1963 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1963.

Events

January – Novy Mir publishes "Matryona's Home", the first of three more stories by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn critical of the Soviet regime. They will be the last of his works to be published in the Soviet Union until 1990.
January 2 – The Traverse Theatre opens in Edinburgh.
February – English novelist Barbara Pym submits her seventh book, An Unsuitable Attachment, for publication. It is rejected by Tom Maschler at her regular publisher, Jonathan Cape, and by others. She will not have another novel published until 1977 and An Unsuitable Attachment does not appear until 1982, posthumously.
February 11 – American-born poet Sylvia Plath commits suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in her London flat about a month after her only novel, the semi-autobiographical The Bell Jar, appears and six days after writing her last poem, "Edge".
March – The Publications and Entertainments Act in South Africa enables the government to impose strict censorship. Des Troye's novel An Act of Immorality is among the first to be prohibited.
March/April – The Bologna Children's Book Fair is inaugurated.
March 19 – Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop premières the ensemble musical Oh, What a Lovely War! at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, London.
May 17 – The first Galician Literature Day is held.
July 16 – A day after admission to the Acland Hospital in Oxford, C. S. Lewis suffers a heart attack. Though later discharged, he dies at home four months later.
August 20 – The Royal Shakespeare Company introduces its performance cycle of Shakespeare's history plays under the title The War of the Roses, adapted and directed by John Barton and Peter Hall at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.
September – Publication in India of Bhalchandra Nemade's Bildungsroman, Kosala, considered the first existentialist novel in Marathi literature, written in the author's native village.
October 21 – The first film from Merchant Ivory Productions is released: The Householder with a screenplay adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from her own novel.
October 22 – The Royal National Theatre Company is newly formed in the U.K. under Artistic Director Laurence Olivier. Its first performance is with Peter O'Toole as Hamlet, in London.
November – Tom Wolfe's essay "There Goes That Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby Around the Bend..." is published in Esquire magazine in the United States.
November 17 – Fictional hero 8 Man, created by science fiction writer Kazumasa Hirai and manga artist Jiro Kuwata, appears in print for the first time.
November 20–29 – A High Court case in London over the rights in Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Thunderball determines that future editions will be described as "based on a screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, and Ian Fleming".
unknown dates
*Russian poet Anna Akhmatova's Requiem, an elegy on Soviet sufferings in the Great Purge, composed 1935–1961, is first published complete in book form, without her knowledge, in Munich.
*The first modern publication by mainstream publishers in the U.K. and the United States of John Cleland's novel Fanny Hill causes it to be banned for obscenity in Massachusetts, triggering a court case by its publisher, and prosecution of a London retailer.
*Leslie Charteris publishes his last collection of stories with Simon Templar: The Saint in the Sun. All subsequent Saint books will be ghost-written by others.
*Grace Ogot's short story "A Year of Sacrifice" is published in Black Orpheus.

New books

Poetry

T. S. Eliot – Collected Poems 1909–1962
Lionel Kearns – Songs of Circumstance
H. P. Lovecraft – Collected Poems
Rosemary Tonks – ''Notes on Cafés and Bedrooms''

Non-fiction

Nelson Algren – Who Lost an American?
Hannah Arendt
*Eichmann in Jerusalem
*On Revolution
James Baldwin – The Fire Next Time
Thomas B. Costain – William the Conqueror
L. Sprague de Camp – The Ancient Engineers
Milovan Đilas – Montenegro
Richard P. Feynman – Six Easy Pieces
Robert Newton Flew – Jesus and His Way. A study of the ethics of the New Testament
Shelby Foote – The Civil War: A Narrative – Vol. 2: Fredicksburg to Meridian
Betty Friedan – The Feminine Mystique
W. L. Guttsman – The British Political Elite
Jules Henry – Culture Against Man
Richard Hofstadter – Anti-intellectualism in American Life
C. L. R. James – Beyond a Boundary
Martin Luther King Jr. – Letter from Birmingham Jail
H. P. Lovecraft – Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity
William H. McNeill – The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community
Jessica Mitford – The American Way of Death
Margaret Murray – My First Hundred Years
Iris Origo – The World of San Bernardino
Stanisław Ossowski – Class Structure in the Social Consciousness
W. G. Runciman – Social Science and Political Theory
E. P. Thompson – The Making of the English Working Class
UNESCO – History of Mankind – Vol. 1

