1975 in literature

Events

• January 1 – English-born comic writer P. G. Wodehouse is awarded a knighthood, six weeks before he dies in the United States.
• January – Colin Dexter's detective novel Last Bus to Woodstock introduces his Oxford police officer, Inspector Morse.
• April 23
• *Barbara Pym and Philip Larkin meet in person for the first time, at the Randolph Hotel, Oxford, after years of correspondence.
• *Harold Pinter's play No Man's Land is premièred by the National Theatre at The Old Vic in London, directed by Peter Hall and starring Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson.
• April 28 – Harold Pinter leaves his first wife, the actress Vivien Merchant, having begun an affair with the married biographer Lady Antonia Fraser on January 8.
• May 10 – Leftist Salvadoran poet, journalist and political activist Roque Dalton is assassinated by former colleagues in the People's Revolutionary Army.
• August 12 – As the 20-year time limit stipulated by Thomas Mann at his death expires, sealed packets of 32 of the author's notebooks are opened in Zürich, Switzerland.

• Writing as Émile Ajar, the author Romain Gary becomes the only person to win the Prix Goncourt twice.
• Radical Australian poet Dorothy Hewett publishes her collection Rapunzel in Suburbia, triggering a successful libel action by her ex-husband.
• Hearing Secret Harmonies, the twelfth and final novel in the A Dance to the Music of Time series begun in 1951 by Anthony Powell is published.
• The French critic Hélène Cixous coins the term Écriture féminine in an article, "Le Rire de la méduse".
• Milan Kundera emigrates from Czechoslovakia to France.
• The Petrarca-Preis is founded by Hubert Burda.

  New books

Fiction

• Chabua Amirejibi – Data Tutashkhia
• Edward Abbey – The Monkey Wrench Gang
• Dritëro Agolli – Njeriu me top
• Robert Aickman – Cold Hand in Mine: Eight Strange Stories
• Martin Amis – Dead Babies
• Natalie Babbitt – Tuck Everlasting
• Donald Barthelme – The Dead Father
• Saul Bellow – Humboldt's Gift
• Thomas Berger – Sneaky People
• Thomas Bernhard – Correction
• Jorge Luis Borges – The Book of Sand
• Malcolm Bradbury – The History Man
• John Braine – The Pious Agent
• Morley Callaghan – A Fine and Private Place
• J. L. Carr – How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup
• Agatha Christie – Curtain: Poirot's last case
• James Clavell – Shōgun
• Michael Crichton – The Great Train Robbery
• A. J. Cronin – The Minstrel Boy
• Robertson Davies – World of Wonders
• L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt – The Compleat Enchanter
• Samuel R. Delany – Dhalgren
• Michel Déon – The Foundling Boy
• August Derleth – Harrigan's File
• Guram Dochanashvili – The First Garment
• E. L. Doctorow – Ragtime
• Max Frisch – Montauk
• Carlos Fuentes – Terra Nostra
• William Gaddis – J R
• Gabriel García Márquez – The Autumn of the Patriarch
• Romain Gary as Émile Ajar – The Life Before Us
• Rumer Godden – The Peacock Spring
• Arthur Hailey – The Moneychangers
• Peter Handke – A Moment of True Feeling
• Thomas Harris – Black Sunday
• Xavier Herbert – Poor Fellow My Country
• Georgette Heyer – My Lord John
• Jack Higgins – The Eagle Has Landed
• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala – Heat and Dust
• Gayl Jones – Corregidora
• Stephen King – Salem's Lot
• Sheridan Le Fanu – The Purcell Papers
• Derek Lambert – Touch the Lion's Paw
• David Lodge – Changing Places
• Robert Ludlum – The Road to Gandolfo
• John D. MacDonald – The Dreadful Lemon Sky
• Bharati Mukherjee – Wife
• Gary Myers – The House of the Worm
• V. S. Naipaul – Guerrillas
• Tim O'Brien – Northern Lights
• Gerald W. Page, editor – Nameless Places
• Robert B. Parker – Mortal Stakes
• Georges Perec – W, or the Memory of Childhood
• Elizabeth Peters – Crocodile on the Sandbank
• Baltasar Porcel – Horses into the Night
• Anthony Powell – Hearing Secret Harmonies
• James Purdy – In a Shallow Grave
• Judith Rossner – Looking for Mr. Goodbar
• Nawal El Saadawi – Woman at Point Zero
• Paul Scott – A Division of the Spoils
• Anya Seton – Smouldering Fires
• Gerald Seymour – Harry's Game
• Tom Sharpe – Blott on the Landscape
• Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson – The Illuminatus! Trilogy
• M. P. Shiel – Xélucha and Others
• Rex Stout – A Family Affair
• Glendon Swarthout – The Shootist
• Joseph Wambaugh – The Choirboys
• Jack Vance – Showboat World
• Roger Zelazny – Sign of the Unicorn

