1975 in literature

Events

January 1 – English-born comic writer P. G. Wodehouse is awarded a knighthood, six weeks before his death in the United States.

January – Colin Dexter's detective novel Last Bus to Woodstock, introducing his Oxford police officer Inspector Morse, is published.

April 23 – Harold Pinter's play No Man's Land is premièred by the National Theatre company at The Old Vic theatre in London directed by Peter Hall and starring Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson.

April 28 – Harold Pinter leaves his first wife, the actress Vivien Merchant, having begun an affair with the married biographer Lady Antonia Fraser on January 8.

August 12 – With the 20-year time limit stipulated by Thomas Mann at his death having expired, sealed packets containing 32 of the author's notebooks are opened in Zürich, Switzerland.

Writing under the pseudonym of "Émile Ajar", author Romain Gary becomes the only person to ever win the Prix Goncourt twice.

Radical Australian poet Dorothy Hewett publishes her collection Rapunzel in Suburbia, triggering a successful libel action by her ex-husband.

Hearing Secret Harmonies, the twelfth and final novel of the A Dance to the Music of Time duodecalogy (begun in 1951) by Anthony Powell is published.

French literary critic Hélène Cixous coins the term Écriture féminine in her article "Le rire de la méduse".

Milan Kundera emigrates to France.

The Petrarca-Preis is founded by Hubert Burda.

Fiction

Guram Dochanashvili – The First Garment

Chabua Amirejibi – Data Tutashkhia

Edward Abbey – The Monkey Wrench Gang

Dritëro Agolli – Njeriu me top]] (The Man with the Cannon)

Robert Aickman – Cold Hand in Mine: Eight Strange Stories

Martin Amis – Dead Babies

Natalie Babbitt – Tuck Everlasting

Donald Barthelme – The Dead Father

Saul Bellow – Humboldt's Gift

Thomas Berger – Sneaky People

Thomas Bernhard – Correction (Korrektur)

Jorge Luis Borges – The Book of Sand (El libro de arena, short stories)

Malcolm Bradbury – The History Man

Morley Callaghan – A Fine and Private Place

J. L. Carr – How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup

Agatha Christie – Curtain: Poirot's last case (written in 1940s)

James Clavell – Shōgun

Michael Crichton – The Great Train Robbery

A. J. Cronin – The Minstrel Boy

Robertson Davies – World of Wonders

L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt – The Compleat Enchanter

Samuel R. Delany – Dhalgren

Michel Déon – The Foundling Boy (Le Jeune Homme vert)

August Derleth – Harrigan's File

E. L. Doctorow – Ragtime

Hans Frick (with Willi Glasauer) – Danny's Dream

Max Frisch – Montauk

Carlos Fuentes – Terra Nostra

William Gaddis – J R

Gabriel García Márquez – The Autumn of the Patriarch (El Otoño del Patriarca)

Romain Gary as Émile Ajar – The Life Before Us (La vie devant soi)

Rumer Godden – The Peacock Spring

Arthur Hailey – The Moneychangers

Thomas Harris – Black Sunday

Xavier Herbert – Poor Fellow My Country

Georgette Heyer – My Lord John

Jack Higgins – The Eagle Has Landed

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala – Heat and Dust

Stephen King – 'Salem's Lot

Sheridan Le Fanu (died 1873) – The Purcell Papers

David Lodge – Changing Places

Robert Ludlum – The Road to Gandolfo

John D. MacDonald – The Dreadful Lemon Sky

Bharati Mukherjee – Wife

Gary Myers – The House of the Worm

V. S. Naipaul – Guerrillas

Tim O'Brien – Northern Lights

Gerald W. Page, editor – Nameless Places

Robert B. Parker – Mortal Stakes

Georges Perec – W, or the Memory of Childhood (W, ou le Souvenir d'enfance)

Elizabeth Peters – Crocodile on the Sandbank (first in the Amelia Peabody series)

Baltasar Porcel – Horses into the Night (Cavalls cap a la fosca)

Anthony Powell – Hearing Secret Harmonies

James Purdy – In a Shallow Grave

Judith Rossner – Looking for Mr. Goodbar

Nawal El Saadawi – Woman at Point Zero (Emra'a enda noktat el sifr)

Paul Scott – A Division of the Spoils

Anya Seton – Smouldering Fires

Gerald Seymour – Harry's Game

Tom Sharpe – Blott on the Landscape

Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson – The Illuminatus! Trilogy (individual editions)

M. P. Shiel – Xélucha and Others

Rex Stout – A Family Affair

Glendon Swarthout – The Shootist

Joseph Wambaugh – The Choirboys

Jack Vance – Showboat World

Roger Zelazny – Sign of the Unicorn

Children and young people

Verna Aardema – Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears (illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon)

