1962 in literature

The year 1962 in literature involved some significant literary events and new works.

Events

• 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 photographer Inge Morath.
• May – Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell are prosecuted and jailed for defacing library books in London.
• June 30 – The works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are denounced by the Roman Catholic Church.
• September – Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath separate.^[2] Beginning the following month, Plath experiences a great burst of creativity, writing most of the poems on which her reputation will rest in what will be the last few months of her life, including many which will be published in Ariel and Winter Trees.
• 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 unprecededented acknowledgement of the Soviet Union's Stalinist past.
• December – L. Frank Baum's short story "The Tiger's Eye" is published for the first time, nearly six decades 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.
• Lynne Reid Banks goes to live in a kibbutz.
• George Oppen publishes his first collection of poetry since Discrete Series in 1934, breaking a 28-year silence. He goes on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1969.
• A parellel text edition of George Bernard Shaw's play Androcles and the Lion is published posthumously by Penguin Books in the U.K. as the first work in the phonetic Shavian alphabet as devised by Ronald Kingsley Read.

New books

• H. G. Adler - Eine Reise
• James Baldwin - Another Country
• Isaac Asimov, editor - The Hugo Winners
• J. G. Ballard - The Drowned World
• William Barrett - Lilies of the Field
• Giorgio Bassani - The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini)
• Thomas Berger - Reinhart in Love
• Ray Bradbury
  • R is for Rocket
  • Something Wicked This Way Comes
• John Braine - Life at the Top
• John Brunner
  • Secret Agent of Terra
  • The Super Barbarians
• Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler - Fail-Safe
• Anthony Burgess
  • A Clockwork Orange
  • The Wanting Seed
• William S. Burroughs - The Ticket That Exploded
• Taylor Caldwell - A Prologue To Love
• Alejo Carpentier - El Siglo de las Luces ("Age of Enlightenment", translated as Explosion in a Cathedral)
• John Dickson Carr - The Demoniacs
• Rosario Castellanos - Oficio de tinieblas (translated as The Book of Lamentations)
• Agatha Christie - The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
• James Clavell - King Rat
• Len Deighton - The IPCRESS File
• August Derleth
  • Lonesome Places
  • The Trail of Cthulhu
• August Derleth, editor - Dark Mind, Dark Heart
• Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle
• Tonke Dragt - De brief voor de Koning ("The Letter for the King")
• Allen Drury - A Shade of Difference
• William Faulkner - The Reivers
• Gabriel Fielding - The Birthday King
• Ian Fleming - The Spy Who Loved Me
• Carlos Fuentes
  • Aura
  • The Death of Artemio Cruz
• Aldous Huxley - Island
• Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle
• James Jones - The Thin Red Line
• Ezra Jack Keats - The Snowy Day (children's picture book)
• Ken Kesey - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II - Seven Days in May
• James Krüss - Timm Thaler
• Manuel Mujica Láinez - Bomarzo
• John le Carré - A Murder of Quality
• Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
• Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
• Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Dearly Beloved
• H. P. Lovecraft - Dreams and Fancies
• Alistair MacLean - The Satan Bug
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez - In Evil Hour (La mala hora)
• Eloise McGraw - The Golden Goblet
• Marcel Moreau - Quintes
• Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
• M. T. Vasudevan Nair - Asuravithu
• Anthony Powell - The Kindly Ones
• Katherine Anne Porter - Ship of Fools
• Otfried Preußler - Der Räuber Hotzenplotz ("The Robber Hotzenplotz")
• Reynolds Price - A Long and Happy Life
• Mary Renault - The Bull from the Sea
• Mercè Rodoreda - The Time of the Doves
• Sankar - Chowringhee
• Isaac Bashevis Singer - The Slave
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
• Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake) - The Hunter
• Mary Stewart - The Moon-Spinners
• Rex Stout
  • Gambit
  • Homicide Trinity
• Noel Streatfeild - Travelling Shoes (first published as Apple Bough)
• Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night
• Irving Wallace - The Prize
• Elie Wiesel - Day
• David Wilkerson - The Cross and the Switchblade
• Herman Wouk - Youngblood Hawke

