1959 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1959.

Events

January 31 – Sandu Tudor begins a 40-year sentence at Jilava Prison for "conspiracy against social order" and "intense activity against the working class", as meted out by a Romanian communist tribunal. He will die in 1962 at Aiud prison, possibly from torture.
April 30 – Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards receives its stage première. It was originally performed on radio in 1932.
May 7 – Scientist and novelist C. P. Snow delivers in the Senate House, University of Cambridge a Rede Lecture on The Two Cultures, to do with a perceived breakdown of communication between the sciences and humanities. It is later 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 three books whose bans are overturned in court with assistance from the lawyer Charles Rembar in the United States, the others being Tropic of Cancer and Fanny Hill. The book, published in 1928, legally circulates in the U.S. after a 31-year obscenity ban.
July 29 – The U.K. Obscene Publications Act becomes law, coming into force on August 29. It requires a work to be seen as a whole, permitting a "public good" defence against a prosecution for obscenity, and making prosecutions for obscene libel difficult.
September – Anthony Burgess, teaching in Brunei, suffers a breakdown and is forced to return to the UK, where he becomes a full-time novelist.
October 29 – Astérix the Gaul makes a first appearance in the first regular issue of the comic magazine Pilote.
November 11 – In the United States, the short film Pull My Daisy is released, adapted from an unperformed play by Jack Kerouac, Beat Generation, and narrated by him. It stars poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso.
unknown dates
*Aldous Huxley turns down 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 Gymreig.
*The first butoh performance, Kinjiki by Tatsumi Hijikata, is played at a dance festival in Japan. It is based on the novel of that name by Yukio Mishima and explores the taboos of male homosexuality and pedophilia.

New books

Fiction

Eric Ambler – Passage of Arms
Isaac Asimov – Nine Tomorrows
H.E. Bates – A Breath of French Air
Saul Bellow – Henderson the Rain King
Derek Bickerton – Payroll
Robert Bloch – Psycho
Antoine Blondin – A Monkey in Winter
Heinrich Böll – Billiards at Half-Past Nine
Ray Bradbury – A Medicine for Melancholy
Jurij Brězan – Der Gymnasiast
John Brophy – The Day They Robbed the Bank of England
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
Henry Cecil – Settled [Out of Court (novel)|Settled Out of Court]
James Hadley Chase – The [World in My Pocket (novel)|The World in My Pocket]
Agatha Christie – Cat Among the Pigeons
Ivy Compton-Burnett – A Heritage and Its History
Barbara Comyns – The Vet's Daughter
Richard Condon – The Manchurian Candidate
Evan S. Connell – Mrs. Bridge
Alexander Cordell – Rape of the Fair Country
Julio Cortázar – Las armas secretas
Richard Crichton – The Great Impostor
Cecil Day-Lewis – The Widow's Cruise
Allen Drury – Advise and Consent
Alfred Duggan – Children of the Wolf
Jane Duncan – My Friends the Miss Boyds
Shusaku Endo – Wonderful Fool
William Faulkner – The Mansion
Ian Fleming – Goldfinger
Sarah Gainham – The Stone Roses
Paul Gallico – Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris
William Golding – Free Fall
Richard Gordon – Doctor and Son
Günter Grass – The Tin Drum
Walter Greenwood – Saturday Night at the Crown
Vasily Grossman – Life and Fate
Mark Harris – Wake Up, Stupid
Robert A. Heinlein
*The Menace From Earth
*Starship Troopers
*The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
Dorothy Hewett – Bobbin Up
Hwang Sun-won – "Rain Shower"
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra – Tammūz fī al-Madīnah
Michael Innes – Hare Sitting Up
Shirley Jackson – The Haunting of Hill House
Uwe Johnson – Mutmassungen über Jakob
John Knowles – A Separate Peace
Manuel Lopes – O Galo Que Cantou na Baía
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
Compton Mackenzie – The Lunatic Republic
Alistair MacLean
*The Last Frontier
*Night Without End
Naguib Mahfouz – Children of Gebelaawi
Norman Mailer – Advertisements for Myself
Ngaio Marsh – Singing in the Shrouds
James A. Michener – Hawaii
Walter M. Miller Jr. – A Canticle for Leibowitz
Gladys Mitchell – The Man Who Grew Tomatoes
V.S. Naipaul – Miguel Street
Patrick O'Brian – The Unknown Shore
Mervyn Peake – Titus Alone
David Piper – Trial by Battle
Raymond Queneau – Zazie in the Metro
Robert Randall – The Dawning Light
Mordecai Richler – The [Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (book)|The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz]
Kate Roberts – Te yn y grug
Philip Roth – Goodbye, Columbus
Robert Ruark – Poor No More
Nathalie Sarraute – Le Planétarium
André Schwarz-Bart – The Last of the Just
Mary Shelley – Mathilda
Alan Sillitoe – The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Andrew Sinclair – The Breaking of Bumbo, My Friend Judas
Aimée Sommerfelt – The Road to Agra
Terry Southern – The Magic Christian
Howard Spring – All the Day Long
Rex Stout – Plot It Yourself
Valerie Taylor – The Girls in 3-B
John Updike – The Same Door
Kurt Vonnegut – The Sirens of Titan
Keith Waterhouse – Billy Liar
Sheila Watson – ''The Double Hook''

