1948 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1948.

Events

January 6 – The poet Pablo Neruda speaks out in the Senate of Chile against political repression and is forced into hiding.
January 28 – A debate between Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston on the existence of God is broadcast by the BBC.
February 5 – A private assembly of 50 major literary and artistic figures listens to a recording of Antonin Artaud's play Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de dieu, whose broadcast on French radio three days earlier has been prohibited.
February 17–November 24 – Venezuelan novelist Rómulo Gallegos serves as his country's first correctly elected President, until overthrown in a military coup.
March 21 – Halldor Laxness's The Atom Station sells out all copies on its first day of publication.
May – Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle is first performed as a student production, in English, at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota. This year also sees the première of Brecht's adaptation of Antigone, at the Chur Stadttheater in Switzerland, with Helene Weigel in the title rôle.
May 4 – Sir Laurence Olivier's film of Shakespeare's Hamlet is shown. It will be the first British film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
c. June 1 – The first volume of Winston Churchill's The Second World War is published.
September 8 – Terence Rattigan's one-act plays The Browning Version and Harlequinade are first performed at the Phoenix Theatre (London).
September 17 – The Irish poet W. B. Yeats, who died at Menton, France, in 1939, is reburied at Drumcliffe, County Sligo, "Under bare Ben Bulben's head", having been moved from the original burial place, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, on the Irish Naval Service corvette LÉ Macha. His grave at Drumcliffe, with an epitaph from "Under Ben Bulben", one of his final poems, becomes a place of literary pilgrimage.
November 13 – Alice's Adventures Under Ground, the original manuscript of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, bought by a group of American Anglophiles in 1946, is presented by Luther H. Evans to the British Museum Library.
unknown dates
*The 20th and last edition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum is published by the Holy See.
*The London publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson is founded by George Weidenfeld and Nigel Nicolson.
*The Pulitzer Prize for the Novel is renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
*The Palatino serif typeface, designed by Hermann Zapf, is released by the Mergenthaler Linotype Company.

New books

Poetry

Sukanta Bhattacharya – Chharpatra
Olga Kirsch – Mure van die Hart
Derek Walcott – ''25 Poems''

Non-fiction

Winston Churchill – The Gathering Storm
T. S. Eliot – Notes Towards the Definition of Culture
Robert Graves – The White Goddess
Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey – Cheaper by the Dozen
Richard Hofstadter – The American Political Tradition
F. R. Leavis – The Great Tradition
Betty MacDonald – The Plague and I
Dumas Malone – Jefferson and His Time: Jefferson the Virginian
Thomas Merton – The Seven Storey Mountain
A. A. Milne – The Norman Church
Anthony Powell – John Aubrey and His Friends
Paul Samuelson – Economics
John Steinbeck – ''A Russian Journal''

Births

January 1 – Lynn Abbey, American writer
January 2 – Joyce Wadler, American writer and memoirist
January 20 – Nigel Williams, English author, playwright and screenwriter
February 3 – Henning Mankell, Swedish crime novelist, children's author and dramatist
February 5 – Christopher Guest, English-American writer, actor and director
February 15 – Art Spiegelman, American cartoonist
February 19 – Clive Sinclair, English short-story writer
February 28 – Mike Figgis, English writer, director and composer
February 29
*Hermione Lee, English biographer
*Patricia A. McKillip, American fantasy and science fiction novel author
March 4 – James Ellroy, American crime fiction author
March 17 – William Gibson, American-born speculative novelist
March 28 – Iman Budhi Santosa, Indonesian poet
April 4 – Patricia A. McKillip, American science fiction, horror and fantasy author
April 21 – Clare Boylan, Irish novelist
April 28 – Terry Pratchett, English comic fantasy author
May 31 – Svetlana Alexievich, Belarusian writer of literary reportage, Nobel Prize in Literature recipient
June 14 – Laurence Yep, American author
June 16 – F. van Dixhoorn, Dutch poet
June 21 – Andrzej Sapkowski, Polish fantasy author
June 30 – Wolf Erlbruch, German children's book illustrator and writer
July 22 – Susan Eloise Hinton, American young-adult author
August 2 – Snoo Wilson, English playwright and screenwriter
August 8 – Miranda Seymour, English novelist and biographer
August 24 – Alexander McCall Smith, Scottish writer
August 28 – Vonda N. McIntyre, American science fiction writer
August 29 – Nick Darke, Cornish playwright
September 2 – Manfred Böckl, German novelist and writer of popular history
September 16 – Julia Donaldson, English author and children's writer
September 20 – George R. R. Martin, American fantasy author
October 5 – Zoran Živković, Serbian author and academic
October 6 – Zakes Mda, South African novelist, poet and playwright
October 9 – Ciaran Carson, Northern Irish poet and novelist
October 17 – Robert Jordan, American fantasy author
October 18 – Ntozake Shange, African American playwright, poet and novelist
November 18 – Frances Fyfield, English jurist and crime writer
December 7 – Gertrud Leutenegger, Swiss novelist and poet
December 20 – Abdulrazak Gurnah, Zanzibar-born novelist, Nobel Prize in Literature recipient
unknown dates
*Ibrahim al-Koni, Libyan novelist
*Suzanne Robert, French Canadian novelist
*Edward Rutherfurd, English novelist

Deaths

January 2 – Vicente Huidobro, Chilean poet
March 6 – Ross Lockridge Jr., American author
March 10 – Zelda Fitzgerald, American novelist
April 22 – Prosper Montagné, French chef and food author
May 5 – Sextil Pușcariu, Romanian linguist, philologist and journalist
May 20 – Victor Ido, Dutch East Indian journalist, novelist and dramatist
May 22 – Claude McKay, Jamaican American writer
June 13 - Dazai Osamu, Japanese writer
June 16 – Holbrook Jackson, English journalist, writer, publisher and bibliophile
June 21 – Alice Brown, American novelist, poet and dramatist
July 3 – Phelps Putnam, American poet
July 4 – Monteiro Lobato, Brazilian fiction writer, particularly for children
July 5 – Georges Bernanos, French novelist
July 21 – J.-H. Rosny jeune, French science fiction writer
July 27 – Susan Glaspell, American dramatist and novelist
August 3 – Venetia Stanley, English correspondent
August 19 – Frederick Philip Grove, German-born Canadian novelist and essayist
August 25 – Gordon Bottomley, English poet, writer of verse drama
September 8 – Thomas Mofolo, Sotho novelist
September 9 – Lajos Bíró, Hungarian novelist, dramatist and screenwriter
September 20 – Husain Salaahuddin, Maldivian writer
October 12 – Alfred Kerr, German theatre critic
December 13 – Michael Roberts, English poet and critic
unknown date – Eraclie Sterian, Romanian science writer and playwright

Awards

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Richard Armstrong, Sea Change
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Percy A. Scholes, The Great Dr Burney
Newbery Medal for children's literature: William Pene du Bois, The Twenty-One Balloons
Nobel Prize in Literature: Thomas Stearns Eliot
Premio Nadal: Sebastián Juan Arbó, Sobre las piedras grises
Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: James A. Michener – Tales of the South Pacific
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: W. H. Auden: ''The Age of Anxiety''

1948 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards