1969 in literature

February 8 – After 147 years, the last issue of The Saturday Evening Post in its original form appears in the United States.
March 23 – German-born writer Assia Wevill, a mistress of the English poet Ted Hughes and ex-wife of the Canadian poet David Wevill, gasses herself and their daughter at her London home.
April 22 – The first Booker-McConnell Prize for fiction is awarded to P. H. Newby for Something to Answer For.^[1]
August – "Penelope Ashe", purported author of a bestselling novel, Naked Came the Stranger, is revealed as a group of Newsday journalists.^[2]
unknown date – The Times Literary Supplement begins using the abbreviation "TLS" on its title page.^[3]

Fiction

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Eva Alexanderson – Kontradans (Counter-dance)
Eric Ambler – The Intercom Conspiracy
Jorge Amado – Tenda dos Milagres (Tent of Miracles)
Kingsley Amis – The Green Man
William H. Armstrong – Sounder
Penelope Ashe – Naked Came the Stranger
Margaret Atwood – The Edible Woman
René Barjavel – Les Chemins de Katmandou^[4]
Ray Bradbury – I Sing the Body Electric
Melvyn Bragg – The Hired Man
Christianna Brand – Court of Foxes
William S. Burroughs – The Last Words of Dutch Schultz
Victor Canning – Queen's Pawn
Louis-Ferdinand Céline – Rigadoon^[5]
Agatha Christie – Hallowe'en Party
Michael Crichton – The Andromeda Strain^[6]
John Cheever – Bullet Park
A. J. Cronin – A Pocketful of Rye^[7]
Henry de Montherlant – Les Garçons (The Boys)
L. Sprague de Camp – The Golden Wind
Philip K. Dick – Ubik
Marion Eames – Y Stafell Ddirgel (The Secret Room)
John Fowles – The French Lieutenant's Woman
George MacDonald Fraser – Flashman
Sarah Gainham – A Place in the Country
Paul Gallico – The Poseidon Adventure
Graham Greene – Travels with My Aunt
Sam Greenlee – The Spook Who Sat by the Door
Günter Grass – Local Anaesthetic (Örtlich betäubt)
Frank Herbert – Dune Messiah
Raymond Hitchcock – Percy
Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter – Conan of Cimmeria
B. S. Johnson – The Unfortunates
David H. Keller – The Folsom Flint and Other Curious Tales
Derek Lambert
- Angels in the Snow
- The Kites of War
Ursula Le Guin – The Left Hand of Darkness
Elmore Leonard – The Big Bounce
Doris Lessing – The Four-Gated City
H. P. Lovecraft and Others – Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
John D. MacDonald – Dress Her in Indigo
Félicien Marceau – Creezy
Yukio Mishima (三島由紀夫) – Runaway Horses
Michael Moorcock – Behold the Man
C. L. Moore – Jirel of Joiry
Vladimir Nabokov – Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
M. T. Vasudevan Nair – Kaalam ("Time")
Patrick O'Brian – Master and Commander
Don Pendleton – War Against The Mafia
Chaim Potok – The Promise
Manuel Puig – Little Painted Mouths
Mario Puzo – The Godfather
Ellery Queen – The Campus Murders
Pauline Réage – Retour à Roissy
Mordecai Richler – The Street
Harold Robbins – The Inheritors
Philip Roth – Portnoy's Complaint
Gabriel Ruhumbika – Village in Uhuru
Giorgio Scerbanenco
- I milanesi ammazzano al sabato
- Milano calibro 9
Irwin Shaw – Rich Man, Poor Man
Dag Solstad – Irr! Grønt!^[8]
Rex Stout – Death of a Dude
Jacqueline Susann – The Love Machine
Theodore Taylor – The Cay
Colin Thiele – Blue Fin
Jack Vance
- The Dirdir
- Emphyrio
- Servants of the Wankh
Mario Vargas Llosa – Conversation in the Cathedral
Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse-Five
Charity Waciuma – Daughter of Mumbi
Irving Wallace – The Seven Minutes
Keith Waterhouse – Everything Must Go
Colin Wilson – The Philosopher's Stone
Roger Zelazny
- Creatures of Light and Darkness
- Damnation Alley
- Isle of the Dead

