1950 in literature

The year 1950 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

 * Kazuo Shimada (1907–1996) wins the "Mystery Writer Of Japan" award for his book Shakai-bu Kisha (City Reporter).
 * Jack Kerouac has his first novel published.
 * Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is sent to a "special camp" for political prisoners in Kazakhstan
 * Dalton Trumbo co-writes the script of Gun Crazy under the pseudonym Millard Kaufman because of his imprisonment for contempt of court.
 * Adrian Bell begins writing his Countryman’s Notebook column in the Eastern Daily Press.

New books

 * Marguerite de Angeli - The Door in the Wall
 * Isaac Asimov - I, Robot
 * Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles
 * Gwen Bristow - Jubilee Trail
 * Pearl S. Buck - The Child Who Never Grew
 * John Dickson Carr
 * The Bride of Newgate
 * Night at the Mocking Widow (as by Carter Dickson)
 * Agatha Christie
 * A Murder is Announced
 * Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
 * William Cooper - Scenes from Provincial Life
 * A. J. Cronin - The Spanish Gardener
 * L. Sprague de Camp and P. Schuyler Miller - Genus Homo
 * L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt - The Castle of Iron
 * Daphne du Maurier - The Parasites
 * Ford Madox Ford - Parade's End
 * Hugh Garner - Cabbagetown
 * Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey - Belles on Their Toes
 * Giovanni Guareschi - The Little World of Don Camillo
 * Frank Hardy - Power Without Glory
 * Ernest Hemingway - Across the River and Into the Trees
 * John Hersey - The Wall
 * Patricia Highsmith -  Strangers on a Train
 * Robert E. Howard - Conan the Conqueror
 * MacKinlay Kantor - Lee and Grant at Appomattox
 * Jack Kerouac - The Town and the City
 * Frances Parkinson Keyes - Joy Street
 * Doris Lessing - The Grass Is Singing
 * C. S. Lewis - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
 * Rose Macaulay - The World My Wilderness
 * Juan Carlos Onetti - La vida breve (A Brief Life)
 * Cesare Pavese - La Luna e i Falò
 * Barbara Pym - Some Tame Gazelle
 * Ellery Queen - Double, Double
 * Conrad Richter - The Town
 * Henry Morton Robinson - The Cardinal
 * Cezaro Rossetti - Kredu min, sinjorino!
 * Budd Schulberg - The Disenchanted
 * Nevil Shute - A Town Like Alice
 * Rex Stout - Three Doors to Death
 * Rex Stout - In the Best Families
 * Edith Templeton - Summer In The Country
 * James Thurber - The 13 Clocks
 * A. E. van Vogt - The Voyage of the Space Beagle
 * Mika Waltari - The Adventurer
 * Evelyn Waugh - Helena
 * Kathleen Winsor - Star Money
 * Frank Yerby - Floodtide

New drama
*Bertolt Brecht - The Tutor
 * Christopher Fry - Venus Observed
 * Kermit Hunter - Unto These Hills
 * William Inge - Come Back, Little Sheba
 * Eugène Ionesco - The Bald Soprano

Short stories

 * Damon Knight - "To Serve Man"

Poetry

 * Leah Bodine Drake - A Hornbook for Witches
 * Pablo Neruda - Canto General

Non-fiction

 * Roland Bainton - Here I Stand:A Life of Martin Luther
 * E. H. Gombrich - The Story of Art
 * Thor Heyerdahl - Kon-Tiki
 * Octavio Paz - The Labyrinth of Solitude
 * Lionel Trilling - The Liberal Imagination
 * Raymond Williams - Reading and Criticism
 * Cecil Woodham-Smith - Florence Nightingale

Births

 * January 25 - Gloria Naylor, African American author
 * February 11 - Mauri Kunnas, Finnish children’s author
 * July - Zhang Kangkang, Chinese writer
 * September 7 - Peggy Noonan, columnist, political writer
 * September 20 - James Blaylock, American fantasy author
 * October 17 - David Adams Richards, Canadian author
 * October 27 - Fran Leibowitz, American writer
 * Barbara Gowdy - Canadian novelist
 * Susan Eloise Hinton, American author

Deaths

 * January 5 - Basil Williams, historian
 * January 21 – George Orwell, novelist
 * February 13 - Rafael Sabatini, novelist
 * February 24 - Irving Bacheller, journalist and writer
 * March 19 – Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan author
 * May 6 - Agnes Smedley, American journalist and writer known for chronicling the Chinese Civil War
 * May 11 - Alfred O. Andersson, newspaper publisher
 * May 13 - F. E. Compton, publisher of reference books
 * September 6 - Olaf Stapledon, philosopher and science-fiction author
 * October 9 - Nicolai Hartmann, philosopher
 * October 19 - Edna St. Vincent Millay, poet
 * November 2 - George Bernard Shaw
 * November 25 - Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, Danish author
 * December 28 - Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, short-story writer
 * December 31 - Xavier Villaurrutia, poet and dramatist
 * date unknown
 * John Mooney, Orkney historian
 * Cezaro Rossetti, Esperanto writer
 * Helen Rowland, journalist and humorist
 * Cuthbert Whitaker, editor of Whitaker's Almanack

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Elfrida Vipont, The Lark on the Wing
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Robert Henriques, Through the Valley
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Cecil Woodham-Smith, Florence Nightingale
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Marguerite de Angeli, The Door in the Wall
 * Newdigate prize: John Bayley
 * Nobel Prize for Literature: Earl (Bertrand Arthur William) Russell
 * Premio Nadal: Elena Quiroga, Viento del norte
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Joshua Logan, South Pacific
 * Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: A. B. Guthrie, Jr., The Way West
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Gwendolyn Brooks, Annie Allen