1960 in literature

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The year 1960 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• November 2 – Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case in the United Kingdom.
• November 10 – Lady Chatterley's Lover sells 200,000 copies in one day following its publication since being banned since 1928.
• August Derleth launches the poetry magazine, Hawk and Whippoorwill.
• Astounding magazine is renamed Analog.
• Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, receives full screenwriting credit for his work on the films Exodus and Spartacus released this year.
• Hans Freudenthal invents the artificial language Lincos, intended for communication with extraterrestrial intelligence.
• Michael Foot relinquishes the editorship of Tribune to return to Parliament.
• Waldo Williams is imprisoned for six weeks for non-payment of income tax (a protest against defence spending).

New prose fiction

• Chinua Achebe – No Longer at Ease
• Kingsley Amis – Take a Girl Like You
• Poul Anderson – The High Crusade
• Lynne Reid Banks – The L-Shaped Room
• Stan Barstow – A Kind of Loving
• Hamilton Basso – The Light Infantry Ball
• Augusto Roa Bastos – Hijo de hombre
• Robert Bloch – Pleasant Dreams: Nightmares
• Algis Budrys – Rogue Moon
• Morley Callaghan – The Many Colored Coat
• John Dickson Carr – In Spite of Thunder
• Carlo Cassola – La ragazza di Bube
• Louis-Ferdinand Céline - North
• Agatha Christie – The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
• L. Sprague de Camp
  • The Bronze God of Rhodes
  • The Glory That Was
• L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt – Wall of Serpents
• Roald Dahl - Kiss Kiss
• Jean-Paul Desbiens – The Insolences of Brother Anonymous
• Lawrence Durrell – Clea, the final volume of The Alexandria Quartet (begun 1957)
• Henry Farrell – What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
• Ian Fleming – For Your Eyes Only (short story collection)
• Per Anders Fogelström - City of My Dreams
• Alan Garner – The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
• Vintilă Horia – Dieu est né en exil
• Jabra Ibrahim Jabra – Hunters in a Narrow Street
• Greye La Spina – Invaders from the Dark
• Hubert Lampo – De komst van Joachim Stiller ("The Coming of Joachim Stiller")
• Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
• David Lodge – The Picturegoers
• John Masters – The Venus of Konpara
• Walter M. Miller – A Canticle for Leibowitz
• Nancy Mitford – Don't Tell Alfred
• Alberto Moravia – La noia (The Empty Canvas)
• Edna O'Brien – The Country Girls
• Flannery O'Connor – The Violent Bear It Away
• Scott O'Dell – Island of the Blue Dolphins
• Wilder Penfield – The Torch
• Frederik Pohl – Drunkard's Walk
• Anthony Powell – Casanova's Chinese Restaurant
• James H. Schmitz – Agent of Vega
• Dr. Seuss – Green Eggs and Ham
• Nevil Shute – Trustee from the Toolroom (published posthumously)
• Clark Ashton Smith – The Abominations of Yondo
• Muriel Spark – The Ballad of Peckham Rye
• David Storey – This Sporting Life
• Rex Stout
  • Three at Wolfe's Door
  • Too Many Clients
• John Updike – Rabbit, Run
• Irving Wallace – The Chapman Report
• Raymond Williams – Border Country
• John Wyndham – Trouble with Lichen

New drama

• Edward Albee – The Death of Bessie Smith and The Sandbox (both first performed)
• Samuel Beckett – The Old Tune (first broadcast)
• Robert Bolt – A Man for All Seasons and The Tiger and the Horse
• Eugène Ionesco – Rhinoceros
• Harold Pinter – The Caretaker (first performed), The Room (first professional performance) and A Night Out (first broadcast)
• Terence Rattigan – Ross
• Wole Soyinka – A Dance of the Forests
• Tennessee Williams – Period of Adjustment

Poetry

Main article: 1960 in poetry

• Douglas Livingstone – The Skull in the Mud
• Sylvia Plath - The Colossus and Other Poems
• Alan Sillitoe - The Rats and other poems
• Jan Twardowski – Znaki ufności

Non-fiction

• Joy Adamson – Born Free
• Kingsley Amis – New Maps of Hell
• Peg Bracken – The I Hate to Cook Book
• Albert Camus – Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
• Jean-Paul Desbiens – Les insolences du Frère Untel
• Hans-Georg Gadamer – Truth and Method
• John Howard Griffin – Black Like Me
• Helen Keller – Light in my Darkness
• Arthur Koestler – The Lotus and the Robot
• Louis Pauwels & Jacques Bergier – Le Matin des Magiciens
• Jean-Paul Sartre – Critique de la raison dialectique (Critique of Dialectical Reason)
• William L. Shirer – The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
• W. T. Stace - The Teachings of the Mystics
• Elie Wiesel – Night – (Previously published in French in 1958 as La Nuit)

Births

• January 1 – Helen Fielding, author
• April 28 – Ian Rankin, crime novelist
• May 21 – John O'Brien, novelist (died 1994)
• July 13 – Ian Hislop, satirist
• November 10 – Neil Gaiman, author
• date unknown – Malcolm Pryce, novelist

Deaths

• January 4 – Albert Camus, novelist (car accident)
• January 12 – Nevil Shute, writer
• January 14 – Ralph Chubb, poet
• January 28 – Zora Neale Hurston
• May 30 – Boris Pasternak, novelist and poet
• November 28 – Richard Wright, author

Awards

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Criticism: E.B. White
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Ian Wolfram Cornwall, The Making of Man
• Eric Gregory Award: Christopher Levenson
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Rex Warner, Imperial Caesar
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Canon Adam Fox, The Life of Dean Inge
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Joseph Krumgold, Onion John
• Nobel Prize for literature: Saint-John Perse
• Premio Nadal: Ramiro Pinilla, Ciegas hormigas
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Jerome Weidman, George Abbott for book' Jerry Bock for music, and Sheldon Harnick for lyrics, Fiorello!
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Allen Drury – Advise and Consent
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: W. D. Snodgrass: Heart's Needle
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: John Betjeman