1951 in literature

Events

January – American writer Flannery O'Connor is diagnosed with lupus at age 25.

January 12 – Janie Moore, C. S. Lewis's "adoptive mother", dies.

March 12 – Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace appears for the first time in 16 United States newspapers.

March 17 – First appearance of Dennis the Menace comic strip in The Beano (U.K.)

Spring – Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Sentinel", which will form a basis for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and subsequent novel, is published as "Sentinel of Eternity" in the only issue ever produced of the American science fiction and fantasy pulp magazine 10 Story Fantasy.

May – Joe Orton enters the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London where he meets his lover and eventual murderer Kenneth Halliwell.

July 16 – J. D. Salinger's coming-of-age story The Catcher in the Rye is published by Little, Brown and Company in New York City.

September 6 – William S. Burroughs shoots and kills his common-law wife Joan Vollmer in Mexico City.

E. E. Cummings and Rachel Carson are awarded Guggenheim Fellowships.

Janet Frame's first book, The Lagoon and Other Stories, is published by the Caxton Press (New Zealand) (dated 1952) while the author is a patient in Seacliff Lunatic Asylum at Seacliff, New Zealand. It is awarded the Hubert Church Memorial Award, at this time one of New Zealand's most prestigious literary prizes, resulting in the cancellation of Frame's scheduled lobotomy.

Béla Hamvas completes his epic novel Karnevál. Because he is at this time prohibited from publishing by the regime in Hungary, it will not be published until 1985, 17 years after his death.

Frank Hardy is tried and cleared of criminal libel in Australia for his self-published roman à clef about corruption in Melbourne life, Power Without Glory (1950).

Anthony Powell produces the first novel of his A Dance to the Music of Time duodecalogy.

Performance of medieval mystery plays revived at York and Chester in England.

Théâtre national de la Colline in Paris founded.

Fiction

Sholem Asch – Moses

Isaac Asimov

Foundation

The Stars Like Dust

Samuel Beckett – Molloy

Ray Bradbury – The Illustrated Man

Gill Hunt – Galactic Storm

Taylor Caldwell – The Balance Wheel

Morley Callaghan – The Loved and the Lost

Truman Capote – The Grass Harp

L. Sprague de Camp

Rogue Queen

The Undesired Princess

John Dickson Carr – The Devil in Velvet

Camilo José Cela – The Hive (La Colmena)

Agatha Christie

The Under Dog and Other Stories

They Came to Baghdad

Arthur C. Clarke – Prelude to Space

Beverly Cleary – Ellen Tebbits

Julio Cortázar – Bestiario

Robertson Davies – Tempest-Tost

August Derleth – The Memoirs of Solar Pons

Heimito von Doderer – Die Strudlhofstiege, oder Melzer und die Tiefe der Jahre ("The Strudelhof Steps")

Owen Dodson – Boy at the Window

Daphne du Maurier – My Cousin Rachel

Friedrich Dürrenmatt – Suspicion

Howard Fast – Spartacus

Per Anders Fogelström – Sommaren med Monika

Henri René Guieu – Le Pionnier de l'atome

Graham Greene – The End of the Affair

John Hawkes – The Beetle Leg

Robert A. Heinlein – The Puppet Masters

Elizabeth Jane Howard and Robert Aickman – We Are for the Dark: Six Ghost Stories

Laurence Hyde – Southern Cross (wordless novel)

James Jones – From Here to Eternity

A. M. Klein – The Second Scroll

Wolfgang Koeppen – Tauben im Gras ("Pigeons on the Grass")

Kalki Krishnamurthy

Poiman Karadu

Ponniyin Selvan (பொன்னியின் செல்வன், "The Son of Ponni"; publication begins)

Louis L'Amour – The Rustlers of the West Fork

John Masters – Nightrunners of Bengal

François Mauriac – Le Sagouin

James A. Michener – Return to Paradise

Nancy Mitford – The Blessing

Nicholas Monsarrat – The Cruel Sea

Alberto Moravia – The Conformist (Il conformista)

Robert Pinget – Entre Fantoine et Agapa

Anthony Powell – A Question of Upbringing

Sax Rohmer – Sumuru

J. D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye

Ernst von Salomon – The Questionnaire (Der Fragebogen)

Ooka Shohei (大岡 昇平) – Fires on the Plain (野火, Nobi)

Vern Schneider – The Teahouse of the August Moon

Cardinal Spellman – The Foundling

John Steinbeck – The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Rex Stout

Curtains for Three

Murder by the Book

William Styron – Lie Down in Darkness

Elizabeth Taylor – A Game of Hide and Seek

Phoebe Atwood Taylor – Diplomatic Corpse

Josephine Tey – The Daughter of Time

Anne de Tourville – Jabadao

Herman Wouk – The Caine Mutiny

John Wyndham – The Day of the Triffids

Frank Yerby – A Woman Called Fancy

Marguerite Yourcenar – Memoirs of Hadrian (Mémoires d'Hadrien)

Children and young people

M. E. Atkinson – Castaway Camp (first in the Fricka series of five books)

Viola Bayley – The Dark Lantern

Margaret Biggs – The Blakes Come to Melling

Eleanor Estes – Ginger Pye

Rumer Godden – The Mousewife

Cynthia Harnett – The Wool-Pack

C. S. Lewis – Prince Caspian

Elinor Lyon – We Daren't Go A'Hunting

Gianni Rodari – l romanzo di Cipollino (The Adventures of the Little Onion)

Drama

Eugène Ionesco – The Lesson (La Leçon)

Maryat Lee – Dope!

