1962 in literature

January 7 – In an article in The New York Times Book Review, Gore Vidal calls Evelyn Waugh "our time's first satirist".^[1]
February 17 – Arthur Miller marries the photographer Inge Morath.^[2]
February 28 – F. R. Leavis delivers the Richmond lecture Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. SnowatDowning College, Cambridge, which arouses controversy.^[3]^[4]
May 11 – The Finnish Ministry of Education forbids the import and distribution of eight children's books (including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), published by Kynäbaari, because of the poor quality and clandestine abridgement of the translations.^[5]
May – Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell are prosecuted and jailed for defacing library books in London.
June 5 – Marvel Comics publishes Amazing Fantasy #15, featuring the debut of its Spider-Man feature by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. The Amazing Spider-Man periodical series begins publication in December.
June 30 – The works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are denounced by the Roman Catholic Church.
July – The General Law Amendment Act in South Africa denies freedom of speech to opposition activists and writers.
September – Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath separate.^[6] From the beginning of the following month, Plath experiences a burst of creativity, writing in the last few months of her life most of the poems on which her reputation will rest. They include many that will appear in Ariel and Winter Trees. On October 31, Heinemann in London publish The Colossus which will be the only collection of her poems published in her lifetime under her own name. In December she moves to a London flat in a house where W. B. Yeats lived as a boy.
November – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Russian: Оди́н день Ива́на Дени́совича, Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha), the author's semi-autobiographical account of life in the gulag, is published in Novy Mir in an unprecedented acknowledgement of the Soviet Union's Stalinist past.
December – L. Frank Baum's short story "The Tiger's Eye" appears for the first time nearly 60 after it was written.
December 4 – A tape-recorded conversation on science fiction takes place between Kingsley Amis, C. S. Lewis and Brian Aldiss in Lewis's rooms at Cambridge.
unknown dates
- Richard Booth opens a second-hand bookshop at the old fire station in the future "bookshop town" of Hay-on-Wye in Wales.^[7]
- Lynne Reid Banks goes to live in a kibbutz in Israel.^[8]
- George Oppen publishes his first collection of poetry since Discrete Seriesin1934, breaking a 28-year silence. He goes on to win the Pulitzer Prizein1969.
- A parallel text edition of George Bernard Shaw's play Androcles and the Lion is published posthumously by Penguin Books in the UK, as the first published work in the phonetic Shavian alphabet devised by Ronald Kingsley Read.

January 17 – Sebastian Junger, American novelist, journalist and documentary film-maker
January 29 – Olga Tokarczuk, Polish fiction writer and poet
February 8 – Malorie Blackman, English writer for young adults and children
February 21
- Chuck Palahniuk, American novelist and journalist
- David Foster Wallace, American novelist and essayist (died 2008)
March 27 – John O'Farrell, English writer of fiction and non-fiction, comedy scriptwriter and political campaigner
March 30 – Yōko Ogawa (小川洋子), Japanese novelist and essayist
March 31 – Michal Viewegh, Czech fiction writer
April 2 – Mark Shulman, American children's author
April 6 – Javier Cercas, Spanish novelist and academic
April 13 – Chris Riddell, South African-born English children's book illustrator
April 22 – B. Jeyamohan, Tamil novelist
May 11 - Amir Hamed, Uruguayan writer, essayist and translator (died 2017)
May 12 – Yang Hongying (楊紅櫻), Chinese children's author
May 17 – Lise Lyng Falkenberg, Danish novelist and biographer
May 19 – Jonathan Dee, American novelist
June 12 – Jordan Peterson, Canadian clinical psychologist and writer
July 30 – Lavinia Greenlaw, English poet and novelist
August 3 – Abdo Khal, Saudi Arabian writer
August 10 – Suzanne Collins, American novelist and television writer
August 16 – Christian Cameron, American-born Canadian writer
August 27 – Sjón (Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson), Icelandic novelist and poet
September 22 - Nuzo Onoh, British-Nigerian writer
October 11 – Anne Enright, Irish novelist
October 19 – Tracy Chevalier, American historical novelist
October 28 – Mark Haddon, English novelist and poet
November 4 - Rick Yancey, American young-adult writer
November 12
- Neal Shusterman, American children's author and poet
- Naomi Wolf, American writer and activist
December 17 – Jan Bondeson, Swedish non-fiction writer

January 17 – Gerrit Achterberg, Dutch poet (heart attack, born 1905)^[9]
January 20 – Robinson Jeffers, American poet (born 1887)^[10]
January 24 – Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Turkish novelist and essayist (born 1901)
February 16 – Frank Prewett, Canadian poet (born 1893)^[11]
February 24 – Hu Shih (胡適), Chinese Nobel Prize-winning philosopher and language reformer (born 1891)
March 3 – Pierre Benoit, French novelist (born 1886)^[12]
March 16 – Dora Adele Shoemaker, American poet, playwright, educator (born 1873)
March 20 – C. Wright Mills, American sociologist (born 1916)
April 1 – Michel de Ghelderode, Belgian playwright (born 1898)^[13]
April 24 – Emilio Prados, Spanish poet and editor (born 1899)
May 3 — Helen Dortch Longstreet, American social advocate, librarian, and newspaper woman (born 1863)
May 24 – E. M. W. Tillyard, English literary scholar (born 1889)
May 13 – Constantin Gane, Romanian biographer and historical novelist (torture, born 1885)
May 26 – Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, English poet (born 1878)^[14]
June 2 – Vita Sackville-West, English poet and gardener (born 1892)^[15]
June 27 – Paul Viiding, Estonian poet and critic (born 1904)
July 6 – William Faulkner, American novelist and Nobel laureate (born 1897)^[16]
July 8 – Georges Bataille, French writer (cerebral arteriosclerosis, born 1897)^[17]
July 21 – G. M. Trevelyan, English historian (born 1876)
July 27 – Richard Aldington, English poet and novelist (born 1892)
August 9 – Hermann Hesse, German-born Swiss novelist, poet and painter (born 1877)^[18]
September 3 – E. E. Cummings, American poet (born 1894)^[19]
September 21 – Ouyang Yuqian (欧阳予倩), Chinese dramatist (born 1889)
September 22 – Jean-René Huguenin, French novelist and literary critic (born in 1936)^[20]
September 23 – Patrick Hamilton, English dramatist (liver and kidney failure, born 1904)
November 6 – Howard R. Garis, American children's fiction writer (born 1873)
November 17 – Sandu Tudor, Romanian poet, journalist and theologian (stroke and possibly torture, born 1896)
December 3 – Dame Mary Gilmore, Australian poet and journalist (born 1865)
December 12 – Felix Aderca, Romanian novelist, critic, poet and journalist (cancer, born 1891)
December 18 – Garrett Mattingly, American historian (born 1900)^[21]
December – Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, English working class novelist and campaigner (born 1886)

1962 in literature

Contents

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards

References

Languages