1940 in literature

The year 1940 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Aldous Huxley is a screenwriter for the movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
• Jean-Paul Sartre is taken prisoner by the Germans.
• Robertson Davies joins the Old Vic repertory company.

New books

• Giorgio Bassani - Una città di pianura
• Henry Bellamann - King's Row
• Adolfo Bioy Casares - The Invention of Morel
• Karin Boye - Kallocain
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - Synthetic Men of Mars
• Dino Buzzati - The Tartar Steppe (Il deserto dei Tartari)
• Erskine Caldwell - Trouble in July
• Taylor Caldwell - The Earth is the Lord's
• John Dickson Carr writing as "Carter Dickson" - And So To Murder
• John Dickson Carr writing as "Carter Dickson" - Murder in the Submarine Zone
• Willa Cather - Sapphira And The Slave
• Raymond Chandler - Farewell, My Lovely
• Walter Clark - The Ox-bow Incident
• James Daugherty - Daniel Boone
• Georges Duhamel - Les Maîtres
• Graham Greene - The Power and the Glory
• Georgette Heyer - The Corinthian
• Arthur Koestler - Darkness at Noon
• Dorothy Kunhardt- Pat the Bunny
• John M. Lee - Counter-Clockwise
• Carson McCullers - The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
• John O'Hara - Pal Joey
• Raymond Postgate - Verdict of Twelve
• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - When the Whippoorwill
• Clayton Rawson -- The Headless Lady
• Mikhail Sholokov - The Don Flows Home to the Sea
• Dr. Seuss - Horton Hatches the Egg
• C. P. Snow - George Passant (first of the Strangers and Brothers series)
• Christina Stead - The Man Who Loved Children
• Rex Stout - Over My Dead Body
• Rex Stout - Where There's a Will
• Richard Wright -Native Son

New drama

• Agatha Christie - Peril at End House
• Jean Cocteau - Le Bel Indifférent
• Lawrence Riley - Return Engagement
• George Shiels - The Rugged Path

Non-fiction

• "Cato" (Michael Foot and others) - Guilty Men
• G. H. Hardy - A Mathematician's Apology
• C. S. Lewis - The Problem of Pain
• A. A. Milne - War with Honour
• Edmund Wilson - To the Finland Station

Births

• January 14 - Sir Trevor Nunn, theatre director
• February 4 - George Romero, horror movie writer, producer, director
• March 16 - Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian writer and film director
• March 28 - Russell Banks, novelist
• April 15 - Jeffrey Archer, novelist
• May 7 - Angela Carter, English magical realist author (d. 1992)
• May 8 - Peter Benchley, novelist (d. 2006)
• May 13 - Bruce Chatwin, travel writer (d. 1989)
• May 24 - Joseph Brodsky, poet (d. 1996)
• May 28 - Maeve Binchy, novelist
• July 17 - Tim Brooke-Taylor, comedy writer and actor
• October 20 - Robert Pinsky, poet
• December 5 - Peter Pohl, novelist

Deaths

• January 5 - Humbert Wolfe, poet and epigrammist
• January 27 - Isaac Babel, journalist and dramatist
• February 29 - E. F. Benson, novelist
• March 7 - Edwin Markham, poet
• March 10 - Mikhaïl Boulgakov, Russian writer
• March 16
  • Selma Lagerlöf, writer
  • Thomas Heath, historian and translator
• June 10 - Marcus Garvey, journalist and publisher
• June 20 - Charley Chase, screenwriter
• September - W. H. Davies, poet and Supertramp
• December 21 - F Scott Fitzgerald
• December 22 - Nathanael West
• date unknown - T. O'Conor Sloane, editor of Amazing Stories

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Charles Morgan, The Voyage
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Hilda F. M. Prescott, Spanish Tudor: Mary I of England
• 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
• King's Gold Medal for Poetry: Michael Thwaites