Children and young people

Drama

Edward Albee
*The Death of Bessie Smith
*The Zoo Story
Jean Anouilh – Becket
John Arden – Serjeant Musgrave's Dance
Alan Ayckbourn – The Square Cat
Samuel Beckett – Embers
Bertolt Brecht – Saint Joan of the Stockyards
Albert Camus – The Possessed
Beverley Cross – One More River
William Douglas Home – Aunt Edwina
Refik Erduran – Cengiz Han’ın Bisikleti
Jack Gelber – The Connection
Jean Genet – The Blacks: A Clown Show
Lorraine Hansberry – A Raisin in the Sun
Eugène Ionesco – The Killer
Geoffrey Lumsden – Caught Napping
Harold Pinter – The Caretaker
Zofia Posmysz – Pasażerka z kabiny 45
Jean-Paul Sartre – The Condemned of Altona
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
Zhou Xinfang with Xu Siyan – ''Hai Rui Submits His Memorial''

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!
Georges Friedmann – Signal d'une troisième voie?
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
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
Barbara Wootton, Baroness Wootton of Abinger – ''Social Science and Social Pathology''

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
May 13 – Zeruya Shalev, Israeli novelist
June 12 – Hilary McKay, English children's writer
June 13 – Maurice G. Dantec, French science fiction author
July 19 – Vigdis Hjorth, Norwegian novelist
August 6 – Deborah Levy, South African-born British writer
August 17 – Jonathan Franzen, American essayist and novelist
August 27 – Jeanette Winterson, English novelist
September 9 – Matti Rönkä, Finnish television journalist and novelist
September 29
*Jon Fosse, Norwegian fiction writer, playwright and poet
*Benjamin Sehene, Rwandan writer
October 1 – Brian P. Cleary, American humorist, author and poet
October 7 – Steven Erikson, Canadian novelist and fantasy author
October 31 – Neal Stephenson, American science fiction writer
November 1 – Susanna Clarke, English novelist
November 22 – Christoph Klimke, German writer
December 20 – Sandra Cisneros, Mexican-born American author
unknown dates
*Moira Young, Canadian children's novelist

Deaths

January 3 – Edwin Muir, Scottish poet, novelist and translator
January 14 – G. D. H. Cole, English political theorist, economist and historian
January 26 – Margaret Elizabeth Egan, American librarian
January 29 – Pauline Smith, South African novelist
February 20 – Laurence Housman, English playwright and writer
February 22 – Percy F. Westerman, English children's author
February 23 – Luis Palés Matos, Puerto Rican poet
February 28 – Maxwell Anderson, American playwright and film writer
March 4 – W. W. Greg, English literary scholar
March 17 – Galaktion Tabidze, Georgian poet
March 26 – Raymond Chandler, American crime writer
April 12 – James Gleason, American actor, playwright and screenwriter
April 14 – Julien Josephson, American screenwriter
April 16 – Ramón Armando Rodríguez, Venezuelan writer
May 15 – Jeanne de Flandreysy, French writer
May 18 – Apsley Cherry-Garrard, English memoirist and explorer
May 20 – Alfred Schütz, Austrian philosopher and sociologist
May 30 – Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz, Argentine writer, journalist, essayist and poet
June 1 – Sax Rohmer, English novelist
June 23 – Boris Vian, French novelist
June 30 – José Vasconcelos, Mexican poet and political writer
July 3 – Johan Bojer, Norwegian novelist
July 26 – Manuel Altolaguirre, Spanish poet, editor and publisher
August 8 – Emil František Burian, Czech poet, journalist and playwright
September 5 – Marta Rădulescu, Romanian novelist and poet
September 14 – Laxmi Prasad Devkota, Nepali poet, playwright, and novelist
September 18 – Benjamin Péret, French poet
October 12 – Arnolt Bronnen, Austrian playwright and director
November 29 – Hans Henny Jahnn, German playwright and novelist
December 2 – Giuseppe Zucca, Italian screenwriter

Awards

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers
Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels: Theodor Heuss
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 in Literature: Salvatore Quasimodo
Premio Nadal: Ana María Matute, Primera memoria
Prix Goncourt: André Schwarz-Bart, Le dernier des Justes
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