1959 in literature

See also: 1958 in literature, other events of 1959, 1960 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

New books

• Advertisement for Myself  – Norman Mailer
• Advise and Consent  – Allen Drury
• The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz  – Mordecai Richler
• The Children of Gebelaawi  – Naguib Mahfouz
• Children of the Wolf  – Alfred Duggan
• Dear and Glorious Physician  – Taylor Caldwell
• The Defeat of the Spanish Armada  – Garett Mattingly
• The Elements of Style  – William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White
• Exodus  – Leon Uris
• Goldfinger  – Ian Fleming
• Goodbye, Columbus  – Philip Roth
• The Haunting of Hill House  – Shirley Jackson
• Hawaii  – James A. Michener
• Henderson the Rain King  – Saul Bellow
• The Magic Christian  – Terry Southern
• Mountolive  – Lawrence Durrell
• Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris  – Paul Gallico
• Naked Lunch  – William S. Burroughs
• Poor No More  – Robert Ruark
• Psycho  – Robert Bloch
• Rape of the Fair Country  – Alexander Cordell
• Sink the Bismarck! aka The Last Nine Days of the Bismark  – C.S. Forester
• The Sirens of Titan  – Kurt Vonnegut
• Starship Troopers  – Robert Heinlein
• The Tin Drum  – Günter Grass
• The Ugly American  – William J. Lederer and Eugene L. Burdick

Births

• May 3 – Ben Elton, British comedian and author
• October 31 – Neal Stephenson – science fiction writer
• R. A. Salvatore, science-fiction and fantasy author

Deaths

• February 28 – Maxwell Anderson, playwright, film writer
• March 26 – Raymond Chandler, American novelist.
• June 23 – Boris Vian, French novelist

Awards

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond
• Nobel Prize for literature: Salvatore Quasimodo
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Archibald MacLeish, J. B.
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Robert Lewis Taylor, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Stanley Kunitz, Selected Poems 1928–1958