1950 in literature

See also: 1949 in literature, other events of 1950, 1951 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• Kazuo Shimada (1907–1996) won the "Mystery Writer Of Japan" award for his book Shakai-bu Kisha (City Reporter)
• Francis Briddick Born
• Jack Kerouac had his first novel published

New books

• Across the River and Into the Trees – Ernest Hemingway
• The Adventurer – Mika Waltari
• Beetlecreek  – William Demby
• Cabbagetown – Hugh Garner
• The Cardinal – Henry Morton Robinson
• The Child Who Never Grew – Pearl S. Buck
• The Disenchanted – Budd Schulberg
• The Door in the Wall – Marguerite de Angeli
• The Town and the City – Jack Kerouac
• Floodtide – Frank Yerby
• Florence Nightingale – Cecil Woodham-Smith
• The Grass Is Singing – Doris Lessing
• I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
• Joy Street – Frances Parkinson Keyes
• Jubilee Trail  – Gwen Bristow
• Kon-Tiki  – Thor Heyerdahl
• The Liberal Imagination – Lionel Trilling
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – C. S. Lewis
• The Little World of Don Camillo – Giovanni Guareschi
• The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
• Parade's End – Ford Madox Ford
• The Parasites – Daphne du Maurier
• Reading and Criticism – Raymond Williams
• Star Money – Kathleen Winsor
• Summer In The Country – Edith Templeton
• La vida breve (A Brief Life) – Juan Carlos Onetti
• The Wall – John Hersey

Births

• January 25 – Gloria Naylor, African American author
• May 1 – Francis Briddick, English poet and lyrisist
• July – Zhang Kangkang, Chinese writer
• September 7 – Peggy Noonan, columnist, political writer
• September 20 – James Blaylock, American fantasy author
• October 17  – David Adams Richards, Canadian author
• October 27 – Fran Leibowitz, American writer
• November 2 – Mauri Kunnas, Finnish children’s author
• Barbara Gowdy – Canadian novelist
• Susan Eloise Hinton, American author

Deaths

• January 21 – George Orwell, writer
• March 19 – Edgar Rice Burroughs, author
• May 6 – Agnes Smedley, American journalist and writer known for chronicling the Chinese Civil War
• October 19 – Edna St. Vincent Millay, poet
• November 2 – George Bernard Shaw
• November 25 – Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, Danish author

Awards

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Marguerite de Angeli, The Door in the Wall
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Earl (Bertrand Arthur William) Russell
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Joshua Logan, South Pacific
• Special Life Time Award: Francis Briddick
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: A. B. Guthrie, Jr., The Way West
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Gwendolyn Brooks, Annie Allen