• Bertolt Brecht - Life of Galileo and The Good Person of Szechwan

• Albert Camus - The Misunderstanding

• Moss Hart - Winged Victory

• Jean-Paul Sartre - The Flies

Poetry

• A Choice of Kipling's Verse edited by T. S. Eliot

Non-fiction

• Julius Evola - The Doctrine of Awakening

• C. S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man

• Reinhold Niebuhr - The Nature and Destiny of Man

• Jean-Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness

• Stephan Zweig - The World of Yesterday.

Births

• January 4 - Doris Kearns Goodwin, writer

• January 8 - Charles Murray, Bell Curve author

• January 11 - Jim Hightower, radio host, author

• February 15 - Elke Heidenreich, journalist and writer

• February 18 - Graeme Garden, writer, comedian, actor

• February 22 - Terry Eagleton, critic

• March 26 - Bob Woodward, journalist

• April 6 - Max Clifford, publicist

• April 17 - Gwynne Dyer, journalist

• April 30 - Paul Jennings, children's author

• May 5 - Michael Palin, comedy writer and television personality

• May 7 - Peter Carey, Booker Prize-winning novelist

• May 8 - Pat Barker, Booker Prize-winning novelist

• June 10 - Simon Jenkins, journalist

• June 15 - Xaviera Hollander, Happy Hooker author

• July 16 - Reinaldo Arenas, Cuban writer (d. 1990)

• November 5 - Sam Shepard, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, writer, actor

• November 12 - Wallace Shawn, actor and dramatist

• December 9 - Joanna Trollope, novelist

• date unknown

• *L. E. Modesitt, Jr., fantasy and science fiction writer

• *Sheila Rowbotham, feminist author

Deaths

• January 9 - R. G. Collingwood, philosopher and historian

• March 10 - Laurence Binyon, poet and scholar

• April 7 - Jovan Dučić, poet and diplomat (b. 1871)

• April 30 - Beatrice Webb

• May - Arthur Mee, editor of the Children's Encyclopaedia

• June 28 - Frida Uhl, Austrian writer and translator (b. 1872)

• August - Haig Acterian ("Mihail"), Fascist poet, dramatist, director and journalist (b. 1904) (missing in action)

• August 22 - Virgilio Dávila, poet and politician (b. 1869)

• August 24 - Simone Weil, philosopher

• October 7 - Radclyffe Hall, controversial author

• December 22 - Beatrix Potter, children's author (b. 1866)

• date unknown

• *Ida Lee, Australian historian and poet (b. 1865)

• *Guido Mazzoni, poet

• date unknown - F. M. Cornford, poet

Awards

• Frost Medal: Edna St. Vincent Millay

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Mary Lavin, Tales from Bective Bridge

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: G. G. Coulton, Fourscore Years

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Janet Gray, Adam of the Road

• Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded

• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth

• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Frost: A Witness Tree

• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Upton Sinclair - Dragon's Teeth