1940 in literature

The year 1940 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

 * Aldous Huxley is a screenwriter for the movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
 * Jean-Paul Sartre is taken prisoner by the Germans.
 * Robertson Davies joins the Old Vic repertory company.

New book

 * Giorgio Basssani - ''Una città di pianura
 * Henry Bellamann - King's Row
 * Adolfo Bioy Casares - The Invention of Morel
 * Karin Boye - Kallocain
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs - Synthetic Men of Mars
 * Dino Buzzati - The Tartar Steppe (Il deserto dei Tartari)
 * Erskine Caldwell - Trouble in July
 * Taylor Caldwell - The Earth is the Lord's
 * John Dickson Carr
 * ''The Department of Queer Complaints
 * The Man Who Could Not Shudder
 * And So To Murder (as by Carter Dickson)
 * Murder in the Submarine Zone (as by Carter Dickson)
 * Willa Cather - Sapphira And The Slave
 * Raymond Chandler - Farewell, My Lovely
 * Agatha Christie
 * Sad Cypress
 * One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
 * Walter Clark - The Ox-bow Incident
 * James Daugherty - Daniel Boone
 * Georges Duhamel - Les Maîtres
 * Graham Greene - The Power and the Glory
 * Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls
 * Georgette Heyer - The Corinthian
 * Arthur Koestler - Darkness at Noon
 * Dorothy Kunhardt- Pat the Bunny
 * John M. Lee - Counter-Clockwise
 * Carson McCullers - The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
 * John O'Hara - Pal Joey
 * Raymond Postgate - Verdict of Twelve
 * Arthur Ransome - The Big Six
 * Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - When the Whippoorwill
 * Clayton Rawson -- The Headless Lady
 * Mikhail Sholokov - The Don Flows Home to the Sea
 * Dr. Seuss - Horton Hatches the Egg
 * C.P. Snow - George Passant (first of the Strangers and Brothers series)
 * Christina Stead - The Man Who Loved Children
 * Rex Stout
 * Over My Dead Body
 * Where There's a Will
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor
 * The Criminal C.O.D.
 * The Deadly Sunshade
 * The Left Leg (as by Alice Tilton)
 * Richard Wright -Native Son

New drama

 * Agatha Christie - Peril at End House
 * Jean Cocteau - Le Bel Indifférent
 * Lawrence Riley - Return Engagement
 * George Shiels - The Rugged Path

Non-fiction

 * "Cato" (Michael Foot and others) - Guilty Men
 * G.H. Hardy - A Mathematician's Apology
 * C.S. Lewis - The Problem of Pain
 * Arthur Marder - The Anatomy of British Sea Power: a history of British naval policy in the pre-Dreadnought era, 1880-1905
 * A.A. Milne - War with Honour
 * Edmund Wilson - To the Finland Station

Births

 * January 14 - Sir Trevor Nunn, theatre director
 * February 4 - George A. Romero, horror film writer, producer, director
 * March 16 - Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian writer and film director
 * March 28 - Russell Banks, novelist
 * April 15 - Jeffrey Archer, novelist
 * May 7 - Angela Carter, English magical realist author (d. 1992)
 * May 8 - Peter Benchley, novelist (d. 2006)
 * May 13 - Bruce Chatwin, novelist and travel writer (d. 1989)
 * May 24 - Joseph Brodsky, poet (d. 1996)
 * May 28 - Maeve Binchy, novelist
 * July 17 - Tim Brooke-Taylor, comedy writer and actor
 * October 20 - Robert Pinsky, poet
 * December 5 - Peter Pohl, novelist

Deaths

 * January 5 - Humbert Wolfe, poet and epigrammist
 * January 27 - Isaac Babel, journalist and dramatist
 * February 11 - John Buchan, Scottish author
 * February 29 - E. F. Benson, novelist
 * March 7 - Edwin Markham, poet
 * March 10 - Mikhaïl Boulgakov, Russian writer (b. 1891)
 * March 16
 * Selma Lagerlöf, writer
 * Thomas Heath, historian and translator
 * June 10 - Marcus Garvey, journalist and publisher
 * June 20 - Charley Chase, screenwriter
 * September - W. H. Davies, poet and Supertramp
 * December 21 - F Scott Fitzgerald (b. 1896)
 * December 22 - Nathanael West (b. 1903)
 * date unknown - T. O'Conor Sloane, editor of Amazing Stories

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Kitty Barne, Visitors from London
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Charles Morgan, The Voyage
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Hilda F. M. Prescott, Spanish Tudor: Mary I of England
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: James Daugherty, Daniel Boone
 * Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Mark Van Doren: Collected Poems
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
 * King's Gold Medal for Poetry: Michael Thwaites