1944 in literature

The year 1943 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

 * George Orwell resigns from the BBC to become literary editor of Tribune.
 * Isaac Bashevis Singer becomes a naturalized citizen of the United States.
 * Jack Kerouac joins the US Navy.
 * C.S. Lewis makes a series of radio broadcasts that will be adapted as Mere Christianity.
 * Tristan Bernard is released from the Drancy deportation camp.
 * The FBI places Richard Wright under surveillance.
 * Philip Larkin graduates from Oxford and obtains his first post as a librarian.

New books

 * Sholem Asch - The Apostle
 * Henry Bellamann - Victoria Grandolet
 * Enid Blyton - The Magic Faraway Tree
 * John Dickson Carr - She Died A Lady (as by Carter Dickson)
 * Raymond Chandler - The Lady in the Lake
 * Colette - Le Képi
 * Roald Dahl - The Gremlins
 * Howard Fast - Citizen Tom Paine
 * C.S. Forester - The Ship
 * Elizabeth Janet Gray - Adam of the Road
 * Graham Greene - Ministry of Fear
 * Hermann Hesse - The Glass Bead Game
 * Clarice Lispector - Near to the Wild Heart (Perto do coração selvagem)
 * H.P. Lovecraft - Beyond the Wall of Sleep
 * Naguib Mahfouz - Rhadopis of Nubia
 * C. L. Moore - Earth's Last Citadel
 * Kate O'Brien - The Last of Summer
 * E. Phillips Oppenheim - Mr. Mirakel
 * Roger Peyrefitte - Les amitiés particulières
 * Ellery Queen - There Was an Old Woman
 * Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead
 * Arthur Ransome - The Picts And The Martyrs: or Not Welcome At All
 * Antoine de Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince
 * Betty Smith - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor
 * Going, Going, Gone
 * Proof of the Pudding
 * File for Record (as by Alice Tilton)
 * Kylie Tennant - Ride on Stranger
 * H.G. Wells - Crux Ansata
 * Chancellor Williams - The Raven
 * Virginia Woolf - A Haunted House and Other Short Stories (published anonymously)
 * C.S. Lewis - Perelandra

New drama

 * Bertolt Brecht
 * Life of Galileo
 * The Good Person of Szechwan
 * Albert Camus - The Misunderstanding
 * Moss Hart - Winged Victory
 * Fritz Hochwälder - Das Heilige Experiment (The Strong Are Lonely)
 * Elena Miramova - Dark Eyes
 * Jean-Paul Sartre - The Flies

Poetry

 * A Choice of Kipling's Verse made by T.S. Eliot

Non-fiction

 * Georges Bataille - L'expérience intérieure
 * Julius Evola - The Doctrine of Awakening
 * C. S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man
 * Reinhold Niebuhr - The Nature and Destiny of Man
 * Jean-Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness
 * William Foote Whyte - Street Corner Society
 * Stephan Zweig - The World of Yesterday.

Births

 * January 4 - Doris Kearns Goodwin, writer
 * January 8 - Charles Murray, Bell Curve author
 * January 11 - Jim Hightower, radio host, author
 * February 15 - Elke Heidenreich, journalist and writer
 * February 18 - Graeme Garden, writer, comedian, actor
 * February 22 - Terry Eagleton, critic
 * March 26 - Bob Woodward, journalist
 * April 6 - Max Clifford, publicist
 * April 17 - Gwynne Dyer, journalist
 * April 30 - Paul Jennings, children's author
 * May 5 - Michael Palin, comedy writer and television personality
 * May 7 - Peter Carey, Booker Prize-winning novelist
 * May 8 - Pat Barker, Booker Prize-winning novelist
 * June 10 - Simon Jenkins, journalist
 * June 15 - Xaviera Hollander, Happy Hooker author
 * July 16 - Reinaldo Arenas, Cuban writer (d. 1990)
 * November 5 - Sam Shepard, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, writer, actor
 * November 12 - Wallace Shawn, actor and dramatist
 * December 9 - Joanna Trollope, novelist
 * date unknown
 * Ebrahim Hussein, Swahili playwright
 * L. E. Modesitt, Jr., fantasy and science fiction writer
 * Sheila Rowbotham, feminist author

Deaths

 * January 9 - R. G. Collingwood, philosopher and historian
 * March 10 - Laurence Binyon, poet and scholar
 * April 7 - Jovan Dučić, poet and diplomat (b. 1871)
 * April 30 - Beatrice Webb
 * May - Arthur Mee, editor of the Children's Encyclopaedia
 * June 28 - Frida Uhl, Austrian writer and translator (b. 1872)
 * August - Haig Acterian ("Mihail"), Fascist poet, dramatist, director and journalist (b. 1904) (missing in action)
 * August 22 - Virgilio Dávila, poet and politician (b. 1869)
 * August 24 - Simone Weil, philosopher
 * October 7 - Radclyffe Hall, controversial author (b. 1880)
 * December 22 - Beatrix Potter, children's author (b. 1866)
 * date unknown
 * Ida Lee, Australian historian and poet (b. 1865)
 * Guido Mazzoni, poet
 * date unknown - F. M. Cornford, poet

Awards

 * Frost Medal: Edna St. Vincent Millay
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Mary Lavin, Tales from Bective Bridge
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: G. G. Coulton, Fourscore Years
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Janet Gray, Adam of the Road
 * Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Frost: A Witness Tree
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Upton Sinclair - Dragon's Teeth