Children and young people

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Rev. W. Awdry – Oliver the Western Engine (twenty-fourth in The Railway Series of 42 books by him and his son Christopher Awdry)
Eric Carle – The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Frances Carpenter – South American Wonder Tales
Penelope Farmer – Charlotte Sometimes
Rumer Godden – Operation Sippacik
Ruth Park – The Muddle-Headed Wombat on a Rainy Day
Gary Paulsen – Mr. Tucket (first in Mr. Tucket series)
Bill Peet – Fly Homer Fly
Barbara Sleigh – The Snowball
William Steig – Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
John Rowe Townsend – The Intruder
Elfrida Vipont with Raymond Briggs – The Elephant and the Bad Baby
Anne de Vries – Into the Darkness (first in the Reis door de nacht series of five books)

Drama

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Leilah Assunção – Fala Baixo Senão Eu Grito (Speak Quietly or I’ll Scream)
Aimé Césaire – Une Tempête
Dario Fo – Mistero Buffo^[9]
Athol Fugard – Boesman and Lena^[10]
Joe Orton – What the Butler Saw (posthumously premiered and published)
Michael Pertwee – She's Done It Again
Dennis Potter – Son of Man (television)
Dalmiro Sáenz – Quién yo? (Who me?)
David Storey – In Celebration
Paul Zindel – Let Me Hear You Whisper

Poetry

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James Schuyler – Freely Espousing

Non-fiction

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Dean Acheson – Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department
Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Fernand Braudel – Ecrits sur l'Histoire (translated as On History, 1980)
H. Rap Brown – Die Nigger Die!
Henri Charrière – Papillon
L. Sprague de Camp and George H. Scithers (editors) – The Conan Swordbook
Antonia Fraser – Mary Queen of Scots
Peter Geach – God and the Soul
Søren Hansen and Jesper Jensen – The Little Red Schoolbook (Den Lille Røde Bog For Skoleelever)
Pauline Kael – Going Steady
Anton LaVey – The Satanic Bible
Laurie Lee – As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning^[11]
Dwight Macdonald – On Movies
Kate Millett – Sexual Politics
Desmond Morris – The Human Zoo
Harold Perkin – The Origins of Modern English Society 1780–1880
Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull – The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong^[12]
David Reuben – Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)

January 12 – David Mitchell, English novelist^[13]
January 17 – Michael Moynihan, American journalist and publisher
January 21 – M. K. Hobson, American speculative fiction author
March – Jez Butterworth, English dramatist and screenwriter
May 6 – Emmanuel Larcenet, French comics author
May 6 – John Scalzi, American science-fiction author
May 28 – Muriel Barbery, French novelist^[14]
May 29 – Qiu Miaojin (邱妙津), Korean-born novelist (suicide 1995)
June 13 – Virginie Despentes, French writer
July 5 – Armin Kõomägi, Estonian author and screenwriter
August 4 – Jojo Moyes, English journalist and romantic novelist
September 12 - James Frey, American writer
September 30 - Julianna Baggott, American novelist, essayist, and poet
October 24 – Emma Donoghue, Irish-born Canadian novelist, dramatist, and academic
November 13 – John Belluso, American dramatist (died 2006)
November 28 – Hanne Ørstavik, Norwegian novelist^[15]
November 30 – David Auburn, American dramatist
unknown dates
- Adrian Goldsworthy, Welsh military historian and novelist
- John Harris, English writer, journalist and critic^[16]
- Tom McCarthy, English novelist

January 11 – Richmal Crompton, English children's writer (born 1890)^[17]
January 21 – Giovanni Comisso, Italian writer (born 1895)
March 9 – Charles Brackett, American novelist and screenwriter (born 1892)
March 11 – John Wyndham, English science fiction novelist (born 1903)^[18]
March 24 – Margery Fish, English gardening writer (born 1892)
March 25 – Max Eastman, American writer (born 1883)^[19]
March 26 – John Kennedy Toole, American novelist (suicide, born 1937)
March 27 – B. Traven, presumed German-born novelist (unknown year of birth)
April 6 – Gabriel Chevallier, French writer (born 1895)
April 7 – Rómulo Gallegos, Venezuelan novelist and politician, 48th President of Venezuela (born 1884)^[20]
May 4 – Osbert Sitwell, English novelist and poet (born 1892)^[21]
July 24 – Witold Gombrowicz, Polish playwright and novelist (born 1904)^[22]
July 27 – Vivian de Sola Pinto, English poet and memoirist (born 1895)^[23]
August 10 – Maurine Dallas Watkins, American journalist/play and screenwriter (born 1896)
August 14 – Leonard Woolf, English political theorist (born 1880)^[24]
August 27 – Ivy Compton-Burnett, English novelist (born 1884)^[25]
September 6 – Gavin Maxwell, Scottish naturalist and author (cancer, born 1914)^[26]
September 17 – Greye La Spina, American dramatist and short story writer (born 1880)
September 20 – Elinor Brent-Dyer, English children's writer (born 1894)
September 22 – Rachel Davis Harris, African American librarian (born 1869)
October 14 – August Sang, Estonian poet and literary translator (born 1914)
October 21 – Jack Kerouac, American novelist and poet (internal hemorrhage, born 1922)^[27]
November 6 – Susan Taubes, Hungarian American writer and Jewish intellectual (suicide, born 1928)
November 15 – Ignacio Aldecoa, Spanish writer (born 1925)

