1980 in literature

Events

• June 5
• *The Royal Shakespeare Company opens a production at the Aldwych Theatre, London, of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, adapted from Charles Dickens' novel by David Edgar.
• *Willy Russell's comedy Educating Rita opens in a Royal Shakespeare Company production with Julie Walters in the title rôle, at The Warehouse in London.
• August 25 – Pramoedya Ananta Toer's This Earth of Mankind , the first of a tetralogy of historical novels, the Buru Quartet, is published in Indonesia after Toer's release from ten years' political imprisonment. It is banned in the country the following year.
• September – A production of Shakespeare's Macbeth with Peter O'Toole in the lead opens at the Old Vic Theatre, London. It is often seen one of the disasters in theater history.
• September 23 – The Field Day Theatre Company presents its first production, the première of Brian Friel's Translations, at the Guildhall, Derry, Northern Ireland.
• November 27 – The English playwright Harold Pinter marries the biographer and novelist Lady Antonia Fraser after divorcing the actress Vivien Merchant.
• December 8 – Mark David Chapman shoots John Lennon to death in New York City while carrying a copy of J. D. Salinger's 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, which he claims "is my statement."

• Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer, tops The New York Times Best Seller list.
• Vasily Grossman's novel Life and Fate is first published, in Western Europe.
• Marguerite Yourcenar becomes the first woman elected to the Académie française.
• The first Tibetan-language literature journal, Tibetan Literature and Art, is published by the Tibet Autonomous Region Writers Association ; it features short stories.
• The National Library of Indonesia is created by a merger.

  New books

Fiction

• Douglas Adams – The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
• Warren Adler – The War of the Roses
• Woody Allen – Side Effects
• V. C. Andrews – Petals on the Wind
• Jean M. Auel – The Clan of the Cave Bear
• Thomas Berger – Neighbors
• Anthony Burgess – Earthly Powers
• Ramsey Campbell, editor – New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
• Bruce Chatwin – The Viceroy of Ouidah
• Mary Higgins Clark – The Cradle Will Fall
• J. M. Coetzee – Waiting for the Barbarians
• Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre -The Fifth Horseman
• Pat Conroy – The Lords of Discipline
• Basil Copper – Necropolis
• L. Sprague de Camp
• *Conan and the Spider God
• *The Purple Pterodactyls
• Mircea Diaconu – La noi, când vine iarna
• E. L. Doctorow – Loon Lake
• Marguerite Duras – L'Homme assis dans le couloir
• Allan W. Eckert – Song of the Wild
• Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose
• Shusaku Endo – The Samurai
• Ken Follett – The Key to Rebecca
• Frederick Forsyth – The Devil's Alternative
• Mary Jayne Gold – Crossroads Marseilles 1940
• William Golding – Rites of Passage
• Graham Greene – Dr. Fischer of Geneva
• Douglas Hill
• *Day of the Starwind
• *Deathwing Over Veynaa
• Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp – The Treasure of Tranicos
• Hammond Innes – Solomon's Seal
• P. D. James – Innocent Blood
• Stephen King – Firestarter
• Judith Krantz – Princess Daisy
• Björn Kurtén – Dance of the Tiger
• Manuel Mujica Láinez – El gran teatro
• Derek Lambert – I, Said the Spy
• John le Carré – Smiley's People
• Madeleine L'Engle – A Ring of Endless Light
• Robert Ludlum – The Bourne Identity
• James A. Michener – The Covenant
• Haruki Murakami – Pinball, 1973
• Ryū Murakami – Coin Locker Babies
• Cees Nooteboom – Rituals
• Robert B. Parker – Looking for Rachel Wallace
• Pepetela – Mayombe
• Ellis Peters – Monk's Hood
• Tom Phillips – A Humument: a treated Victorian novel
• Belva Plain – Random Winds
• Paulette Poujol-Oriol – Le Creuset
• Marin Preda – Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni
• Barbara Pym – Crampton Hodnet
• Herman Raucher – There Should Have Been Castles
• Mordecai Richler – Joshua Then and Now
• Marilynne Robinson – Housekeeping
• Salman Rushdie – Midnight's Children
• Sidney Sheldon – Rage of Angels
• Gay Talese – Thy Neighbor's Wife
• Walter Tevis – Mockingbird
• John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces
• Gene Wolfe – The Shadow of the Torturer
• Roger Zelazny
• *Changeling
• *The Last Defender of Camelot

  Children and young people

• Richard Adams
• *The Girl in a Swing
• *The Iron Wolf and Other Stories
• Vivien Alcock – The Haunting of Cassie Palmer
• Lynne Reid Banks – The Indian in the Cupboard
• Jill Barklem – Brambly Hedge series:
• *Spring Story
• *Summer Story
• *Autumn Story
• *Winter Story
• Ruskin Bond – The Cherry Tree
• Matt Christopher – Wild Pitch
• Roald Dahl – The Twits
• Thomas M. Disch – The Brave Little Toaster
• Buchi Emecheta – Titch the Cat
• Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Spooks and Spectres
• Thomas Meehan – Annie: An old-fashioned story
• Robert Munsch – The Paper Bag Princess
• Susan Musgrave
• *Gullband
• *Hag Head
• Ruth Park – Playing Beatie Bow
• Avril Rowlands – God's Wonderful Railway
• Marjorie W. Sharmat – Gila Monsters Meet you at the Airport
• Mary Stewart – A Walk in Wolf Wood

