1960 in literature

Events

February–October – Astounding magazine is renamed Analog.

Spring – August Derleth launches the poetry magazine, Hawk and Whippoorwill in the United States.

March 22 – Joan Henry's play Look on Tempests is premièred at the Comedy Theatre in London's West End, the first play dealing openly with homosexuality to be passed for performance by the Lord Chamberlain in Britain.

April 27 – Harold Pinter's play The Caretaker is premièred at the Arts Theatre Club in London's West End, transferring to the Duchess Theatre the following month, where it runs for 444 performances before departing London for Broadway, Pinter's first significant commercial success. Alan Bates and Donald Pleasence star in the original production.

July 11 – Harper Lee's Southern Gothic Bildungsroman To Kill a Mockingbird is published in the United States. She completes no later novel before her death in 2016.

September 5 – Welsh poet Waldo Williams is imprisoned for six weeks for non-payment of income tax (a protest against defence spending).

October 3 – The Lilly Library is opened on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington, based on the collections of Josiah K. Lilly, Jr.

October 6 & December 16 – Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, receives full screenwriting credit for his work on the films Spartacus and Exodus, released in the United States on these dates.

c. October – Vasily Grossman submits his novel Life and Fate (Жизнь и судьба) for publication, resulting in confiscation of the manuscript and all related material by the KGB in the Soviet Union.

November – Rita Rait-Kovaleva's Russian translation of The Catcher in the Rye is published in the Soviet literary magazine Inostrannaya Literatura as Над пропастью во ржи ("Over the Abyss in Rye").

November 2 – R v Penguin Books Ltd: Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover in the United Kingdom.

November 8 – Richard Wright delivers a polemical lecture, "The Situation of the Black Artist and Intellectual in the United States", to students and members of the American Church in Paris, a few weeks before his death from heart attack aged 52 in the city.

November 10 – Lady Chatterley's Lover sells 200,000 copies in one day following its publication in the U.K. since being banned in 1928.

November 17 – Michael Foot is re-elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom and relinquishes the editorship of Tribune.

November 19 – American novelist Norman Mailer stabs his wife, the artist Adele Morales.

November 24 – Raymond Queneau founds Oulipo in France.

Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal invents the artificial language Lincos, intended for communication with extraterrestrial intelligence.

Fiction

Chinua Achebe – No Longer at Ease

Kingsley Amis – Take a Girl Like You

Poul Anderson – The High Crusade

Lynne Reid Banks – The L-Shaped Room

Stan Barstow – A Kind of Loving

John Barth – The Sot-Weed Factor

Hamilton Basso – The Light Infantry Ball

Augusto Roa Bastos – Hijo de hombre

Charles Beaumont – Night Ride and Other Journeys

Robert Bloch – Pleasant Dreams: Nightmares

Algis Budrys – Rogue Moon

Anthony Burgess

The Doctor is Sick

The Right to an Answer

Dino Buzzati – Larger than Life (Il grande ritratto)

Morley Callaghan – The Many Colored Coat

John Dickson Carr – In Spite of Thunder

Carlo Cassola – Bébo's Girl (La ragazza di Bube)

Louis-Ferdinand Céline – North (Nord)

Agatha Christie – The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

Barry Crump – A Good Keen Man

Roald Dahl – Kiss Kiss (short stories)

L. Sprague de Camp

The Bronze God of Rhodes

The Glory That Was

L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt – Wall of Serpents

Carmen de Icaza – The House Across the Street (La casa de enfrente)

Philip K. Dick

Dr. Futurity

Vulcan's Hammer

E. L. Doctorow – Welcome to Hard Times

Lawrence Durrell – Clea (final volume of The Alexandria Quartet, begun 1957)

Henry Farrell – What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Gabriel Fielding – Through Streets Broad and Narrow

Ian Fleming – For Your Eyes Only (James Bond short stories)

Per Anders Fogelström – City of My Dreams (Mina drömmars stad)

Graham Greene – A Burnt-Out Case

Arthur Hailey – In High Places

Donald Hamilton – Death of a Citizen

James Leo Herlihy – All Fall Down

Vintilă Horia – God Was Born in Exile (Dieu est né en exil)

