1976 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1976.

Events

• January – First Kolkata Book Fair opens in India.
• June 21 – Market Theatre (Johannesburg) opened as a multiracial venue by Barney Simon.
• September 9 – The Royal Shakespeare Company opens a memorable production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in the lead roles directed by Trevor Nunn.
• October 25 – Official opening of the Royal National Theatre on the South Bank in London, in premises designed by Sir Denys Lasdun, with a performance of Goldoni's 18th-century comedy Il Campiello. Its Lyttleton Theatre first previewed on 8 March, followed on 16 March by a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet by Albert Finney directed by Peter Hall; and its Olivier Theatre opened on October 4 with a production of Marlowe's Elizabethan drama Tamburlaine, also with Finney in the title rôle directed by Peter Hall.
• Novelist Antonio di Benedetto is imprisoned and tortured under the National Reorganization Process (military dictatorship) in Argentina.
• Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers established in new premises at Nanterre.
• Saul Bellow wins both the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

New books

Fiction

• Émile Ajar (Romain Gary) – Hocus Bogus
• Kingsley Amis – The Alteration
• Ann Beattie – Chilly Scenes of Winter
• Saul Bellow – To Jerusalem and Back
• Peter Benchley – The Deep
• Erma Bombeck – The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank
• Marjorie Bowen – Kecksies and Other Twilight Tales
• William F. Buckley – Saving the Queen (the first Blackford Oakes thriller)
• Anthony Burgess – Beard's Roman Women
• Ramsey Campbell – The Height of the Scream
• Leonora Carrington – The Hearing Trumpet
• Raymond Carver – Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
• Agatha Christie (posthumous) – Sleeping Murder (the last Miss Marple story, written c. 1940)
• A. J. Cronin – Lady with Carnations
• L. Sprague de Camp – The Virgin & the Wheels
• Samuel R. Delany – Triton
• August Derleth – Dwellers in Darkness
• Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny – Deus Irae
• G. B. Edwards (posthumous) – The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
• Buchi Emecheta – The Bride Price
• Marian Engel – Bear
• Richard Ford – A Piece of My Heart
• Brian Garfield – The Last Hard Men
• Judith Guest – Ordinary People
• Alex Haley – Roots: The Saga of an American Family
• Frank Herbert – Children of Dune
• Etienne Leroux – Magersfontein, O Magersfontein!
• Ira Levin – The Boys from Brazil
• Robert Ludlum – The Gemini Contenders
• Ryū Murakami (村上 龍) – Almost Transparent Blue (限りなく透明に近いブルー, Kagirinaku tōmei ni chikai burū)
• R. K. Narayan – The Painter of Signs
• Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle – Inferno
• Robert Nye – Falstaff
• Breandán Ó hEithir – Lig Sinn i gCathú
• Marge Piercy – Woman on the Edge of Time
• Anthony Powell – Infants of the Spring
• Terry Pratchett – The Dark Side of the Sun
• Manuel Puig – El beso de la mujer araña (Kiss of the Spider Woman)
• Jean Raspail – Le Jeu du Roi
• Ishmael Reed – Flight To Canada
• Ruth Rendell – A Demon in My View
• Anne Rice – Interview with the Vampire
• Hubert Selby, Jr. – The Demon
• Cynthia Propper Seton – A Fine Romance
• Tom Sharpe – Wilt
• Sidney Sheldon – A Stranger in the Mirror
• Muriel Spark – The Takeover
• John Steinbeck – The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
• Jacqueline Susann – Dolores
• Paul Theroux – The Family Arsenal
• Jesús Torbado – En el día de hoy
• Leon Uris – Trinity (novel)
• Melvin Van Peebles – Just an Old Sweet Song
• Gore Vidal – 1876
• Kurt Vonnegut – Slapstick (novel)
• Roger Zelazny
  • Doorways in the Sand
  • The Hand of Oberon
  • My Name is Legion

Children and young people

• Chester Aaron – Besser als Lachen (Better than Laughter)
• Natalie Babbitt – Tuck Everlasting
• Judy Blume
  • Blubber
  • Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
• Nancy Bond – A String in the Harp
• Eve Bunting – One More Flight
• Adèle Geras – Tea at Mrs Manderby's
• Michael de Larrabeiti – The Borribles
• Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Monsters
• Ruth Park – The Muddle-Headed Wombat on Clean-Up Day
• Dennis Nolan
  • Big Pig
  • Monster Bubbles: A Counting Book

Drama

• Samuel Beckett
  • Footfalls
  • That Time
• Maeve Binchy – End of Term
• Howard Brenton – Weapons of Happiness
• Ken Campbell – Illuminatus!
• David Edgar – Destiny
• Athol Fugard – Sizwe Banzi Is Dead
• Roger Hall – Glide Time
• Dorothy Hewett – This Old Man Came Rolling Home
• Albert Innaurato – Gemini
• Ntozake Shange – For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf
• Alexander Vampilov – Duck Hunting («Утиная охота», Utinaya okhota, published 1970, first performed)