New drama

• Edward Albee - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• Wilberto Cantón - Nosotros somos Dios
• Friedrich Dürrenmatt - Die Physiker ("The Physicists")
• Witold Gombrowicz - Historia
• David Rudkin - Afore Night Come

Poetry

• Bella Akhmadulina - Struna ("The String")
• George Oppen - The Materials
• Al Purdy - Poems for all the Annettes
• William Carlos Williams - Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems

Non-fiction

• W. H. Auden - The Dyer's Hand and other essays
• Helen Gurley Brown - Sex and the Single Girl
• Rachel Carson - Silent Spring
• Thomas B. Costain - The Last Plantagenets (Fourth book in the Plantagenet or Pageant of England series)
• L. Sprague de Camp - Energy and Power
• August Derleth - 100 Books by August Derleth
• Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom
• Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
• Dumas Malone - Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty
• W. Somerset Maugham - Looking Back
• V. S. Naipaul - The Middle Passage: Impressions of Five Societies - British, French and Dutch in the West Indies and South America
• Louis Nizer - My Life in Court
• John Steinbeck - Travels With Charley: In Search of America
• Barbara Tuchman - The Guns of August

Births

• January 17 – Sebastian Junger, American novelist, journalist and documentary film-maker
• February 8 – Malorie Blackman, Barbadian-born 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 31 – Michal Viewegh, Czech fiction writer
• April 2 – Mark Shulman, American children's author
• May 17 – Lise Lyng Falkenberg, Danish novelist and biographer
• July 30 – Lavinia Greenlaw, English poet and novelist
• August 16 – Christian Cameron, American-born Canadian writer
• August 27 – Sjón (Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson), Icelandic novelist and poet
• October 19 – Tracy Chevalier, American historical novelist
• October 28 – Mark Haddon, English novelist and poet
• November 12 – Naomi Wolf, American writer and activist

Deaths

• January 17 – Gerrit Achterberg, Dutch poet (heart attack, born 1905)
• January 20 – Robinson Jeffers, American poet (born 1887)
• January 24 – Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Turkish novelist and essayist (born 1901)
• February 16 – Frank Prewett, Canadian poet (born 1893)
• March 3 – Pierre Benoit, French novelist (born 1886)
• April 24 – Emilio Prados, Spanish poet and editor (born 1899)
• May 26 – Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, poet (born 1878)
• June 2 – Vita Sackville-West, English poet and gardener (born 1892)
• June 27 – Paul Viiding, Estonian poet and critic (born 1904)
• July 6 – William Faulkner, American novelist and Nobel laureate (born 1897)
• July 8 – Georges Bataille, French writer (born 1897)
• 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)
• September 3 – E. E. Cummings, American poet (born 1894)
• September 23 – Patrick Hamilton, English dramatist (liver and kidney failure, born 1904)
• December 3 – Dame Mary Gilmore, Australian poet and journalist (born 1865)

Awards

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction: William Faulkner
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Pauline Clarke, The Twelve and the Genii
• Eric Gregory Award: Donald Thomas, James Simmons, Brian Johnson, Jenny Joseph
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Ronald Hardy, Act of Destruction
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Meriol Trevor, Newman: The Pillar and the Cloud and Newman: Light in Winter
• Miles Franklin Award: Thea Astley, The Well Dressed Explorer and George Turner, The Cupboard Under the Stairs
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth George Speare, The Bronze Bow
• Newdigate Prize: Stanley Johnson
• Nobel Prize for Literature: John Steinbeck
• Premio Nadal: José María Mendiola, Muerte por fusilamiento
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Frank Loesser, Abe Burrows, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Edwin O'Connor, The Edge of Sadness
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Alan Dugan, Poems
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Christopher Fry

References