A. A. Milne – Before the Flood

Lawrence Riley – Kin Hubbard

Jean-Paul Sartre – The Devil and the Good Lord (Le Diable et le Bon Dieu)

John Van Druten – I Am a Camera

John Whiting

A Penny for a Song

Saint's Day (first performance)

Tennessee Williams – The Rose Tattoo

Poetry

Clark Ashton Smith – The Dark Chateau

Frank O'Hara – A City Winter and Other Poems

Iona and Peter Opie – The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes

Non-fiction

Rachel Carson – The Sea Around Us

Nirad C. Chaudhuri – The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian

Thomas B. Costain – The Magnificent Century (second book in the Plantagenet or Pageant of England series)

Daphne du Maurier (ed.) – The Young George du Maurier: a selection of his letters 1860–67

Jacquetta Hawkes – A Land

Dumas Malone – Jefferson and the Rights of Man

Vladimir Nabokov – Speak, Memory

Lou Andreas-Salomé (posthumous) – Lebensrückblick

Albert Camus – The Rebel

Births

January 1 – Ashfaq Hussain, Urdu poet

January 13 – Nigel Cox, New Zealand novelist

January 22 – Steve J. Spears, Australian actor, singer, and playwright (died 2007)

February 13 – Katja Lange-Müller, German novelist

February 17 – Jagadish Mohanty, Indian novelist (died 2013)

March 4 – Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, South Korean-born novelist and artist (died 1982)

March 12 – Susan Musgrave, Canadian poet and children's writer

April 5 – Guy Vanderhaeghe, Canadian author

April 19 – Pierre Lemaitre, French suspense novelist

May 3 – Tatyana Tolstaya, Russian novelist, essayist and TV presenter

May 9

Christopher Dewdney, Canadian poet

Joy Harjo, Native American poet

May 15 – David Almond, English writer for children and young adults

June 15 – Amir Barghashi, Iranian-born Swedish actor and dramatist

June 22 – Rosario Murillo, Nicaraguan poet and political activist

August 20 – Greg Bear, American science fiction writer

August 24 – Orson Scott Card, American science fiction writer

September 20 – Javier Marías, Spanish novelist

September 29 – Andrés Caicedo, Colombian novelist and cinema critic (suicide 1977)

October 3 – Bernard Cooper, American writer

October 12 – Peter Flannery, English dramatist

October 17 – Clark Parent, Haitian novelist, musician and politician

December 6 – Tomson Highway, Canadian and Cree playwright, novelist and children's author

December 8 – Bill Bryson, American travel writer

December 22 – Charles de Lint, Canadian fantasy author and Celtic folk musician

Unknown date – Carol Birch, English novelist

Deaths

January 7 – René Guénon, French philosophical writer (born 1886)

January 29 – James Bridie, Scottish dramatist (born 1888)

February 7 – Sinclair Lewis, American novelist (born 1885)

February 13 – Lloyd C. Douglas, American author (born 1877)

February 16 – Henri-René Lenormand, French dramatist (born 1882)

February 19 – André Gide, French author (born 1869)

February 28 – Vsevolod Vishnevsky, Russian dramatist and screenwriter (born 1900)

March 25 – Oscar Micheaux, African American author, film director and producer (born 1884)

April 3 – Henrik Visnapuu, Estonian poet and dramatist (born 1890)

April 9 – Sadegh Hedayat, Iranian-born novelist (born 1903; suicide)

April 29 – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian philosopher (born 1889)

June 10 – Håkon Evjenth, Norwegian children's writer (born 1894)

June 11 – W. C. Sellar, Scottish humorist (born 1898)

August 14 – William Randolph Hearst, American newspaper tycoon (born 1863)

September 2 – Antoine Bibesco, Romanian dramatist (born 1878)

September 7 – F. G. Loring, English writer and naval officer (born 1869)

November 27 – Timrava (Božena Slančíková), Slovak novelist, short story writer and playwright (born 1867)

December 4 – Pedro Salinas, Spanish poet (born 1891)

December 10 – Algernon Blackwood, English novelist and journalist (born 1869)

Awards

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Cynthia Harnett, The Wool-Pack

Frost Medal: Wallace Stevens

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Chapman Mortimer, Father Goose

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Noel Annan, Leslie Stephen

Newbery Medal: Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man

Nobel Prize in Literature: Pär Lagerkvist

Premio Nadal: Luis Romero, La noria

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Conrad Richter, The Town

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Carl Sandburg, Complete Poems