Non-fiction

• Maya Angelou – Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
• John G. Bennett (died 1974) – Journeys in Islamic Countries
• L. Sprague de Camp – Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers
• Richard Dawkins – The Selfish Gene
• Norman F. Dixon – On the Psychology of Military Incompetence
• Elisabeth Elliot – Let Me Be a Woman
• Michel Foucault – Histoire de la sexualité, 1: La Volonte de savoir
• Aileen Fox – Prehistoric Maori Fortifications
• Julien Gracq – The Narrow Waters
• Christopher Isherwood – Christopher and His Kind
• Ryszard Kapuściński – Another Day of Life
• John Keegan – The Face of Battle
• Maxine Hong Kingston – The Woman Warrior
• Arthur Koestler – The Thirteenth Tribe
• H. P. Lovecraft
  • Selected Letters IV (1932–1934)
  • Selected Letters V (1934–1937)
  • To Quebec and the Stars
• Paul Morand – The Allure of Chanel
• Peter C. Newman – The Canadian Establishment
• Harold Perkin – The Age of the Automobile
• Jean-François Revel – The Totalitarian Temptation
• Geoffrey Smith
  • Mr Smith's Flower Garden
  • Mr Smith's Vegetable Garden
• Arnold J. Toynbee – Mankind and Mother Earth
• Andrew Vachss – The Life-Style Violent Juvenile
• Simon Wiesenthal – The Sunflower
• Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein – The Final Days

Births

• February 3 – Isla Fisher, Australian actress and author
• August 29 – T. James Belich (Colorado Tolston), American playwright, novelist and actor
• Jon McGregor, Bermuda-born British fiction writer

Deaths

• January 12 – Agatha Christie, English crime writer (born 1890)
• January 25 – Victor Ehrenberg, German historian (born 1891)
• February 2 – Barbara Euphan Todd, English children's writer (born 1890)
• February 12 – John Lewis, Welsh philosopher (born 1889)
• March 13 – Sergiu Dan, Romanian novelist and journalist (born 1903)
• March 24 – E. H. Shepard, English illustrator and autobiographer (born 1879)
• March 31 – Edward Streeter, American humorist (born 1891)
• April 22 – Joe David Brown, American novelist and journalist (born 1915)
• April 28 – Richard Hughes, English novelist (born 1900)
• May 7 – Alison Uttley, English writer of children's books (born 1884)
• June 18 – Malcolm Johnson, American journalist (born 1904)
• July 3 – Alexander Lernet-Holenia, Austrian poet, dramatist and fiction writer (born 1897)
• August 29 – Kazi Nazrul Islam, Bengali poet (born 1899)
• September 10 – Dalton Trumbo, American novelist and screenwriter (born 1905)
• October 30 – Barbu Solacolu, Romanian poet, translator and economist (born 1897)
• November 4 – Robert Speaight, English actor, biographer and essayist (born 1904)
• November 6 – Patrick Dennis, American novelist (pancreatic cancer, born 1921)
• December 21 – Munro Leaf, American children's author (born 1905)
• December 22 – Martín Luis Guzmán, Mexican novelist and journalist (born 1887)
• December 26 – Yashpal, Hindi novelist (born 1903)
• December 29 – G. B. Edwards, Guernsey-born writer (born 1899)
• Unknown date – Mark Slonim, Russian literary historian and critic (born 1894)

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Saul Bellow

Canada

• See 1976 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

• Prix Goncourt: Patrick Grainville, Les Flamboyants
• Prix Médicis French: Marc Cholodenko, Les États du désert
• Prix Médicis International: Doris Lessing, The Gold Coronet – United Kingdom

Spain

• Premio Miguel de Cervantes: Jorge Guillén

United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: David Storey, Saville
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Jan Mark, Thunder and Lightnings
• Cholmondeley Award: Peter Porter, Fleur Adcock
• Eric Gregory Award: Stewart Brown, Valerie Gillies, Paul Groves, Paul Hyland, Nigel Jenkins, Andrew Motion, Tom Paulin, William Peskett
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: John Banville, Doctor Copernicus
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Ronald Hingley, A New Life of Chekhov

United States

• Frost Medal: A. M. Sullivan
• Nebula Award: Frederik Pohl, Man Plus
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Susan Cooper, The Grey King
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Michael Bennett for concept, choreography, and direction; James Kirkwood, Jr. for book, Marvin Hamlisch for lyrics, Nicholas Dante for music, A Chorus Line
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Elsewhere

• Miles Franklin Award: David Ireland, The Glass Canoe
• Premio Nadal: Raúl Guerra Garrido, Lectura insólita de El Capital
• Viareggio Prize: Mario Tobino, La bella degli specchi