Events

• August 18 - Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in United States.

• First volume of The Civil War by Shelby Foote is published.

• Rumours of a library ban on Enid Blyton's books in New Zealand.

• Herbert Marcuse begins teaching at Brandeis University.

• Jack Kerouac writes and narrates the "beat" movie, Pull My Daisy.

• Ken Kesey is awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship to enrol in the creative writing program at Stanford University.

• Mervyn Peake begins to develop Parkinson's Disease.

New books

• Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart

• Kingsley Amis - I Like It Here

• Jorge Amado - Gabriela, Cravo e Canela (Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon)

• Thomas Berger - Crazy in Berlin

• James Blish - A Case of Conscience

• Joseph Payne Brennan - Nine Horrors and a Dream

• Algis Budrys

• *Man of Earth

• *Who?

• Truman Capote - Breakfast at Tiffany's

• Raymond Chandler - Playback

• A. J. Cronin

• *The Innkeeper's Wife

• *The Northern Light

• L. Sprague de Camp - An Elephant for Aristotle

• Patrick Dennis - Around the World with Auntie Mame

• August Derleth

• *The Mask of Cthulhu

• *The Return of Solar Pons

• Lawrence Durrell

• *Balthazar

• *Mountolive

• Ian Fleming - Dr. No

• Peter George - Red Alert

• Graham Greene - Our Man in Havana

• Cyril Hare - He Should Have Died Hereafter

• Marlen Haushofer - We Murder Stella

• Georgette Heyer - Venetia

• Harold L. Humes - The Underground City

• Jack Kerouac - The Dharma Bums

• Frances Parkinson Keyes - Victorine

• Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa - The Leopard (published posthumously)

• Ross Macdonald - The Doomsters

• Alberto Moravia - La ciociara

• Kenzaburō Ōe - Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids

• Mary Renault - The King Must Die

• Anya Seton - The Winthrop Woman

• Dr. Seuss - Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories

• Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

• Terry Southern (as Maxwell Kenton) - Candy

• Rex Stout

• *And Four to Go

• *Champagne for One

• Robert Traver - Anatomy of a Murder

• Jack Vance - The Languages of Pao

• Rex Warner - Young Caesar

• Jerome Weidman - The Enemy Camp

New drama

• Samuel Beckett - Krapp's Last Tape

• Brendan Behan - The Hostage

• Max Frisch - The Fire Raisers and Phiipp Hotz's Fury

• Jean Genet - The Blacks (first published)

• Elmer Rice - Cue for Passion

• Peter Shaffer - Five Finger Exercise

• N. F. Simpson - The Hole

• Arnold Wesker - Chicken Soup with Barley (first performed)

• Tennessee Williams - Suddenly, Last Summer

Poetry

• Eli Siegel - Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems

• Clark Ashton Smith - Spells and Philtres

Non-fiction

• Brendan Behan - Borstal Boy

• Shelby Foote – The Civil War: A Narrative – Vol 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville

• John Kenneth Galbraith - The Affluent Society

• J. Edgar Hoover - Masters of Deceit

• Aldous Huxley - Brave New World Revisited

• Claude Lévi-Strauss – Structural Anthropology

• John Steinbeck – Once There Was A War

• Raymond Williams – Culture and Society 1780-1950

Births

• April 15 - Benjamin Zephaniah, dub poet

• May - Roddy Doyle, novelist

• June 10 - James F. Conant, philosopher

• July 5 - Veronica Guerin, journalist

• date unknown

• *Robert Antoni, novelist

• *Lionel Fogarty, poet

• *Flora Fraser, biographer

• *Wayne Johnston, novelist

• *Margaret Smith, poet

Deaths

• February 4 - Henry Kuttner, science fiction author

• March 21 - Cyril M. Kornbluth, science fiction writer

• March 24 - Seamus O'Sullivan, poet

• April 7 - Elliot Paul, American writer

• May 5 - James Branch Cabell, fantasy fiction author

• June 28 - Alfred Noyes, poet

• September 11 - Robert W. Service, poet

• October 24 - George Edward Moore, philosopher

• October 30 - Rose Macaulay, novelist

Awards

• Hugo Award for Best Novel: Fritz Leiber, The Big Time

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Angus Wilson, The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Joyce Hemlow, The History of Fanny Burney

• Miles Franklin Award: Randolph Stow, To the Islands

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Harold Keith, Rifles for Watie

• Newdigate prize: Jon Stallworthy

• Nobel Prize for literature: Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

• Premio Nadal: J. Vidal Cadellans, No era de los nuestros

• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Ketti Frings, Look Homeward, Angel

• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: James Agee, A Death In The Family

• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Penn Warren, Promises: Poems 1954-1956''