1940 in literature

See also: 1939 in literature, other events of 1940, 1941 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• June 4 – The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers is published.

New books

• The Corinthian – Georgette Heyer
• Counter-Clockwise – John M. Lee
• Daniel Boone – James Daugherty
• Darkness at Noon – Arthur Koestler
• The Don Flows Home to the Sea – Mikhail Sholokov
• The Earth is the Lord's – Taylor Caldwell
• Farewell, My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
• The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
• Horton Hatches the Egg – Dr. Seuss
• King's Row – Henry Bellamann
• Last Train Out – E. Phillipe Oppenheim
• The Man Who Loved Children – Christina Stead
• A Mathematician's Apology – G. H. Hardy
• Native Son – Richard Wright
• The Ox-bow Incident – Walter Clark
• Pal Joey – John O'Hara
• Pat the Bunny – Dorothy Kunhardt
• Sapphira And The Slave – Willa Cather
• Trouble in July – Erskine Caldwell
• When the Whippoorwill – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Births

• February 4 – George Romero, horror movie writer, producer, director
• February 29 – Edward Frederick Benson, American writer
• March 16 – Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian writer and film director
• May 7 – Angela Carter, English magical realist author

Deaths

• March 10 – Mikhaïl Boulgakov, Russian writer
• March 16 – Selma Lagerlöf, writer
• December 21 – F Scott Fitzgerald
• December 22 – Nathanael West

Awards

• 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