1939 in literature

See also: 1938 in literature, other events of 1939, 1940 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• December 25 – A Christmas Carol was read before a radio audience for the first time.
• The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West is published.
• Finnegans Wake by James Joyce is published.
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is published.

New books

• The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
• Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal – Aime Cesaire
• Children of God – Vardis Fisher
• The Day of the Locust – Nathanael West
• Drums at Dusk – Arna Wendell Bontemps
• Files on Parade – John O'Hara
• Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
• The Gladiators – Arthur Koestler
• The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
• Let Me Breathe Thunder – William Attaway
• Listen for the Voices – Anne Colver
• Magna – Zona Gale
• The Mask of Dimitrios – Eric Ambler
• The Mysterious Mickey Finn  – Elliot Paul
• Melbourne – David Cecil
• Moses, Man Of The Mountain – Zora Neale Hurston
• The Nazarene – Sholem Asch
• Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats – T. S. Eliot
• The Outsider and Others – H. P. Lovecraft
• The Patriot – Pearl S. Buck
• The Snows of Kilimanjaro – Ernest Hemingway
• Studies in Iconology – Erwin Panofsky
• Thimble Summer – Elizabeth Enright
• The Tree of Liberty – Elizabeth Page
• If I Forget Thee Jerusalem (The Wild Palms/Old Man) – William Faulkner

Births

• Michael Moorcock, English science fiction author
• august 1 – Robert James Waller, American novelist

Deaths

• January 28 – William Butler Yeats, writer

Awards

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Enright, Thimble Summer
• Nobel Prize for literature: Frans Eemil Sillanpää
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, Abe Lincoln in Illinois
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: John Gould Fletcher: Selected Poems
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings – The Yearling