1964 in literature

Events

• January 10 – Federico García Lorca's play The House of Bernarda Alba, completed just before his assassination in 1936, receives its first performance in Spain.
• January 12 – The Royal Shakespeare Company Experimental Group open a four-week Theatre of Cruelty season at the LAMDA Theatre Club, London.
• January 23 – Arthur Miller's play After the Fall opens at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre Off-Broadway in New York City, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Jason Robards and Kazan's wife Barbara Loden. A semi-autobiographical work, it arouses controversy over Miller's portrayal of his late ex-wife Marilyn Monroe.
• February 11 – A London retailer, R. v. Gold, is found guilty under section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 of stocking a 1963 edition of John Cleland's novel Fanny Hill.
• February 28 – The Dutch comic artist and writer Jan Cremer publishes his autobiographical novel I, Jan Cremer, which provokes controversy for its frank content and style and becomes a bestseller.
• April 23 – Shakespeare Birthplace Trust opens the Shakespeare Centre in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, to house its library and research facilities.
• April 29 – Peter Weiss's play with music Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade premières at the Schiller Theater in West Berlin. In August it receives its English-language première by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London at the Aldwych Theatre.
• May – Michael Moorcock becomes editor of the science fiction magazine New Worlds.
• May 6 – Joe Orton's black comedy Entertaining Mr Sloane premières at the New Arts Theatre in London with Dudley Sutton in the title rôle.
• May 29 – Le Théâtre du Soleil is established as a collective avant-garde stage ensemble by Ariane Mnouchkine, Philippe Léotard and fellow students of L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. It opens with Les Petits Bourgeois, at Théâtre Mouffetard.
• June 22 – Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer is allowed to circulate legally in the United States by the U.S. Supreme Court three decades after its publication in France, after the U.S. Supreme Court, in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, cites Jacobellis v. Ohio and overrules state court findings that the book is obscene.
• August 11 – Ian Fleming walks to the Royal St George's Golf Club in Canterbury, Kent, for lunch and then dines at his hotel with friends, collapsing shortly afterward with a heart attack. His last recorded words are an apology to the ambulance drivers:"I am sorry to trouble you chaps. I don't know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the roads these days." Fleming dies next day.
• September – The Everyman Theatre opens in Liverpool, England.
• September 28 – Brian Friel's play Philadelphia, Here I Come! is premièred at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin.
• October 28 – The Wednesday Play is broadcast for the first time on BBC1 television, presenting original one-off contemporary social drama, mostly written for television.

• W. H. Auden describes the supernatural "Vision of Agape" he experienced in June 1933 in his preface to the anthology The Protestant Mystics.

