1959 in literature

Events

January 31 – At Jilava prison, Sandu Tudor begins serving a 40-year sentence for "conspiracy against the social order" and "intense activity against the working class", as meted out by a Romanian communist tribunal; he would die in 1962, at Aiud prison, possibly from torture.

April 30 – Theatrical première of Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards, originally performed on radio in 1932.

May 7 – Scientist and novelist C. P. Snow delivers an influential Rede Lecture on The Two Cultures, concerning a perceived breakdown of communication between the sciences and humanities, in the Senate House, University of Cambridge. It is subsequently published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.

May 28 – The Mermaid Theatre opens in the City of London.

July 21 – D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is one of a trio of books (the others being Tropic of Cancer and Fanny Hill), the ban on which is fought and overturned in court with assistance by lawyer Charles Rembar in the United States; the book, published in 1928, legally circulates in the U.S. after a 31-year obscenity ban.

July 29 – Obscene Publications Act in the United Kingdom becomes law (coming into force on August 29), requiring a work to be considered as a whole, permitting a "public good" defence against a prosecution for obscenity, and making prosecutions for obscene libel difficult.

October 29 – First appearance of Astérix the Gaul, in the first regular issue of the comic magazine Pilote.

November 11 – Release in the United States of the short film Pull My Daisy, adapted from his unperformed play Beat Generation and narrated by Jack Kerouac and starring poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso.

Anthony Burgess is invalided home to England from a teaching post in Brunei and becomes a full-time novelist.

Aldous Huxley turns down the offer of a knighthood.

Colin Dexter begins teaching at Corby Grammar School.

Frank Herbert begins researching Dune.

Frederik Pohl becomes an editor of the American science fiction magazine Galaxy.

Marcel Achard is elected to the Académie française.

Literature Wales is established as The Academi.

The first butoh performance piece, Kinjiki by Tatsumi Hijikata, premieres at a dance festival in Japan. It is based on the novel of the same name (Forbidden Colors) by Yukio Mishima and explores the taboos of male homosexuality and paedophilia.

Fiction

Isaac Asimov – Nine Tomorrows

Saul Bellow – Henderson the Rain King

Robert Bloch – Psycho

Antoine Blondin – A Monkey in Winter (Un Singe en hiver)

Ray Bradbury – A Medicine for Melancholy

John Brunner

Echo in the Skull

The World Swappers

Algis Budrys – The Falling Torch

William S. Burroughs – Naked Lunch

Taylor Caldwell – Dear and Glorious Physician

John Dickson Carr – Scandal at High Chimneys: A Victorian Melodrama

Agatha Christie – Cat Among the Pigeons

Ivy Compton-Burnett – A Heritage and Its History

Richard Condon – The Manchurian Candidate

Alexander Cordell – Rape of the Fair Country

Julio Cortázar – Las armas secretas (short stories)

Richard Crichton – The Great Impostor

Allen Drury – Advise and Consent

Alfred Duggan – Children of the Wolf

Shusaku Endo (遠藤 周作) – Wonderful Fool (おバカさん)

William Faulkner – The Mansion

Ian Fleming – Goldfinger

Paul Gallico – Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris

William Golding – Free Fall

Günter Grass – The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel)

Vasily Grossman – Life and Fate (Жизнь и судьба; completed but unpublished until the 1980s)

Robert A. Heinlein

The Menace From Earth

Starship Troopers

The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag

Dorothy Hewett – Bobbin Up

Hwang Sun-won – "Rain Shower" (소나기, Sonagi, short story)

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra – Tammūz fī al-Madīnah (Tammuz in the City)

Shirley Jackson – The Haunting of Hill House

Uwe Johnson – Mutmassungen über Jakob (Speculations about Jakob)

John Knowles – A Separate Peace

H. P. Lovecraft etc. – The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces

John Lymington – Night of the Big Heat

John D. MacDonald

Deadly Welcome

The Beach Girls

The Crossroads

Ross Macdonald – The Galton Case

Colin MacInnes – Absolute Beginners

Alistair MacLean

The Last Frontier

Night Without End

Naguib Mahfouz – Children of Gebelaawi (أولاد حارتنا)

Norman Mailer – Advertisements for Myself

James A. Michener – Hawaii

V.S. Naipaul – Miguel Street

Mervyn Peake – Titus Alone

Raymond Queneau – Zazie in the Metro

Robert Randall (writing as Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett) – The Dawning Light

Mordecai Richler – The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

Kate Roberts – Te yn y grug (short stories)

Philip Roth – Goodbye, Columbus

Robert Ruark – Poor No More

Nathalie Sarraute – Le Planétarium

Alan Sillitoe – The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Aimée Sommerfelt – The Road to Agra (Veien til Agra)

Terry Southern – The Magic Christian

Rex Stout – Plot It Yourself

John Updike – The Same Door

Kurt Vonnegut – The Sirens of Titan

Keith Waterhouse – Billy Liar

Sheila Watson – The Double Hook

Children and young people

Jane Duncan – My Friends the Miss Boyds (first in the My Friends series of 19 books)

Joseph Krumgold – Onion John

Dr. Seuss – Happy Birthday to You!

