1932 in literature

The year 1932 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

 * E.V. Knox replaces Sir Owen Seaman as editor of Punch magazine.
 * Samuel Beckett's first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, is rejected by several publishers.
 * W. B. Yeats rents a house in Dublin.
 * The New Poetry (Thơ mới) period began, marked by an article and a poem of Phan Khôi, beginning Modern Literature in Vietnam.

New books

 * Laura Adams Armer - Waterless Mountain
 * Henry Bellamann - The Richest Woman in Town
 * John Buchan - The Gap in the Curtain
 * Pearl S. Buck - Sons
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan Triumphant
 * Erskine Caldwell - Tobacco Road
 * Morley Callaghan - A Broken Journey
 * John Dickson Carr
 * The Waxworks Murder
 * Poison In Jest
 * Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Journey to the End of the Night
 * Agatha Christie
 * Peril at End House
 * The Thirteen Problems
 * Colette - Le Pur et L'Impur
 * A.J. Cronin - Three Loves
 * John Dos Passos - 1919
 * William Faulkner - Light in August
 * Lion Feuchtwanger - Josephus
 * Rudolph Fisher - The Conjure Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem
 * Elena Fortún - Celia en el colegio
 * Lewis Grassic Gibbon - Sunset Song
 * Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm
 * Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life
 * Herman Hesse - Journey to the East
 * Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
 * Annabel Jackson - A Victorian Childhood
 * W. Somerset Maugham - The Narrow Corner
 * Nancy Mitford - Christmas Pudding
 * Vladimir Nabokov
 * Glory
 * Laughter in the Dark
 * Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall - Mutiny on the Bounty
 * Anthony Powell - Venusberg
 * Ellery Queen
 * The Greek Coffin Mystery
 * The Egyptian Cross Mystery
 * Arthur Ransome - Peter Duck
 * Joseph Roth - Radetzky March
 * Damon Runyon - Guys and Dolls
 * Dorothy L. Sayers - Have His Carcase
 * Thorne Smith - Topper Takes a Trip
 * John Steinbeck - The Pastures of Heaven
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor - Death Lights a Candle
 * Wallace Thurman - Infants Of The Spring
 * Sigrid Undset
 * Burning Bush
 * The Son Avenger
 * Hugh Walpole - The Fortress
 * Evelyn Waugh - Black Mischief
 * Laura Ingalls Wilder - Little House in the Big Woods
 * Charles Williams - The Greater Trumps

New drama

 * Elias Canetti - The Wedding
 * Noël Coward - Design for Living
 * George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber - Dinner at Eight
 * Marcel Pagnol - Fanny

Poetry

 * W.H. Auden - The Orators
 * Cecil Day-Lewis - From Feathers To Iron
 * An "Objectivist's" Anthology
 * Boris Pasternak - The Second Birth

Non-fiction

 * Henri Bergson - Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (The Two Sources of Morality and Religion)
 * Bernard DeVoto - Mark Twain's America
 * T. S. Eliot - Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (1932)

Births

 * January 18 - Robert Anton Wilson, author (d. 2007)
 * February 7 - Gay Talese, author
 * February 16 - Aharon Appelfeld, novelist and poet
 * March 18 - John Updike, novelist and poet (d. 2009)
 * March 31 - John Jakes, novelist
 * May 7 - Jenny Joseph, poet
 * June 5 - Christy Brown, My Left Foot author (d. 1981)
 * July 17 - Karla Kuskin, children's book author and illustrator (d. 2009)
 * August 16 - Christopher Okigbo, Nigerian poet (d. 1967)
 * August 17 - V. S. Naipaul, novelist
 * September 7 - Malcolm Bradbury, novelist (d. 2000)
 * October 27 - Sylvia Plath, poet (d. 1963)
 * unknown date - Troy Kennedy Martin, scriptwriter

Deaths

 * January 21 - Lytton Strachey, biographer
 * February 10 - Edgar Wallace, crime writer
 * March 16 - Harold Monro, poet
 * April 20 - Giuseppe Peano, philosopher
 * April 26 - Hart Crane, poet
 * May 22 - Augusta, Lady Gregory, dramatist
 * June 17 - Sir John Quick, politician and author
 * July 6 - Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows author
 * July 20 - René Bazin, novelist
 * July 22 - J. Meade Falkner, Moonfleet author
 * November 23 - Henry S. Whitehead, American author

Awards

 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Helen de Guerry Simpson, Boomerang
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Stephen Gwynn, The Life of Mary Kingsley
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Laura Adams Armer, Waterless Mountain
 * Nobel Prize for literature: John Galsworthy
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, Ira Gershwin, Of Thee I Sing
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: George Dillon: The Flowering Stone
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Pearl S. Buck: The Good Earth