1962 in literature

See also: 1961 in literature, other events of 1962, 1963 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov is published.

New books

• Apples of Gold – Jo Petty
• The Changeling – Thomas Middleton
• Dearly Beloved  – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• The Guns of August – Barbara Tuchman
• The Kindly Ones – Anthony Powell
• King Rat – James Clavell
• Lilies of the Field – William Barrett
• The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick
• Mother Night – Kurt Vonnegut
• A Murder of Quality  – John le Carré
• My Life in Court  – Louis Nizer
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest – Ken Kesey
• Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
• The Prize  – Irving Wallace
• A Prologue To Love – Taylor Caldwell
• Reinhart in Love – Thomas Berger
• The Reivers – William Faulkner
• Seven Days in May  – Fletcher Knebel & Charles W. Bailey II
• Sex and the Single Girl – Helen Gurley Brown
• A Shade of Difference  – Allen Drury
• Ship of Fools  – Katherine Anne Porter
• Silent Spring – Rachel Carson
• The Spy Who Loved Me  – Ian Fleming
• The Thin Red Line – James Jones
• Travels With Charley – John Steinbeck
• Wise Blood – Flannery O'Connor
• A Wrinkle in Time — Madeleine L'Engle
• Youngblood Hawke  – Herman Wouk

Births

• March 31 – Michal Viewegh, Czech language writer
• October 19 – Tracy Chevalier, novelist
• unknown date – Mark Haddon, novelist
• unknown date – David Edwards, journalist
• unknown date – Sebastian Junger, novelist

Deaths

• February 16 – Frank Prewett, poet
• May 26 – Wilfred Wilson Gibson, poet
• June 2 – Vita Sackville-West, poet and gardener
• July 6 – William Faulkner, American novelist
• July 21 – G. M. Trevelyan, historian
• July 27 – Richard Aldington, World War I writer
• August 9 – Hermann Hesse, novelist
• September 3 – E. E. Cummings, poet
• September 23 – Patrick Hamilton, dramatist
• December 3 – Dame Mary Gilmore, poet and journalist

Awards

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth George Speare, The Bronze Bow
• Nobel Prize for literature – John Steinbeck
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Frank Loesser, Abe Burrows, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Edwin O'Connor – The Edge of Sadness
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Alan Dugan: Poems