1962 in literature

The year 1962 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

 * January 7 - In an article in the New York Times Book Review, Gore Vidal calls Evelyn Waugh "our time's first satirist."
 * Arthur Miller marries photographer Inge Morath.
 * Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell are prosecuted and jailed for defacing library books.
 * A tape-recorded conversation on science fiction took place between Kingsley Amis, C. S. Lewis and Brian Aldiss in Lewis's rooms at Cambridge.
 * The works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are denounced by the Roman Catholic Church.
 * Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath separate.
 * Lynne Reid Banks goes to live in a kibbutz.
 * George Oppen published his first collection of poetry since Discrete Series in 1934, breaking a 28 year silence. Goes on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1969.
 * L. Frank Baum's short story "The Tiger's Eye" is first published in December, nearly six decades after it was written.

New books

 * James Baldwin - Another Country
 * Isaac Asimov, editor - The Hugo Winners
 * J. G. Ballard - The Drowned World
 * William Barrett - Lilies of the Field
 * Giorgio Bassani - The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini)
 * Thomas Berger - Reinhart in Love
 * Ray Bradbury
 * R is for Rocket
 * Something Wicked This Way Comes
 * John Braine - Life at the Top
 * John Brunner
 * Secret Agent of Terra
 * The Super Barbarians
 * Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler - Fail-Safe
 * Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
 * William S. Burroughs - The Ticket That Exploded
 * Taylor Caldwell - A Prologue To Love
 * John Dickson Carr - The Demoniacs
 * Agatha Christie - The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
 * James Clavell - King Rat
 * Len Deighton - The IPCRESS File
 * August Derleth
 * Lonesome Places
 * The Trail of Cthulhu
 * August Derleth, editor - Dark Mind, Dark Heart
 * Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle
 * Allen Drury - A Shade of Difference
 * William Faulkner - The Reivers
 * Ian Fleming - The Spy Who Loved Me
 * Aldous Huxley - Island
 * Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle
 * James Jones - The Thin Red Line
 * Ken Kesey - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
 * Fletcher Knebel & Charles W. Bailey II– Seven Days in May
 * John le Carré - A Murder of Quality
 * Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
 * Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
 * Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Dearly Beloved
 * H. P. Lovecraft - Dreams and Fancies
 * Alistair MacLean - The Satan Bug
 * Eloise McGraw - The Golden Goblet
 * Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
 * Anthony Powell - The Kindly Ones
 * Katherine Anne Porter - Ship of Fools
 * Mary Renault - The Bull from the Sea
 * Isaac Bashevis Singer - The Slave
 * Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
 * Noel Streatfeild - Travelling Shoes (first published as Apple Bough)
 * Mary Stewart - The Moon-Spinners
 * Rex Stout - Homicide Trinity
 * Rex Stout - Gambit
 * Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night
 * Irving Wallace - The Prize
 * Elie Wiesel - Day
 * David Wilkerson - The Cross and the Switchblade
 * Herman Wouk - Youngblood Hawke

New drama

 * Edward Albee - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
 * Friedrich Dürrenmatt - Die Physiker (The Physicists)
 * Witold Gombrowicz - Historia

Poetry

 * George Oppen - The Materials
 * Al Purdy - Poems for all the Annettes
 * William Carlos Williams - Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems

Non-fiction

 * W. H. Auden - The Dyer's Hand and other essays
 * Helen Gurley Brown - Sex and the Single Girl
 * Rachel Carson – Silent Spring
 * Thomas B. Costain – The Last Plantagenets (Fourth book in the Plantagenet or Pageant of England series)
 * L. Sprague de Camp – Energy and Power
 * August Derleth – 100 Books by August Derleth
 * Milton Friedman – Capitalism and Freedom
 * Thomas Kuhn – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
 * W. Somerset Maugham – Looking Back
 * V. S. Naipaul – The Middle Passage: Impressions of Five Societies - British, French and Dutch in the West Indies and South America
 * Louis Nizer - My Life in Court
 * John Steinbeck – Travels With Charley: In Search of America
 * Barbara Tuchman – The Guns of August

Births

 * January 17 - Sebastian Junger, novelist, journalist, documentarian
 * February 21 - David Foster Wallace, novelist
 * February 21 - Chuck Palahniuk, author, journalist
 * March 31 - Michal Viewegh, Czech language writer
 * October 19 - Tracy Chevalier, novelist
 * October 28 - Mark Haddon, novelist
 * unknown date - David Edwards, journalist

Deaths

 * February 16 - Frank Prewett, poet
 * April 24 - Emilio Prados, poet
 * May 26 - Wilfred Wilson Gibson, poet
 * June 2 - Vita Sackville-West, poet and gardener
 * July 6 - William Faulkner, American novelist
 * July 21 - G. M. Trevelyan, historian
 * July 27 - Richard Aldington, World War I writer
 * August 9 - Hermann Hesse, novelist
 * September 3 - E. E. Cummings, poet
 * September 23 - Patrick Hamilton, dramatist
 * December 3 - Dame Mary Gilmore, poet and journalist

Awards

 * American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction: William Faulkner
 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Pauline Clarke, The Twelve and the Genii
 * Eric Gregory Award: Donald Thomas, James Simmons, Brian Johnson, Jenny Joseph
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Ronald Hardy, Act of Destruction
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Meriol Trevor, Newman: The Pillar and the Cloud and Newman: Light in Winter
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth George Speare, The Bronze Bow
 * Newdigate Prize: Stanley Johnson
 * Nobel Prize for Literature: John Steinbeck
 * Premio Nadal: José María Mendiola, Muerte por fusilamiento
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Frank Loesser, Abe Burrows, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
 * Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Edwin O'Connor, The Edge of Sadness
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Alan Dugan, Poems
 * Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Christopher Fry