1970 in literature

Events

January 16 – The new Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus is inaugurated with a performance of Georg Büchner's Dantons Tod.

June 17 – Première of David Storey's play Home at the Royal Court Theatre, London, directed by Lindsay Anderson and starring Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson.

July 7 – Death of English publisher Sir Allen Lane (b. 1902). On August 21 his paperback imprint Penguin Books is acquired by Pearson.

August 27 – RSC production of A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Royal Shakespeare Company premieres its revolutionary production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Peter Brook, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, England.

November 20 – Playwright Fadil Paçrami becomes Chairman of the Parliament of Albania.

November 25 – In Tokyo, Japanese author and Tatenokai militia leader Yukio Mishima (45) and his followers take over the headquarters of the Japan Self-Defense Forces in an attempted coup d'état. After Mishima's speech fails to sway public opinion towards his right-wing politics, including restoration of the powers of the Emperor, he commits seppuku (public ritual suicide).

December 5 – Dario Fo premières his play Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Morte accidentale di un anarchico) at Varese in Italy.

Len Deighton's 1943-set Bomber, published this year in England, is the first novel written on a word processor, the IBM MT/ST.

Deliverance by American poet James Dickey published. In 2001, the book will be named as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by the editorial board of the American Modern Library.

An unexpurgated edition of John Cleland's Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, 1748-9) is published in the United Kingdom without legal challenge.

Bohumil Hrabal's books Domácí úkoly and Poupata are suppressed by the authorities in Czechoslovakia.

Fiction

Dritëro Agolli – Komisari Memo (Commissar Memo)

Poul Anderson – Tau Zero

Thomas Berger – Vital Parts

Thomas Bernhard – The Lime Works (Das Kalkwerk)

Pierre Berton – The National Dream

Jim Bouton – Ball Four

Melvyn Bragg – A Place in England

Wallace Breem – Eagle in the Snow

Jimmy Breslin – The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

Taylor Caldwell – Great Lion of God

John Dickson Carr – The Ghosts' High Noon

Agatha Christie – Passenger to Frankfurt

Robertson Davies – Fifth Business

L. Sprague de Camp

The Reluctant Shaman and Other Fantastic Tales

Warlocks and Warriors (ed.)

Samuel R. Delany – The Fall of the Towers (trilogy)

Michel Déon – Les Poneys sauvages

James Dickey – Deliverance

José Donoso – The Obscene Bird of Night (El obsceno pájaro de la noche)

Lawrence Durrell – Nunquam

Vincent Eri – The Crocodile

Nuruddin Farah – From a Crooked Rib

J. G. Farrell – Troubles

Shirley Hazzard – The Bay of Noon

Anne Hébert – Kamouraska

Ernest Hemingway – Islands in the Stream

Susan Hill – I'm the King of the Castle

Pamela Hansford Johnson – The Honours Board

Uwe Johnson – Jahrestage (Anniversaries; begins publication)

Anna Kavan – Julia and the Bazooka

Jaan Kross – Between Three Plagues (part 1)

Halldór Laxness – Innansveitarkronika

Ira Levin – This Perfect Day

H. P. Lovecraft – The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions

John D. MacDonald – The Long Lavender Look

Eric Malpass – Oh My Darling Daughter

Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫) – The Decay of the Angel (天人五衰, Tennin Gosui; last in The Sea of Fertility tetralogy)

Brian Moore – Fergus

Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye

Larry Niven – Ringworld

John Jay Osborn, Jr. – The Paper Chase

Mary Renault – Fire from Heaven

Kurban Said – Ali and Nino

Erich Segal – Love Story

Sidney Sheldon – The Naked Face

Clark Ashton Smith – Other Dimensions

Manuel Scorza – Drums for Rancas

Muriel Spark – The Driver's Seat

Mary Stewart – The Crystal Cave

Leon Uris – QB VII

Jack Vance – The Pnume

Gore Vidal – Two Sisters

Patrick White – The Vivisector

Venedikt Yerofeyev – Moscow-Petushki (Moscow to the End of the Line; samizdat publication)

Roger Zelazny – Nine Princes in Amber

Children and young people

Richard Bach – Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Nina Bawden – The Birds on the Trees

Judy Blume – Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret

John Burningham – Mr Gumpy's Outing

Betsy Byars – Summer of the Swans

John Christopher (Sam Youd) – The Guardians (science fiction)

Roald Dahl – Fantastic Mr Fox

Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen – The God Beneath the Sea

Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Devils and Demons

Ruth Park

The Muddle-Headed Wombat in the Springtime

The Muddle-Headed Wombat on the River

Maurice Sendak – In the Night Kitchen

Isaac Bashevis Singer – A Day Of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw

E. B. White – The Trumpet Of The Swan

Bill Peet

The Wump World

The Whingdingdilly

Drama

Ama Ata Aidoo – Anowa

Robert Bolt – Vivat! Vivat Regina!