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

al-Ḥurrīyah wa-al-Tūfān

Hunters in a Narrow Street

Greye La Spina – Invaders from the Dark

Hubert Lampo – De komst van Joachim Stiller ("The Coming of Joachim Stiller")

Jean Lartéguy – Les Centurions

Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird

David Lodge – The Picturegoers

John Masters – The Venus of Konpara

Richard Matheson – The Beardless Warriors

Judith Merrill – The Tomorrow People

Walter M. Miller – A Canticle for Leibowitz

Nancy Mitford – Don't Tell Alfred

Alberto Moravia – La noia (The Empty Canvas)

Edna O'Brien – The Country Girls

Flannery O'Connor – The Violent Bear It Away

Scott O'Dell – Island of the Blue Dolphins

Wilder Penfield – The Torch

Frederik Pohl – Drunkard's Walk

Anthony Powell – Casanova's Chinese Restaurant

James H. Schmitz – Agent of Vega

Nevil Shute (posthumously) – Trustee from the Toolroom

Clark Ashton Smith – The Abominations of Yondo

Muriel Spark – The Ballad of Peckham Rye

David Storey – This Sporting Life

Rex Stout

Three at Wolfe's Door

Too Many Clients

William Styron – Set This House on Fire

John Updike – Rabbit, Run

Irving Wallace – The Chapman Report

John Edward Williams – Butcher's Crossing

Raymond Williams – Border Country

John Wyndham – Trouble with Lichen

Children and young people

Hans Baumann – Ich zog mit Hannibal (I Marched with Hannibal, 1961)

Sheila Burnford – The Incredible Journey

P. D. Eastman – Are You My Mother?

Michael Ende – Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver (Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer)

Alan Garner – The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

Jean Craighead George – My Side of the Mountain

Rumer Godden – Candy Floss

Georges Prosper Remi (as Hergé) – Tintin au Tibet (book publication)

Scott O'Dell – Island of the Blue Dolphins

Dr. Seuss

Green Eggs and Ham

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

Barbara Sleigh – The Kingdom of Carbonel

María Elena Walsh

La Mona Jacinta

La Familia Polillal

Tutú Marambá

Drama

Tawfiq al-Hakim – El Sultan El-Ha'er (The Sultan Perplexed)

Edward Albee – The Death of Bessie Smith and The Sandbox (first performances)

Samuel Beckett – The Old Tune (first broadcast)

Robert Bolt – A Man for All Seasons (stage version) and The Tiger and the Horse

Marc Camoletti – Boeing-Boeing

Noël Coward – Waiting in the Wings

Beverley Cross – Strip the Willow

Witold Gombrowicz – The Marriage (Ślub, first performance)

Eugène Ionesco – Rhinocéros

Ira Levin – Critic's Choice

Stephen Lewis and Theatre Workshop – Sparrers Can't Sing

Bruce Mason – The End of the Golden Weather

Tad Mosel – All the Way Home

Harold Pinter

The Caretaker (first performed and published)

The Room (first professional performance)

A Night Out (first broadcast)

Terence Rattigan – Ross

Barry Reckord – You in Your Small Corner

Nelson Rodrigues – Beijo no Asfalto (The Asphalt Kiss)

Wole Soyinka – A Dance of the Forests

Gore Vidal – The Best Man

Maruxa Vilalta – Los disorientados (The Disoriented Ones)

Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall – Billy Liar

Orson Welles (adaptation) – Chimes at Midnight

Tennessee Williams – Period of Adjustment

Poetry

Douglas Livingstone – The Skull in the Mud

Sylvia Plath – The Colossus and Other Poems

Alan Sillitoe – The Rats and other poems

Jan Twardowski – Znaki ufności

Non-fiction

Joy Adamson – Born Free

Kingsley Amis – New Maps of Hell

Philippe Ariès – Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (L'Enfant et la vie familiale sous l'Ancien Régime)

Peg Bracken – The I Hate to Cook Book

Albert Camus (posthumously) – Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (selected essays)

Aimé Césaire – Toussaint Louverture: La Révolution française et le problème colonial

