1947 in literature

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The year 1947 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• The Diary of Anne Frank is published for the first time.
• Jack Kerouac makes the journey which he will later chronicle in his book On the Road.
• Dorothy Parker divorces Alan Campbell for the first time.
• Dalton Trumbo refuses to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Ring Lardner, Jr., attends, but refuses to answer any questions.
• Kenneth Arnold witnesses nine Flying saucers, starting a huge amount of enthuisiasm in science fiction writers and scientists.

New prose fiction

• Cynthia Asquith - This Mortal Coil
• Carolyn Sherwin Bailey - Miss Hickory
• François Boyer - Les Jeux Inconnus
• Ray Bradbury - Dark Carnival (debut book)
• Margaret Wise Brown - Goodnight Moon
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the Foreign Legion
• Italo Calvino - The Path to the Nest of Spiders
• Albert Camus - The Plague (La Peste)
• John Dickson Carr
  • The Sleeping Sphinx
  • Dr. Fell, Detective, and Other Stories
• Agatha Christie - The Labours of Hercules
• Thomas B. Costain - The Moneyman
• Jean Genet - Querelle de Brest
• Robert A. Heinlein - Rocket Ship Galileo
• William Hope Hodgson - Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder
• Carl Jacobi - Revelations in Black
• Yasunari Kawabata - Snow Country
• Fritz Leiber, Jr. - Night's Black Agents
• Malcolm Lowry - Under the Volcano
• Thomas Mann - Doctor Faustus
• Gabriel García Márquez - Eyes of a Blue Dog
• W. Somerset Maugham
  • Creatures of Circumstance
  • Theatre
• Oscar Micheaux - Masquerade, a Historical Novel
• James A. Michener - Tales of the South Pacific
• W.O. Mitchell - Who Has Seen the Wind?
• Alberto Moravia - The Woman of Rome (La Romana)
• Willard Motley - Knock On Any Door
• Vladimir Nabokov - Bend Sinister
• Cesare Pavese - Il compagno
• Arthur Ransome - Great Northern?
• Michael Sadleir - Forlorn Sunset
• Samuel Shellabarger - Prince of Foxes
• Mickey Spillane - I, the Jury
• John Steinbeck - The Pearl
• Rex Stout - Too Many Women
• Phoebe Atwood Taylor - The Iron Clew (as by Alice Tilton)
• Philip Toynbee - Tea with Mrs Goodman
• Boris Vian
  • The Dead All Have the Same Skin (as Vernon Sullivan)
  • Froth on the Daydream
• Evelyn Waugh - The Loved One & Scott-King's Modern Europe
• Jack Williamson - With Folded Hands

New drama

• Jean Anouilh - Invitation to the Castle
• Jean Genet - The Maids
• Arthur Miller - All My Sons
• Tennessee Williams - A Streetcar Named Desire

Poetry

• Kingsley Amis - Bright November
• August Derleth editor - Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre
• Abba Kovner - Ad Lo-Or ("Until No-Light")

Non-fiction

• Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer - Dialectic of Enlightenment.
• Emil Brunner - The Divine Imperative.
• L. Sprague de Camp - The Evolution of Naval Weapons.
• Bernard DeVoto - Across the Wide Missouri.
• Walter Lippmann - The Cold War.
• George Orwell - Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool.
• Samuel Putnam - Paris Was Our Mistress: Memoirs of a Lost & Found Generation.

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 1 - J. D. Beresford, short story writer
• February 15 - Margaret Marshall Saunders, Canadian author
• March 12 - Winston Churchill, American novelist
• April 24 - Willa Cather
• September 25 - Afawarq Gabra Iyasus, Ethiopian author and linguist
• November 12 - Baroness Orczy, "Scarlet Pimpernel" author
• December 7 - Tristan Bernard - French writer and lawyer
• December 15 - Arthur Machen, journalist, novelist and short story writer
• date unknown - Anna Wickham, poet

Awards

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Walter de la Mare, Collected Stories for Children
• Frost Medal: Gustav Davidson
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: L. P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Rev. C. C. E. Raven, English Naturalists from Neckham to Ray
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, Miss Hickory
• Nobel Prize for literature: André Gide
• Premio Nadal: Miguel Delibes, La sombra del ciprés es alargada
• 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