Dario Fo – Accidental Death of an Anarchist

Michael Frayn – The Two of Us (4 1-act plays)

Trevor Griffiths – Occupations

Christopher Hampton – The Philanthropist

Lorraine Hansberry – Les Blancs

Welcome Msomi – uMabatha

Terence Rattigan – A Bequest to the Nation

Anthony Shaffer – Sleuth

Alexander Vampilov – Duck Hunting («Утиная охота», Utinaya okhota, published; first performed 1976)

Derek Walcott – Dream on Monkey Mountain

Poetry

L. Sprague de Camp – Demons and Dinosaurs

Ted Hughes – Crow

Non-fiction

Theodor W. Adorno (posthumously) – Aesthetic Theory (Asthetische Theorie)

Dee Brown – Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

James MacGregor Burns – Roosevelt: The Soldier Of Freedom

Henri Charrière – Papillon

Edward De Bono – Lateral Thinking: creativity step by step

August Derleth – Thirty Years of Arkham House, 1939-1969: A History and Bibliography

Michel Foucault – Les Mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines (The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences)

Germaine Greer – The Female Eunuch

Helene Hanff – 84 Charing Cross Road

Arthur Janov – The Primal Scream

Christopher Lloyd – The Well-Tempered Garden

Norman Mailer – Of a Fire on the Moon

Dumas Malone – Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801-1805

Mahathir bin Mohamad – The Malay Dilemma

Kate Millet – Sexual Politics

Nancy Mitford – Frederick the Great

J. B. Priestley – The Edwardians

Albert Speer – Inside the Third Reich

Alvin Toffler – Future Shock

Births

January 1 – Alex Garland, English novelist

January 25 – Stephen Chbosky, American novelist and screenwriter

March 6 – Simona Vinci, Italian fiction writer

March 12 – Dave Eggers, American writer, editor and publisher

March 20 – Michele Jaffe, American author

May 20 – Dorthe Nors, Danish fiction writer

June 6 – Sarah Dessen, American novelist

September 10 – Phaswane Mpe, South African novelist (died 2004)

September 16 – Nick Sagan, American novelist and screenwriter

October 27 – Jonathan Stroud, English fantasy writer

November 7 – Chris Adrian, American novelist

November 24 – Marlon James, Jamaican novelist

November 27 – Han Kang, South Korean novelist

Unknown date – Nathan Englander, American short story writer

Deaths

January 10 – Charles Olson, American modernist poet (liver cancer, born 1910)

January 29 – B. H. Liddell Hart, English military historian (born 1895)

February 2 – Bertrand Russell, English philosopher (born 1872)

March 11 – Erle Stanley Gardner, American writer (born 1889)

March 21 – Marlen Haushofer, Austrian novelist (born 1920)

March 29 – Vera Brittain, English novelist, memoirist and poet (born 1893)

April 11 – John O'Hara, American novelist (cardiovascular disease, born 1905)

May 12 – Nelly Sachs, Jewish German poet and dramatist (born 1891)

June 2 – Giuseppe Ungaretti, Italian modernist poet and writer (born 1888)

June 7 – E. M. Forster, English novelist (born 1879)

June 16 – Elsa Triolet, French novelist (born 1896)

July 15 – Eric Berne, Canadian-born psychiatrist and author (heart attack, born 1910)

September 1 – François Mauriac, French novelist (born 1885)

September 28 – John Dos Passos, American novelist (born 1896)

November 23 – Alf Prøysen, Norwegian author, musician and children's writer (born 1914)

November 25 – Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫), Japanese author (seppuku, born 1925)

Unknown date – Racey Helps, English children's author and illustrator (born 1913)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Canada

See 1970 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

Prix Goncourt: Michel Tournier, Le Roi des Aulnes

Prix Médicis French: Camille Bourniquel, Sélinonte ou la Chambre impériale

Prix Médicis International: Luigi Malerba, Saut de la mort

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen, The God Beneath the Sea

Cholmondeley Award: Kathleen Raine, Douglas Livingstone, Edward Brathwaite

Eric Gregory Award: Helen Frye, Paul Mills, John Mole, Brian Morse, Alan Perry, Richard Tibbitts

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Lily Powell, The Bird of Paradise

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston

Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Roy Fuller

United States

Hugo Award: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Nebula Award: Larry Niven, Ringworld

Newbery Medal for children's literature: William H. Armstrong, Sounder

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Charles Gordone, No Place To Be Somebody

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Jean Stafford, Collected Stories

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Richard Howard, Untitled Subjects

Elsewhere

Miles Franklin Award: Dal Stivens, A Horse of Air

Premio Nadal: Jesús Fernández Santos, Libro de las memorias de las cosas

Viareggio Prize: Nello Saito, Dentro e fuori