  Drama

• Howard Brenton – The Romans in Britain
• Andrea Dunbar – The Arbor
• David Edgar – The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
• Ronald Harwood – The Dresser
• Ron Hutchinson – The Irish Play
• Kenneth Ross – Breaker Morant
• Willy Russell – Educating Rita
• Sam Shepard – True West

  Poetry

• Valerio Magrelli – Ora serrata retinae
• Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse

  Non-fiction

• Tony Benn – Arguments for Socialism
• Pierre Berton – The Invasion of Canada
• Maryanne Blacker and Pamela Clark – Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book
• David Bohm – Wholeness and the Implicate Order
• L. Sprague de Camp – The Ragged Edge of Science
• L. Sprague de Camp – The Spell of Conan
• Graham Chapman et al. – A Liar's Autobiography
• Marilyn Ferguson – The Aquarian Conspiracy
• Stanley Fish – Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities
• Julien Gracq – Reading Writing
• Graham Greene – Ways of Escape
• Stephen Hawking – A Brief History of Time
• Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman – No One Here Gets Out Alive
• János Kornai – Economics of Shortage
• Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers – Grimoire of Armadel translation from French
• Michael Medved and Harry Medved – The Golden Turkey Awards
• Tom O'Carroll – '
• Carl Sagan – Cosmos
• Randy Shilts – And the Band Played On
• Ram Swarup – '
• Alvin Toffler – The Third Wave

  Deaths

• January 3
• *Joy Adamson, Silesian-born conservationist and writer living in Kenya
• *George Sutherland Fraser, Scottish poet and critic
• January 11 – Barbara Pym, English novelist
• February 25 – Caradog Prichard, Welsh poet and novelist in Welsh
• March 12 – Eugeniu Ștefănescu-Est, Romanian poet, novelist and cartoonist
• March 25 – James Wright, American poet
• March 26 – Roland Barthes, French literary theorist
• April 15 – Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, novelist and dramatist
• April 24 – Alejo Carpentier, French Cuban novelist and writer
• May 7 – Margaret Cole, English political writer, biographer and activist
• May 16 – Marin Preda, Romanian novelist
• June 7 – Henry Miller, American novelist
• July 1 – C. P. Snow, English novelist and scientist
• July 6 – Mart Raud, Estonian poet, playwright and writer
• July 9 – Vinicius de Moraes, Brazilian poet and songwriter
• July 17 – Traian Herseni, Romanian social scientist and journalist
• July 26 – Kenneth Tynan, English-born theater critic
• August 8 – David Mercer, English dramatist
• August 10 – Gareth Evans, British philosopher
• September 18 – Katherine Anne Porter, American novelist and essayist
• November 9 – Patrick Campbell, Irish journalist and wit
• December 2 – Romain Gary, French novelist
• December 8 – John Lennon, English musician, songwriter and author
• December 12 – Ben Travers, English playwright, screenwriter and novelist
• December 27 – Todhunter Ballard, American genre novelist
• December 31 – Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher

  Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Czesław Miłosz

  Australia

• The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Inaugural award to Archie Weller, The Day Of The Dog; the award is initially given to Paul Radley, who, in 1996, admits that his manuscript was actually written by his uncle.
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: David Campbell, Man in the Honeysuckle
• Miles Franklin Award: Jessica Anderson, The Impersonators

  Canada

• See 1980 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

  France

• Prix Goncourt: Yves Navarre, Le Jardin d'acclimatation
• Prix Médicis French: Jean-Luc Benoziglio, Cabinet-portrait who refused the prize, thus it was given to Jean Lahougue's Comptine des Height
• Prix Médicis International: Andre Brink, Une saison blanche et sèche

  United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: William Golding, Rites of Passage
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Peter Dickinson, City of Gold
• Cholmondeley Award: George Barker, Terence Tiller, Roy Fuller
• Eric Gregory Award: Robert Minhinnick, Michael Hulse, Blake Morrison, Medbh McGuckian
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Robert B. Martin, Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart
• Whitbread Best Book Award: David Lodge, How Far Can You Go?

  United States

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Drama: Edward Albee
• Caldecott Medal: Barbara Cooney, Ox-Cart Man
• Dos Passos Prize: Graham Greene
• Nebula Award: Gregory Benford, Timescape
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Joan Blos,
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Lanford Wilson, Talley's Folly
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Donald Justice, Selected Poems

  Elsewhere

• Hugo Award for Best Novel: Arthur C. Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise
• Premio Cervantes : Juan Carlos Onetti
• Premio Nadal: Juan Ramón Zaragoza, Concerto grosso