Jean-Paul Desbiens – Les insolences du Frère Untel (The Insolences of Brother Anonymous)

Hans-Georg Gadamer – Truth and Method (Wahrheit und Methode)

John Howard Griffin – Black Like Me

Helen Keller – Light in my Darkness

Arthur Koestler – The Lotus and the Robot

A. S. Neill – Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing

Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier – The Morning of the Magicians (Le Matin des magiciens)

Jean-Paul Sartre – Critique of Dialectical Reason (Critique de la raison dialectique)

William L. Shirer – The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

W. T. Stace – The Teachings of the Mystics

Elie Wiesel – Night (La Nuit, 1958)

Births

January 18 – Mark Rylance, English actor and theater director

January 28 – Robert von Dassanowsky, Austrian-American historian and academic

February 19 – Helen Fielding, English novelist and screenwriter

April 28 – Ian Rankin, Scottish crime novelist

May 4 – Kate Saunders, English author and children's writer

May 21 – John O'Brien, American novelist (died 1994)

June 2 – Julie Myerson, English novelist and columnist

July 13 – Ian Hislop, Welsh-born satirist

August 4 – Tim Winton, Australian novelist

October 18 – Hồ Anh Thái, Vietnamese author

November 10 – Neil Gaiman, English author

December 10 – Kenneth Branagh, Northern Irish actor and screenwriter

Unknown dates

Malcolm Pryce, Anglo-Welsh detective novelist

Alexis Stamatis, Greek novelist, playwright and poet

D. J. Taylor, English literary critic and biographer

Deaths

January 4 – Albert Camus, French Pied-Noir novelist (car accident, born 1913)

January 9 – Elsie J. Oxenham (Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley), English girls' story writer (born 1880)

January 12 – Nevil Shute, English-born novelist (stroke, born 1899)

January 14 – Ralph Chubb, English poet, printer and artist (born 1892)

January 28 – Zora Neale Hurston, African-American anthropologist and author (born 1891)

May 30 – Boris Pasternak, Russian novelist, poet and translator (born 1890)

July 27 – Ethel Lilian Voynich, Anglo-Irish novelist and composer (born 1864)

July 28 – Kassian Bogatyrets, Rusyn priest, politician and historian (born 1868)

August 19 – Frances Cornford, English poet (born 1886)

August 29 – Vicki Baum, Austrian-born novelist writing in German and English (born 1888)

October 31 – H. L. Davis, American fiction writer and poet (born 1894)

November 20 – Ya'akov Cohen, Russian-born Israeli poet (born 1881)

November 28 – Richard Wright, African-American novelist and poet (born 1908)

December 26 – Tetsuro Watsuji (和辻 哲郎), Japanese philosopher and historian of ideas (born 1889)

Awards

American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Criticism: E. B. White

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Ian Wolfram Cornwall, The Making of Man

Eric Gregory Award: Christopher Levenson

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Rex Warner, Imperial Caesar

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Canon Adam Fox, The Life of Dean Inge

Miles Franklin Award: Elizabeth O'Conner, The Irishman

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Joseph Krumgold, Onion John

Nobel Prize for literature: Saint-John Perse

Premio Nadal: Ramiro Pinilla, Ciegas hormigas

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Jerome Weidman, George Abbott for book, Jerry Bock for music, and Sheldon Harnick for lyrics, Fiorello!

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Allen Drury, Advise and Consent

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: W. D. Snodgrass, Heart's Needle

Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: John Betjeman

In literature

Ray Bradbury's mystery novel Let's All Kill Constance (2002) is set during this year.

Smith Hempstone's novel A Tract of Time (1966) is set during the Vietnam War around this time.

Charles McCarry's spy novel The Secret Lovers (1977) is set during this year.

Mary McGarry Morris' novel Songs in Ordinary Time (1995) is set during this year.

Austin Pendleton's play Orson's Shadow (2000) is set in London during this year.

Dan Simmons' horror novel Summer of Night (1991) is set during this year.

Jules Verne's novel Paris in the Twentieth Century (Paris au XXe siècle, written in 1863 but not published until 1994) is set during this August.