Bill Peet

Hubert's Hair-Raising Adventure

Goliath II

Margery Sharp – The Rescuers (first in the eponymous series of nine novels)

Drama

Edward Albee

The Death of Bessie Smith (written)

The Zoo Story (premiered in German)

Jean Anouilh – Becket

John Arden – Serjeant Musgrave's Dance

Alan Ayckbourn (as Roland Allen) – The Square Cat

Samuel Beckett – Embers (first broadcast)

Bertolt Brecht (posthumously) – Saint Joan of the Stockyards (Die Heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe, first stage performance)

Albert Camus – The Possessed (Les Possédés)

Beverley Cross – One More River

Refik Erduran – Cengiz Han’ın Bisikleti (The Bicycle of Genghis Khan)

Jack Gelber – The Connection

Jean Genet – The Blacks: A Clown Show (Les Nègres, clownerie, first performed)

Lorraine Hansberry – A Raisin in the Sun

Eugène Ionesco – The Killer (Tueur sans gages)

Harold Pinter – The Caretaker (first published)

Jean-Paul Sartre – The Condemned of Altona (Les Séquestrés d'Altona, translated as Loser Wins)

N. F. Simpson – One Way Pendulum

Wole Soyinka – The Lion and the Jewel

Arnold Wesker

Roots

The Kitchen

Tennessee Williams – Sweet Bird of Youth

Egon Wolff – Parejas de trapo

Non-fiction

Kenneth Anger – Hollywood Babylon

L. Sprague de Camp – Engines

August Derleth

Arkham House: The First 20 Years

Some Notes on H. P. Lovecraft

Savitri Devi – Impeachment of Man

G. H. Dury – The Face of the Earth

C. S. Forester – Sink the Bismarck! (also as The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck)

Erving Goffman – The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Laurie Lee – Cider With Rosie

Miguel León-Portilla – Visión de los vencidos: Relaciones indígenas de la conquista

Garrett Mattingly – The Defeat of the Spanish Armada

Czesław Miłosz – Rodzinna Europa (Native Realm)

Iona and Peter Opie – The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren

James Pope-Hennessy – Queen Mary 1867–1953

Karl Popper – The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Cornelius Ryan – The Longest Day

William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White – The Elements of Style

Wilfred Thesiger – Arabian Sands

Births

January 8 – Ovidiu Pecican, Romanian writer and poet

January 9 – Rigoberta Menchú, Guatemalan writer and Nobel Peace Prize winner

January 20 – R. A. Salvatore, American science fiction and fantasy author

January 28 – Megan McDonald, American children's author

February 2 – Jari Tervo, Finnish author

March 11 – Dejan Stojanović, Serbian-American poet and essayist

March 15 – Ben Okri, Nigerian poet and novelist

March 18 – Frédéric-Yves Jeannet, French-born writer in French and Spanish

April 15 – Emma Thompson, English actress and screenwriter

April 30 – Alessandro Barbero, Italian historian, novelist and essayist

c. May 1 – Yasmina Reza, French novelist and dramatist

May 3 – Ben Elton, English comedian, novelist and screenwriter

June 12 – Hilary McKay, English children's writer

June 13 – Maurice G. Dantec, French science fiction author

August 27 – Jeanette Winterson, English novelist

September 9 – Matti Rönkä, Finnish TV journalist and novelist

September 29 – Benjamin Sehene, Rwandan writer

October 1 – Brian P. Cleary, American humorist, author and poet

October 31 – Neal Stephenson, American science fiction writer

November 1 – Susanna Clarke, English novelist

December 20 – Sandra Cisneros, Mexican-born American author

Deaths

January 3 – Edwin Muir, Scottish poet, novelist and translator (born 1887)

January 29 – Pauline Smith, South African novelist (born 1882)

February 20 – Laurence Housman, English playwright and writer (born 1865)

February 22 – Percy F. Westerman, English children's author (born 1876)

February 23 – Luis Palés Matos, Puerto Rican poet (heart failure (born 1898)

February 28 – Maxwell Anderson, American playwright and film writer (born 1888)

March 4 – W. W. Greg, English literary scholar (born 1875)

March 17 – Galaktion Tabidze (Galaktioni), Georgian poet (suicide, born 1892)

March 26 – Raymond Chandler, American crime writer (born 1888)

April 14 – Julien Josephson, American screenwriter (born 1881)

May 18 – Apsley Cherry-Garrard, English memoirist and explorer (born 1886)

May 20 – Alfred Schütz, Austrian philosopher and sociologist (born 1899)

June 1 – Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Ward), English novelist (born 1883)

June 23 – Boris Vian, French novelist (heart attack, born 1920)

June 30 – José Vasconcelos, Mexican poet and political writer (born 1882)

July 3 – Johan Bojer, Norwegian novelist (born 1872)

July 26 – Manuel Altolaguirre, Spanish poet, editor and publisher (car accident, born 1905)

August 8 – Emil František Burian, Czech poet, journalist and playwright (born 1904)

September 18 – Benjamin Péret, French poet and Surrealist (born 1899)

Awards

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers

Hugo Award for Best Novel: James Blish, A Case of Conscience

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Morris West, The Devil's Advocate

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Christopher Hassall, Edward Marsh

Miles Franklin Award: Vance Palmer, The Big Fellow

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Nobel Prize for literature: Salvatore Quasimodo

Premio Nadal: Ana María Matute, Primera memoria

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Archibald MacLeish, J. B.

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Robert Lewis Taylor, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Stanley Kunitz, Selected Poems 1928-1958

Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Francis Cornford