1939 in literature

The year 1939 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

 * December 25 - A Christmas Carol is read before a radio audience for the first time.
 * Frank Herbert lies about his age to get his first job as a local newspaper reporter.
 * Jean-Paul Sartre is drafted into the French Army.
 * Robert A. Heinlein's first published short story appears in Astounding Magazine.
 * Captain Marvel debuts in Whiz Comics #2 (cover date February 1940).

New books

 * Eric Ambler - The Mask of Dimitrios
 * Sholem Asch - The Nazarene
 * William Attaway - Let Me Breathe Thunder
 * Arna Wendell Bontemps - Drums at Dusk
 * Pearl S. Buck - The Patriot
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan the Magnificent
 * John Dickson Carr
 * The Black Spectacles
 * The Problem of the Wire Cage
 * The Reader is Warned (as by Carter Dickson)
 * Drop to His Death (in collaboration with John Rhode)
 * Aimé Césaire - Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal
 * Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep
 * Agatha Christie
 * And Then There Were None
 * Murder is Easy
 * The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
 * Jeffrey Dell - Nobody Ordered Wolves
 * John Fante - Ask the Dust
 * William Faulkner - If I Forget Thee Jerusalem (The Wild Palms/Old Man)
 * Vardis Fisher - Children of God
 * Zona Gale - Magna
 * Henry Green - Party Going
 * Ernest Hemingway - The Snows of Kilimanjaro
 * Zora Neale Hurston - Moses, Man Of The Mountain
 * Aldous Huxley - After Many a Summer
 * Christopher Isherwood - Goodbye to Berlin
 * James Joyce - Finnegans Wake
 * Arthur Koestler - The Gladiators
 * Richard Llewellyn - How Green Was My Valley
 * H. P. Lovecraft - The Outsider and Others
 * Lucy Maud Montgomery - Anne of Ingleside
 * Flann O'Brien - At Swim-Two-Birds.
 * John O'Hara - Files on Parade
 * George Orwell - Coming Up for Air
 * Elliot Paul - The Mysterious Mickey Finn
 * Ellery Queen - The Dragon's Teeth
 * Katherine Anne Porter - Pale Horse, Pale Rider
 * Arthur Ransome - We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea
 * Clayton Rawson - The Footprints on the Ceiling
 * Seymour Reit- The Friendly Ghost
 * Dorothy L. Sayers - In the Teeth of the Evidence
 * John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
 * Rex Stout - Some Buried Caesar
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor
 * Spring Harrowing
 * Cold Steal (as by Alice Tilton)
 * Dalton Trumbo - Johnny Got His Gun
 * S. S. Van Dine - The Winter Murder Case
 * Elio Vittorini - Conversations in Sicily (Conversazione in Sicilia)
 * Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust
 * Ernest Vincent Wright - Gadsby
 * Pierre Schaeffer - Chlothar Nicole (Clotaire Nicole)

New drama

 * Philip Barry - The Philadelphia Story
 * Bertolt Brecht - Mother Courage and Her Children (written)
 * T. S. Eliot - The Family Reunion
 * Lillian Hellman - The Little Foxes
 * George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart -The Man Who Came to Dinner
 * Joseph Kesselring - Arsenic and Old Lace
 * Jean Giraudoux - Ondine
 * Clare Boothe Luce - Margin of Error

Poetry

 * T. S. Eliot - Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
 * Javier del Granado - Rosas Pálidas (Pale Roses)

Non-fiction

 * Lord David Cecil - The Young Melbourne and the Story of his Marriage with Caroline Lamb
 * Savitri Devi - A Warning to the Hindus
 * Erwin Panofsky - Studies in Iconology
 * Ed Ricketts - Between Pacific Tides
 * Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des hommes)
 * Ronald Syme - The Roman Revolution
 * Bill W. & Dr. Bob - The Big Book

Births

 * January 29 - Germaine Greer, feminist author
 * April 12 - Alan Ayckbourn, dramatist
 * June 5 - Margaret Drabble, novelist
 * July 2 - Ferdinand Mount, journalist and novelist
 * August 1 - Robert James Waller, American novelist
 * October 6 - Melvyn Bragg, novelist, critic and television presenter
 * October 9 - John Pilger, journalist
 * October 10 - Clive James, writer, humorist and television personality
 * November 17 - Auberon Waugh, journalist and son of Evelyn Waugh
 * November 18 - Margaret Atwood, novelist and poet
 * December 18 - Michael Moorcock, science fiction author
 * date unknown - Iris Gower, romantic novelist

Deaths

 * January 28 - William Butler Yeats, poet (b. 1865)
 * February 18 - Okamoto Kanoko, tanka poet
 * February 22 - Antonio Machado, poet
 * March 7 - Ludwig Fulda
 * March 23 - Richard Halliburton, travel writer
 * April 11 - S. S. Van Dine, crime fiction writer
 * May 23 - Margarete Böhme, German novelist
 * May 27 - Joseph Roth, novelist
 * June 26 - Ford Madox Ford, novelist (b. 1873)
 * July 8 - Havelock Ellis, sexual psychologist and controversial writer (b. 1859)
 * September - Ethel M. Dell, romantic novelist
 * September 6 - Arthur Rackham, book illustrator
 * October 23 - Zane Grey, popular author of westerns (b. 1872)
 * December 2 - Llewelyn Powys, biographer and autobiographer
 * Unknown Date - Solomon Cleaver, storyteller and novelist

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Eleanor Doorly, The Radium Woman
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Aldous Huxley After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: David C. Douglas, English Scholars
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Enright, Thimble Summer
 * Nobel Prize for literature: Frans Eemil Sillanpää
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, Abe Lincoln in Illinois
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: John Gould Fletcher: Selected Poems
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - The Yearling