longer at Ease
- J. R. Ackerley – We Think the World of You
- Kingsley Amis – Take a Girl Like You
- Poul Anderson – The High Crusade
- Lynne Reid Banks – The L-Shaped Room
- Stan Barstow – A Kind of Loving
- John Barth – The Sot-Weed Factor
- Hamilton Basso – The Light Infantry Ball
- Augusto Roa Bastos – Hijo de hombre
- Charles Beaumont – Night Ride and Other Journeys
- Robert Bloch –
- Algis Budrys – Rogue Moon
- Anthony Burgess
- *The Doctor is Sick
- *The Right to an Answer
- Dino Buzzati – Larger than Life
- Morley Callaghan – The Many Colored Coat
- John Dickson Carr – In Spite of Thunder
- Carlo Cassola – Bébo's Girl
- Louis-Ferdinand Céline – North
- Agatha Christie – The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
- Barry Crump – A Good Keen Man
- Roald Dahl – Kiss Kiss
- L. Sprague de Camp
- *The Bronze God of Rhodes
- *The Glory That Was
- L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt – Wall of Serpents
- Carmen de Icaza – The House Across the Street
- Philip K. Dick
- *Dr. Futurity
- *Vulcan's Hammer
- E. L. Doctorow – Welcome to Hard Times
- Lawrence Durrell – Clea
- Henry Farrell – What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
- Gabriel Fielding – Through Streets Broad and Narrow
- Ian Fleming – For Your Eyes Only
- Per Anders Fogelström – City of My Dreams
- Graham Greene – A Burnt-Out Case
- Arthur Hailey – In High Places
- Donald Hamilton – Death of a Citizen
- Wilson Harris – Palace of the Peacock
- James Leo Herlihy – All Fall Down
- Vintilă Horia – God Was Born in Exile
- Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
- *al-Ḥurrīyah wa-al-Tūfān
- *Hunters in a Narrow Street
- Hammond Innes – The Doomed Oasis
- Greye La Spina – Invaders from the Dark
- Hubert Lampo – De komst van Joachim Stiller
- Jean Lartéguy – Les Centurions
- Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
- Clarice Lispector – Family Ties
- David Lodge – The Picturegoers
- John Masters – The Venus of Konpara
- Richard Matheson – The Beardless Warriors
- Judith Merrill – The Tomorrow People
- Walter M. Miller – A Canticle for Leibowitz
- Nancy Mitford – Don't Tell Alfred
- Alberto Moravia – La noia
- Edna O'Brien – The Country Girls
- Flannery O'Connor – The Violent Bear It Away
- Scott O'Dell – Island of the Blue Dolphins
- Wilder Penfield – The Torch
- Frederik Pohl – Drunkard's Walk
- Anthony Powell – Casanova's Chinese Restaurant
- James H. Schmitz – Agent of Vega
- Nevil Shute – Trustee from the Toolroom
- Clark Ashton Smith – The Abominations of Yondo
- Muriel Spark – The Ballad of Peckham Rye
- Alan Sillitoe – The General
- David Storey – This Sporting Life
- Rex Stout
- *Three at Wolfe's Door
- *Too Many Clients
- William Styron – Set This House on Fire
- John Updike – Rabbit, Run
- Irving Wallace – The Chapman Report
- John Edward Williams – Butcher's Crossing
- Raymond Williams – Border Country
- John Wyndham – Trouble with Lichen
Children and young people
- Hans Baumann – Ich zog mit Hannibal
- Sheila Burnford – The Incredible Journey
- P. D. Eastman – Are You My Mother?
- Michael Ende – Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver
- Alan Garner – The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
- Jean Craighead George – My Side of the Mountain
- Rumer Godden – Candy Floss
- Elinor Lyon – Cathie Runs Wild
- Scott O'Dell – Island of the Blue Dolphins
- Georges Prosper Remi – Tintin au Tibet
- Dr. Seuss
- *Green Eggs and Ham
- *One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
- Barbara Sleigh – The Kingdom of Carbonel
- María Elena Walsh
- *La Mona Jacinta
- *La Familia Polillal
- *Tutú Marambá
Drama
- Arthur Adamov – Le Printemps '71
- Tawfiq al-Hakim – El Sultan El-Ha'er
- Edward Albee – The Death of Bessie Smith and The Sandbox
- Samuel Beckett – The Old Tune
- Robert Bolt – A Man for All Seasons and The Tiger and the Horse
- Marc Camoletti – Boeing-Boeing
- Noël Coward – Waiting in the Wings
- Beverley Cross – Strip the Willow
- Witold Gombrowicz – The Marriage
- Eugène Ionesco – Rhinocéros
- Ira Levin – Critic's Choice
- Stephen Lewis and Theatre Workshop – Sparrers Can't Sing
- Bruce Mason – The End of the Golden Weather
- Tad Mosel – All the Way Home
- Harold Pinter
- *The Caretaker
- *The Room
- *A Night Out
- Terence Rattigan – Ross
- Barry Reckord – You in Your Small Corner
- Nelson Rodrigues – Beijo no Asfalto
- Wole Soyinka – A Dance of the Forests
- Gore Vidal – The Best Man
- Maruxa Vilalta – Los disorientados
- Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall – Billy Liar
- Orson Welles – Chimes at Midnight
- Tennessee Williams – Period of Adjustment
Poetry
Non-fiction
Births
- Malcolm Pryce, Anglo-Welsh detective novelist
- Alexis Stamatis, Greek novelist, playwright and poet
- D. J. Taylor, English literary critic and biographer
Deaths
- January 4 – Albert Camus, French Pied-Noir novelist
- January 9 – Elsie J. Oxenham, English girls' story writer
- January 12 – Nevil Shute, English-born novelist
- January 14 – Ralph Chubb, English poet, printer and artist
- January 28 – Zora Neale Hurston, African-American anthropologist and author
- May 30 – Boris Pasternak, Russian novelist, poet and translator
- July 27
- *Leonora Eyles, English feminist writer and novelist
- *Ethel Lilian Voynich, Anglo-Irish novelist and composer
- July 28 – Kassian Bogatyrets, Rusyn priest, politician and historian
- August 19 – Frances Cornford, English poet
- August 29 – Vicki Baum, Austrian-born novelist writing in German and English
- October 31 – H. L. Davis, American fiction writer and poet
- November 20 – Ya'akov Cohen, Russian-born Israeli poet
- November 28 – Richard Wright, African-American novelist and poet
- December 26 – Tetsuro Watsuji, Japanese philosopher and historian of ideas
Awards
- American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Criticism: E. B. White
- Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Ian Wolfram Cornwall, The Making of Man
- Eric Gregory Award: Christopher Levenson
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Rex Warner, Imperial Caesar
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Canon Adam Fox, The Life of Dean Inge
- Miles Franklin Award: Elizabeth O'Conner, The Irishman
- Newbery Medal for children's literature: Joseph Krumgold, Onion John
- Nobel Prize for literature: Saint-John Perse
- Premio Nadal: Ramiro Pinilla, Ciegas hormigas
- Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Jerome Weidman, George Abbott for book, Jerry Bock for music, and Sheldon Harnick for lyrics, Fiorello!
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Allen Drury, Advise and Consent
- Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: W. D. Snodgrass, Heart's Needle
- Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: John Betjeman