  New books

Fiction

• Chinua Achebe – Arrow of God
• José Agustín – La Tumba
• Lloyd Alexander – The Book of Three
• Poul Anderson – Time and Stars
• Louis Auchincloss – The Rector of Justin
• J. G. Ballard – The Terminal Beach
• Simone de Beauvoir – A Very Easy Death
• Saul Bellow – Herzog
• Thomas Berger – Little Big Man
• Leigh Brackett
• *People of the Talisman
• *The Secret of Sinharat
• Ray Bradbury – The Machineries of Joy
• John Braine – The Jealous God
• Richard Brautigan – A Confederate General From Big Sur
• John Brunner
• *To Conquer Chaos
• *The Whole Man
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan and the Madman
• William S. Burroughs – Nova Express
• J. Ramsey Campbell – The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants
• John Dickson Carr – Most Secret
• Agatha Christie – A Caribbean Mystery
• Louis-Ferdinand Céline –
• A. J. Cronin – A Song of Sixpence
• Len Deighton – Funeral in Berlin
• August Derleth – Over the Edge
• Michel Droit – Le Retour
• Ralph Ellison – Shadow and Act
• Ian Fleming – You Only Live Twice
• Max Frisch – Gantenbein
• Daniel F. Galouye – Simulacron-3
• William Golding – The Spire
• Bohumil Hrabal – Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age
• Carl Jacobi – Portraits in Moonlight
• B. S. Johnson – Albert Angelo
• Ken Kesey – Sometimes a Great Notion
• Richard E. Kim – The Martyred
• Etienne Leroux – Een vir Azazel
• Liang Yusheng – Datang Youxia Zhuan
• Clarice Lispector – The Passion According to G.H.
• H. P. Lovecraft – At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels
• John D. MacDonald
• *The Deep Blue Good-by
• *A Purple Place For Dying
• *The Quick Red Fox
• Iris Murdoch – The Italian Girl
• Sterling North – Rascal
• Vladimir Nabokov – The Defense
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – Weep Not, Child
• Kenzaburō Ōe – A Personal Matter
• Anthony Powell – The Valley of Bones
• Mario Puzo – Fortunate Pilgrim
• Ellery Queen – And On the Eighth Day
• Jean Ray – Saint-Judas-de-la-nuit
• Ruth Rendell – From Doon With Death
• Karl Ristikivi – Imede saar
• Hubert Selby Jr. – Last Exit to Brooklyn
• Ryōtarō Shiba – Moeyo Ken
• Howard Spring – Winds of the Day
• Clark Ashton Smith – Tales of Science and Sorcery
• Wilbur Smith – When the Lion Feeds
• Rex Stout
• *Trio for Blunt Instruments
• *A Right to Die
• Leon Uris – Armageddon
• Jack Vance
• *The Houses of Iszm
• *The Killing Machine
• *Star King
• Gore Vidal – Julian
• Irving Wallace – The Man
• Raymond Williams – Second Generation
• Maia Wojciechowska – Shadow of a Bull

  Children and young people

• Nina Bawden – On the Run
• Christianna Brand – Nurse Matilda
• Hesba Fay Brismead – Pastures of the Blue Crane
• Jeff Brown – Flat Stanley
• Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Louise Fitzhugh – Harriet the Spy
• Ian Fleming –
• Rumer Godden – Home is the Sailor
• Irene Hunt – Across Five Aprils
• Ervin Lázár – A kisfiú meg az oroszlánok
• Rhoda Levine – Harrison Loved His Umbrella
• Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Dwarfs
• J. P. Martin – Uncle
• Jean Merrill – The Pushcart War
• Ruth Park – The Muddle-Headed Wombat on Holiday
• Bill Peet
• *Ella
• *Randy's Dandy Lions
• Shel Silverstein – The Giving Tree
• Miriam Young – Miss Suzy

  Drama

• Ama Ata Aidoo – The Dilemma of a Ghost
• David Campton – Dead and Alive
• Brian Friel – Philadelphia Here I Come!
• Girish Karnad – Tughlaq
• Robert Lowell – The Old Glory
• Arthur Miller
• *After the Fall
• *Incident At Vichy
• Joe Orton – Entertaining Mr Sloane
• Alexander Vampilov – Farewell in June
• Peter Weiss – Marat/Sade

  Poetry

• Joseph Payne Brennan – Nightmare Need
• Leonard Cohen – Flowers for Hitler
• Mehr Lal Soni Zia Fatehabadi – Husn-e-Ghazal
• Philip Larkin – The Whitsun Weddings
• Oodgeroo Noonuccal – We are Going: Poems
• Ion Vinea – Ora fântânilor
• Donald Wandrei – Poems for Midnight
• Up The Line To Death: The War Poets 1914-1918

  Non-fiction

• Nelson Algren – Conversations with Nelson Algren
• Eric Berne – Games People Play
• Allan Bloom with Harry V. Jaffa – Shakespeare's Politics
• L. Sprague de Camp
• *Ancient Ruins and Archaeology
• *Elephant
• Hilda Ellis Davidson – Gods and Myths of Northern Europe
• Aileen Fox – South West England
• Dick Gregory – Nigger: An Autobiography
• Ernest Hemingway – A Moveable Feast
• Michael Holroyd – Hugh Kingsmill: A Critical Biography
• John F. Kennedy – A Nation of Immigrants
• Martin Luther King, Jr. – Why We Can't Wait
• Jan Kott – Shakespeare, Our Contemporary
• Violette Leduc – La Bâtarde
• Herbert Marcuse – One-Dimensional Man
• Marshall McLuhan – Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
• V. S. Naipaul – An Area of Darkness
• Sayyid Qutb – Ma'alim fi al-Tariq
• Ayn Rand – The Virtue of Selfishness
• The Warren Commission – The Warren Report
• Evelyn Waugh – A Little Learning

  Births

• January 26 – Peter Braunstein, American journalist and playwright
• February 23 – Joseph O'Neill, Irish-born writer
• March 7 – Bret Easton Ellis, American novelist, screenwriter and short-story writer
• March 21 – Kaori Ekuni, Japanese novelist
• June 5 – Rick Riordan, American young-adult author
• June 7 – Petr Hruška, Czech poet
• June 11 – Dan Chaon, American novelist and short-story writer
• July 3 – Joanne Harris, English novelist
• July 7 – Karina Galvez, Ecuadorian poet
• July 16 – Anne Provoost, Flemish novelist and essayist
• September 9 – Aleksandar Hemon, Bosnian novelist and short-story writer
• September 19 – Patrick Marber, English comedian, playwright, director, puppeteer, actor and screenwriter
• September 25
• * Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Spanish novelist
• * Gareth Thompson, English children's author
• December 26 – Elizabeth Kostova, American author
• December 29 – Christine Leunens, American-born Belgian-New Zealand novelist

• Ros Barber, English novelist and poet
• Ge Fei, Chinese novelist
• Mai Jia, Chinese novelist
• Nell Zink, American novelist

  Deaths

• January 17 – T. H. White, English novelist
• February 3 – Clarence Irving Lewis, American philosopher
• February 25 – Grace Metalious, American novelist
• March 17 – Păstorel Teodoreanu, Romanian poet and satirist
• March 20 – Brendan Behan, Irish playwright, poet and writer
• April 14 – Rachel Carson, American environmentalist
• April 18 – Ben Hecht, American screenwriter
• April 23 – Karl Polanyi, Austro-Hungarian economic historian and social philosopher
• May 13 – Hamilton Basso, American novelist and journalist
• July 6 – Ion Vinea, Romanian poet, novelist, and journalist
• August 3 – Flannery O'Connor, American essayist and fiction writer
• August 12 – Ian Fleming, English spy thriller writer
• August 17 – Mihai Ralea, Romanian critic and sociologist of literature
• September 14 – Vasily Grossman, Soviet novelist
• September 18 – Seán O'Casey, Irish dramatist and memoirist
• November 21 – Leah Bodine Drake, American poet, editor and critic
• November 29 – Anne de Vries, Dutch novelist
• December 9 – Dame Edith Sitwell, English poet and critic
• December 21 – Carl Van Vechten, American writer and photographer

• Radu D. Rosetti, Romanian poet and playwright

  Awards

• Nobel Prize for literature – Jean-Paul Sartre

  Canada

• See 1964 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

  France

• Prix Goncourt: Georges Conchon, L'Etat sauvage
• Prix Médicis: Monique Wittig, L’Opoponax

  United Kingdom

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Sheena Porter, Nordy Bank
• Eric Gregory Award: Robert Nye, Ken Smith, Jean Symons, Ted Walker
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Frank Tuohy, The Ice Saints
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Elizabeth Longford, Victoria R.I.
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: R. S. Thomas

  United States

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Drama: Lillian Hellman
• Hugo Award: Clifford D. Simak, Way Station
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Emily Cheney Neville, It's Like This, Cat
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Louis Simpson: At The End Of The Open Road

  Elsewhere

• Miles Franklin Award: George Johnston, My Brother Jack
• Premio Nadal: Alfredo Martínez Garrido, El miedo y la esperanza
• Viareggio Prize: Giuseppe Berto, Il male oscuro

  In literature

• Robert Harris's alternate history novel Fatherland is set in a version of 1964.
• Sue Monk Kidd's Bildungsroman The Secret Life of Bees is set in 1964.