1936 in literature

See also: 1935 in literature, other events of 1936, 1937 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• Life magazine is first published

New books

• The Allegory of Love – C. S. Lewis
• The Big Money – John Dos Passos
• Black Thunder – Arna Wendell Bontemps
• The Brothers Ashkenazi – Israel Joshua Singer
• Caddie Woodlawn – Carol Ryrie Brink
• The Dark Frontier – Eric Ambler
• Dark Metropolis – Arthur Joseph
• Death on the Installment Plan – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
• Drums Along the Mohawk – Walter D. Edmonds
• Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
• The Gray Man Walks – Henry Bellamann
• The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
• In Dubious Battle – John Steinbeck
• Jamaica Inn – Daphne du Maurier
• John Dawn – Robert P. Tristram Coffin
• The Long Night – Andrew Lytle
• Nobody's Buddy – John A. Moroso
• Not Under Forty – Willa Cather
• Now that April's Here and Other Stories – Morley Callaghan
• Otto at Sea – William Pène du Bois
• Quel homme es-tu – André Billy
• We The Living – Ayn Rand

Births

• January 10 – Stephen Ambrose, controversial historian
• January 22 – Joseph Wambaugh, author
• February 18 – Jean M. Auel, Earth's Children author
• May 23 – Ian Kennedy Martin, scriptwriter
• June 23 – Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull author
• July 22 – Tom Robbins, novelist
• August 24 – A. S. Byatt, novelist
• October 5 – Václav Havel, dramatist and first president of the Czech Republic
• November 17 – John Wells, satirical writer and actor
• November 20 – Don DeLillo, United States novelist
• date unknown – Andrew Davies, TV and film writer
• date unknown – Duff Hart-Davis, biographer and journalist
• date unknown – J. H. Prynne, poet

Deaths

• January 18 – Rudyard Kipling, British writer – Nobel prize for literature (1907)
• March 16 – Marguerite Durand, journalist
• April 30 – A. E. Housman, poet
• June 11 – Robert E. Howard, American fantasy writer (suicide)
• June 12 – M. R. James, writer of ghost stories
• June 14 – G. K. Chesterton, author
• June 14 – Maxim Gorky, dramatist
• August 19 – Federico García Lorca, dramatist and poet
• November 12 – Stefan Grabinski, "the Polish Poe"
• December 10 – Luigi Pirandello, dramatist and novelist
• December 28 – John Cornford, Communist poet
• Grazia Deledda, Sardinian (Italy) writer – Nobel prize for literature (1926)

Awards

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Carol Ryrie Brink, Caddie Woodlawn
• Nobel Prize for literature: Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, Idiots Delight
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert P. Tristram Coffin: Strange Holiness
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Harold L. Davis – Honey in the Horn