  Children and young people

• Verna Aardema – Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears
• Nina Bawden – The Peppermint Pig
• Susan Cooper – The Grey King
• Roald Dahl – Danny, the Champion of the World
• Rumer Godden – Mr. McFadden's Hallowe'en
• Peter Härtling – Oma
• Eva Ibbotson – The Great Ghost Rescue
• Ronald McCuaig – Fresi Fantastika
• Ruth Park – The Muddle-Headed Wombat and the Invention
• Robert Westall – The Machine Gunners
• Bill Peet
• *Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent
• *The Gnats of Knotty Pine

  Drama

• Alan Ayckbourn – Bedroom Farce
• Patrick Galvin – We Do It For Love
• Trevor Griffiths – Comedians
• Christopher Hampton – Treats
• Colin Higgins and Denis Cannan with Peter Brook – The Ik
• Franz Xaver Kroetz
• *Geisterbahn
• *Das Nest
• Tom Murphy – The Sanctuary Lamp
• Stewart Parker – Spokesong
• Harold Pinter – No Man's Land
• Wole Soyinka – Death and the King's Horseman
• Ben Travers – The Bed Before Yesterday

  Poetry

• Lin Carter – Dreams from R'lyeh
• Leslie Norris – Mountains, Polecats, Pheasants and other Elegies

  Non-fiction

• Philip Agee – Inside the Company: CIA Diary
• Kingsley Amis – Rudyard Kipling and His World
• Robert Bresson – Notes on the Cinematographer
• Jacob Bronowski – The Ascent of Man
• L. Sprague de Camp
• *Blond Barbarians and Noble Savages
• *'
• *'
• Michel Foucault – Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
• Paul Fussell – The Great War and Modern Memory
• Douglas Hay – Albion's Fatal Tree: crime and society in eighteenth-century England
• Paul Horgan – Lamy of Santa Fe
• Frank Belknap Long –
• Philip Roth – Reading Myself and Others
• Peter Singer – Animal Liberation
• Paul Theroux – The Great Railway Bazaar

  Births

• January 13 – Daniel Kehlmann, German novelist
• February 25 – Carrie Mac, Canadian young-adult fiction writer
• April 11 – Walid Soliman, Tunisian author and translator
• June 23 – Markus Zusak, Australian young-adult novelist
• July 19 – Martina Montelius, Swedish playwright
• August 20 – Matthew and Michael Dickman, American poets
• October 27 – Zadie Smith, English novelist
• unknown dates
• *Gavin Francis, Scottish medical writer and physician
• *Cynan Jones, Welsh novelist

  Deaths

• January 15 – Sydney Goodsir Smith, Scottish poet, dramatist and novelist
• February 14
• *Sir Julian Huxley, English biologist and author
• *Sir P. G. Wodehouse, English-born comic novelist
• February 20 – Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov, Russian author
• March 3 – T. H. Parry-Williams, Welsh poet
• March 7 – Kate Seredy, Hungarian-born American children's writer and illustrator
• March 13 – Ivo Andrić, Serbo-Croatian novelist and Nobel laureate
• April 23 – Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, German poet
• May 21 – A. H. Dodd, Welsh historian
• June 8 – Murray Leinster, American science fiction writer
• July 10 – Peter Frederick Anson, English writer on religion and maritime matters
• September 20 – Saint-John Perse, French poet and Nobel laureate
• October 5 – Lady Constance Malleson, Irish actress and writer
• October 22 – Arnold J. Toynbee, English historian
• November 13 – R. C. Sherriff, English dramatist and novelist
• November 19 – Elizabeth Taylor, English novelist
• November 27 – Ross McWhirter, English sports journalist and joint compiler of Guinness Book of Records
• December 4 – Hannah Arendt, German-American philosopher
• December 7 – Thornton Wilder, American novelist and dramatist

  Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Eugenio Montale

  Canada

• See 1975 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

  France

• Prix Goncourt: Romain Gary as Emile Ajar – La vie devant soi
• Prix Médicis French: Jacques Almira, Le Voyage à Naucratis
• Prix Médicis International: Steven Millhauser, La Vie trop brève d'Edwin Mulhouse – United States

  Spain

• Premio Nadal: Francisco Umbral, Las ninfas

  United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Robert Westall, The Machine Gunners
• Cholmondeley Award: Jenny Joseph, Norman MacCaig, John Ormond
• Duff Cooper Prize: Seamus Heaney, North
• Eric Gregory Award: John Birtwhistle, Duncan Bush, Val Warner, Philip Holmes, Peter Cash, Alasdair Paterson
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Brian Moore, The Great Victorian Collection
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Karl Miller, Cockburn's Millennium

  United States

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Belles Lettres: Kenneth Burke
• Nebula Award: Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Virginia Hamilton, M. C. Higgins, the Great
• Newdigate Prize: Andrew Motion
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Edward Albee, Seascape
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Michael Shaara – The Killer Angels
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Gary Snyder – Turtle Island

  Elsewhere

• Miles Franklin Award: Xavier Herbert, Poor Fellow My Country
• Viareggio Prize: Paolo Volponi, Il sipario ducale