Births

January 3 – Alex Wheatle, black British young adult fiction writer
January 11 – Jan Arnald, Swedish novelist and critic
January 18 – Peter Stamm, Swiss writer, dramatist and journalist
January 30 – Thomas Brezina, Austrian author
March 1 – Miss Shangay Lily, Spanish drag queen, writer, actor, and director
March 26 – Natsuhiko Kyogoku, Japanese mystery writer
April 27 – Russell T Davies, Welsh television writer
April 28 – Beate Grimsrud, Norwegian novelist and playwright
May 5 – Scott Westerfeld, American young-adult novelist
May 24 – Michael Chabon, American author
May 26 – Simon Armitage, English poet, Poet Laureate of the UK
June 8 – Lutz Seiler, German poet and novelist
June 18 – Adam Hargreaves, children’s author
June 23 – Liu Cixin, Chinese speculative fiction writer
June 25 – Yann Martel, Canadian author
August 6 – Xurxo Borrazás, Spanish writer and translator
August 13 – Valerie Plame, American writer and spy novelist
August 15 – Jan Sonnergaard, Danish short-story writer
September 2 – Thor Kunkel, German novelist
September 4 – Louise Doughty, English novelist and radio dramatist
September 6 – Alice Sebold, American novelist
September 12 – Michael McElhatton, Irish actor and writer
September 15 – Stephen C. Spiteri, Maltese military historian
September 17 – Rami Saari, Israeli poet, translator, linguist and literary critic
October 8 – Nick Earls, Australian novelist and children's writer
October 20 – Gisela Kozak, Venezuelan writer and essayist
October 23 – Gordon Korman, Canadian-American children's and young adult author
October 25 – Dominic Dromgoole, English theatre director and writer
November 12 – Damon Galgut, South African novelist and playwright
December 23 – Donna Tartt, American novelist
unknown dates
*Jeff Abbott, American genre novelist
*Joanna Briscoe, English novelist
*Don Paterson, Scottish poet, writer and musician

Deaths

January 6 – Stark Young, teacher, playwright, novelist, painter, literary critic and essayist
January 8 – Kay Sage, American poet
January 13 – Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Spanish dramatist
January 14 – Gustav Regler, German Socialist novelist
January 29 – Robert Frost, American poet
February 4 – Brinsley MacNamara, Irish novelist and playwright
February 8 – Ernst Glaeser, German writer
February 11 – Sylvia Plath, American poet and novelist
February 14 – Hilda Vīka, Latvian poet and novelist
February 18 – Beppe Fenoglio, Italian writer
February 24 – Herbert Asbury, American journalist and writer
March 4 – William Carlos Williams, American writer
March 11
*Deirdre Cash, Australian novelist
*James Lennox Kerr, Scottish novelist and children's writer
March 26 – Jean Bruce, French writer
March 29 – Pola Gojawiczyńska, Polish writer
April 14 – Kodō Nomura, Japanese novelist and music critic
April 25 – Christopher Hassall, English actor, dramatist, librettist, lyricist and poet
April 27 – Lillian Barrett, American novelist and playwright
May 12 – A. W. Tozer, American religious writer and pastor
May 28 – Ion Agârbiceanu, Romanian writer and pastor
June 3 – Nâzım Hikmet Ran, Turkish poet, playwright and novelist
June 17 – John Cowper Powys, English novelist
August 1 – Theodore Roethke, American poet
August 14 – Clifford Odets, American dramatist
August 27 – W. E. B. Du Bois, American writer, scholar and activist
September 3 – Louis MacNeice, Irish poet
September 9 – Ernst Kantorowicz, German historian
September 28 – Marie Linde, South African novelist
October 11 – Jean Cocteau, French poet, novelist and short story writer
October – Jolán Földes, Hungarian novelist and playwright
November 13 – Margaret Murray, Indian-born English archeologist and historian
November 22
*Mary Findlater, Scottish novelist
*Aldous Huxley, English novelist
*C. S. Lewis, Irish novelist and children's and religious writer
November 24 – Martha Ostenso, Norwegian-born Canadian novelist and screenwriter
December 25 – Tristan Tzara, Romanian-born French poet and essayist

Awards

American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry: William Carlos Williams
Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Hester Burton, Time of Trial
Eric Gregory Award: Ian Hamilton, Stewart Conn, Peter Griffith, David Wevill
Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels: Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Gerda Charles, A Slanting Light
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Georgina Battiscombe, John Keble: A Study in Limitations
Miles Franklin Award: Sumner Locke Elliott, Careful, He Might Hear You
Newbery Medal for children's literature: Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Nobel Prize in Literature – Giorgos Seferis
Premio Nadal: Manuel Mejía Vallejo, El día señalado
Prix Goncourt: Armand Lanoux, Quand la mer se retire
Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: William Faulkner – The Reivers
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: William Carlos Williams: Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems
Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: William Plomer

1963 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards