1947 in literature

See also: 1946 in literature, other events of 1947, 1948 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• The Diary of Anne Frank is published
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is published.
• Jack Kerouac makes the journey which he will later chronicle in his book On the Road.

New books

• Bright November – Kingsley Amis' first collection of poems
• Country Place  – Ann Lane Petty
• Creatures of Circumstance – W. Somerset Maugham
• The Cold War – Walter Lippmann
• Dark Carnival – Ray Bradbury's first book.
• Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
• Froth on the Daydream – Boris Vian
• God Is For White Folks – Thomas Will
• Goodnight Moon  – Margaret Wise Brown
• A High Wind Rising – Elsie Singmaster
• I, the Jury – Mickey Spillane
• Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
• Les Jeux Inconnus – François Boyer
• Knock On Any Door – Willard Motley
• Masquerade, a Historical Novel – Oscar Micheaux
• Miss Hickory – Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
• The Moneyman – Thomas B. Costain
• Paris Was Our Mistress: Memoirs of a Lost & Found Generation – Samuel Putnam
• The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
• The Plague (La Peste) – Albert Camus
• Prince of Foxes – Samuel Shellabarger
• Rocket Ship Galileo – Robert Heinlein
• Saggy Baggy Elephant – Kathryn Jackson and Byron Jackson
• Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata
• Tales of the South Pacific – James A. Michener
• Tea with Mrs Goodman – Philip Toynbee
• Theater – W. Somerset Maugham
• Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
• Who Has Seen the Wind?  – W.O. Mitchell

Births

• February 3 – Paul Auster, novelist
• April 12 – Tom Clancy, novelist
• June 19 – Salman Rushdie, author
• September 21 – Stephen King, author
• October 19 – Giorgio Cavazzano, comics artist and illustrator

Deaths

• February 15 – Margaret Marshall Saunders, Canadian author
• April 24 – Willa Cather
• December 7 – Tristan Bernard – French writer and lawyer

Awards

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, Miss Hickory
• Nobel Prize for literature: André Paul Guillaume Gide
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Lowell: Lord Weary's Castle
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Robert Penn Warren – All the King's Men