Nobel Prize for Literature: Samuel Beckett^[28]

Canada

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See 1969 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

^ Who was who. St. Martin's Press. 1996. p. 426. ISBN 978-0-312-29366-6.

^ "Penelope Ashe". Open Road Integrated Media. Archived from the original on 2013-11-10. Retrieved 2013-03-25.

^ May, Derwent (2001). Critical Times: The History of the "Times Literary Supplement". Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-711449-4.

^ Contemporary Authors. Gale. 1998. p. 24. ISBN 9780787619978.

^ Solomon, Philip P. (1992). Understanding Céline. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. p. 105. ISBN 9780872498143.

^ Israel Shenker (1969-06-08). "Michael Crichton (rhymes with frighten); Michael Crichton". The New York Times. p. BR5. Retrieved 2019-06-06.

^ Ross McKibbin (2019). Democracy and Political Culture: Studies in Modern British History. Oxford University Press. p. 73. ISBN 9780198834205.

^ A History of Norwegian Literature. University of Nebraska Press. 1993. p. 308. ISBN 0803233175.

^ Gaetana Marrone (2007). Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies: A-J. Routledge. p. 742.

^ Kruger, Loren (1999). The drama of South Africa : plays, pageants, and publics since 1910. London New York: Routledge. p. 219. ISBN 9781134680863.

^ Ousby, Ian (1996). Cambridge paperback guide to literature in English. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 227. ISBN 9780521436274.

^ "The Peter Principle Lives". Bloomberg Businessweek. 2009-04-01. Archived from the original on July 1, 2012. Retrieved 2013-06-27.

^ Editors of Chase's (24 September 2019). Chase's Calendar of Events 2020: The Ultimate Go-to Guide for Special Days, Weeks and Months. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 82–. ISBN 978-1-64143-316-7.

^ "Meet the Authors". Reading Women Podcast. 10 November 2016. Retrieved 1 December 2021.

^ Godal, Anne Marit (ed.). "Hanne Ørstavik". Store norske leksikon (in Norwegian). Oslo: Norsk nettleksikon. Retrieved 1 December 2021.

^ "John Harris". RCW Literary Agency. Retrieved 17 December 2020.

^ Contemporary Authors. Gale Research Company. 1975. p. 360. ISBN 978-0-8103-0036-1.

^ Seed, David (9 June 2008). A Companion to Science Fiction. John Wiley & Sons. p. 387. ISBN 978-0-470-79701-3.

^ "Max Eastman Dies: Author and Radical" (obituary). The New York Times. March 26, 1969. p. 1.

^ Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature. Taylor & Francis. 1997. p. 630. ISBN 9781135314255.

^ Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. 1969. p. 159.

^ Ziarek, Ewa Płonowska (January 1995), The Rhetoric of Failure: Deconstruction of Skepticism, Reinvention of Modernism, p. 235, ISBN 9780791427118

^ W. Rubinstein; Michael A. Jolles (27 January 2011). The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 758. ISBN 978-0-230-30466-6.

^ Glendinning, Victoria (2006). Leonard Woolf : a biography. New York: Free Press. p. 435. ISBN 9780743289184.

^ J. Bhagyalakshmi (1986). Ivy Compton-Burnett and Her Art. Mittal Publications. p. 5.

^ Oxbury, Harold (1985). Great Britons: twentieth-century lives. Oxford Oxfordshire New York: Oxford University Press. p. 239. ISBN 9780192115997.

^ Larson, Jordan. "What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation". The Atlantic. Retrieved September 12, 2017.

^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969". Nobel Prize. Retrieved 17 December 2020.

^ "Awards — K M Peyton". kmpeyton.co.uk. Retrieved 28 December 2016.

^ "Stevie Smith". www.poetryarchive.org. Retrieved 28 December 2016.

1969 in literature

Contents

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards

Canada

France

United Kingdom

United States

Elsewhere

References

Languages