Nina Bawden – The Peppermint Pig

Susan Cooper – The Grey King

Roald Dahl – Danny, the Champion of the World

Rumer Godden – Mr. McFadden's Hallowe'en

Peter Härtling – Oma (Grandma)

Eva Ibbotson – The Great Ghost Rescue

Ruth Park – The Muddle-Headed Wombat and the Invention

Robert Westall – The Machine Gunners

Bill Peet - Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent

Bill Peet - The Gnats of Knotty Pine

Drama

Alan Ayckbourn – Bedroom Farce

Patrick Galvin – We Do It For Love

Trevor Griffiths – Comedians

Colin Higgins and Denis Cannan with Peter Brook – The Ik

Franz Xaver Kroetz

Geisterbahn (Ghost Train)

Das Nest (The Nest)

Stewart Parker – Spokesong

Harold Pinter – No Man's Land

Wole Soyinka – Death and the King's Horseman

Ben Travers – The Bed Before Yesterday

Poetry

Lin Carter – Dreams from R'lyeh

Leslie Norris – Mountains, Polecats, Pheasants and other Elegies

Non-fiction

Philip Agee – Inside the Company: CIA Diary

Kingsley Amis – Rudyard Kipling and His World

Robert Bresson – Notes on the Cinematographer (Notes sur le cinématographe)

Jacob Bronowski – The Ascent of Man

L. Sprague de Camp

Blond Barbarians and Noble Savages

Lovecraft: A Biography

The Miscast Barbarian: a Biography of Robert E. Howard

Michel Foucault – Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison)

Paul Fussell – The Great War and Modern Memory

Paul Horgan – Lamy of Santa Fe

Frank Belknap Long – Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside

Philip Roth – Reading Myself and Others

Paul Theroux – The Great Railway Bazaar

Births

January 13 – Daniel Kehlmann, German novelist

February 25 – Carrie Mac, Canadian young-adult fiction writer

June 23 – Markus Zusak, Australian young-adult novelist

July 19 – Martina Montelius, Swedish playwright

August 20 – Matthew and Michael Dickman, American poets

October 27 – Zadie Smith (Sadie Smith), English novelist

Cynan Jones, Welsh novelist

Deaths

January 15 – Sydney Goodsir Smith, Scottish poet, dramatist and novelist (heart attack, born 1915)

February 14

Sir Julian Huxley, English biologist and author (born 1887)

Sir P. G. Wodehouse, English-born comic novelist (born 1881)

February 20 – Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov, Russian author (born 1882)

March 3 – T. H. Parry-Williams, Welsh poet (born 1887)

March 7 – Kate Seredy, Hungarian-born American children's writer and illustrator (born 1899)

March 13 – Ivo Andrić, Serbo-Croatian novelist and Nobel laureate (born 1892)

May 21 – A. H. Dodd, Welsh historian (born 1891)

June 8 – Murray Leinster (William Fitzgerald Jenkins), American science fiction writer (born 1896)

September 20 – Saint-John Perse (Alexis Leger), French poet and Nobel laureate (born 1887)

October 5 – Lady Constance Malleson, Irish actress and writer (born 1895)

October 22 – Arnold J. Toynbee, English historian (born 1889)

November 13 – R. C. Sherriff, English dramatist and novelist (born 1896)

November 19 – Elizabeth Taylor, English novelist (cancer, born 1912)

November 27 – Ross McWhirter, English sports journalist and joint compiler of Guinness Book of Records (assassinated, born 1925)

December 4 – Hannah Arendt, German-American philosopher (born 1906)

December 7 – Thornton Wilder, American novelist and dramatist (born 1897)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Eugenio Montale

Canada

See 1975 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

Prix Goncourt: Romain Gary as Emile Ajar – La vie devant soi

Prix Médicis French: Jacques Almira, Le Voyage à Naucratis

Prix Médicis International: Steven Millhauser, La Vie trop brève d'Edwin Mulhouse – United States

Spain

Premio Nadal: Francisco Umbral, Las ninfas

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Robert Westall, The Machine Gunners

Cholmondeley Award: Jenny Joseph, Norman MacCaig, John Ormond

Duff Cooper Prize: – Seamus Heaney, North

Eric Gregory Award: John Birtwhistle, Duncan Bush, Val Warner, Philip Holmes, Peter Cash, Alasdair Paterson

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Brian Moore, The Great Victorian Collection

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Karl Miller, Cockburn's Millennium

United States

American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Belles Lettres: Kenneth Burke

Nebula Award: Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Virginia Hamilton, M. C. Higgins, the Great

Newdigate Prize: Andrew Motion

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Edward Albee, Seascape

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Michael Shaara – The Killer Angels

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Gary Snyder – Turtle Island

Elsewhere

Miles Franklin Award: Xavier Herbert, Poor Fellow My Country

Viareggio Prize: Paolo Volponi, Il sipario ducale