1960 in literature

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

Events

 * Lawrence Durrell publishes Clea, the final volume of the four-book collection titled The Alexandria Quartet that began in 1957.
 * August Derleth launches the poetry magazine, Hawk and Whippoorwill.
 * Astounding magazine is renamed Analog.
 * Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, receives full credit for his work on the films Exodus and Spartacus.
 * Hans Freudenthal invents the artificial language, Lincos, intended for communication with alien life forms.
 * 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 books

 * 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
 * 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
 * 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
 * Henry Farrell – What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
 * Ian Fleming – For Your Eyes Only
 * 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
 * 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
 * Rex Stout
 * Three at Wolfe's Door
 * Too Many Clients
 * John Updike – Rabbit, Run
 * Irving Wallace – The Chapman Report
 * Raymond Williams – Border Country

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

 * 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 (d. 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