1963 in literature

The year 1963 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• First United States printing of John Cleland's 1749 novel, Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure). The book is banned for obscenity, triggering a court case by its publisher.
• Leslie Charteris publishes his final collection of stories featuring Simon Templar, also known as "The Saint", The Saint in the Sun (he first wrote about the character in 1928). After this, all future Saint books would be ghost written by other authors, though Charteris would continue in an editorial capacity until the series ends in 1983.

New books

• J. G. Ballard
  • The Four-Dimensional Nightmare
  • Passport to Eternity
• Simone de Beauvoir - Force of Circumstance (La Force des choses)
• Pierre Boulle - Planet of the Apes (La Planète des Singes)
• Pearl S. Buck - The Living Reed
• Anthony Burgess - Inside Mr. Enderby
• Taylor Caldwell - Grandmother and the Priests
• Morley Callaghan - That Summer in Paris
• John Dickson Carr - The Men Who Explained Miracles
• Agatha Christie - The Clocks
• L. Sprague de Camp - A Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales
• L. Sprague de Camp, editor - Swords and Sorcery
• Len Deighton - Horse Under Water
• August Derleth - Mr. George and Other Odd Persons (writing as Stephen Grendon)
• Daphne du Maurier - The Glass-Blowers
• Nell Dunn - Up the Junction
• John Fowles - The Collector
• Ian Fleming
  • On Her Majesty's Secret Service
  • Thrilling Cities
• Betty Friedan - The Feminine Mystique
• Jane Gaskell – The Serpent
• Günter Grass - Dog Years - (Hundejahre)
• John Hawkes - Second Skin
• Georgette Heyer - False Colours
• Damon Knight - First Flight: Maiden Voyages in Space and Time
• John le Carré - The Spy who Came in from the Cold
• Primo Levi - La tregua (The Truce/Reawakening)
• Mary McCarthy - The Group
• Richard McKenna - The Sand Pebbles
• Alistair MacLean - Ice Station Zebra
• Ruth Manning-Sanders - A Book of Giants
• James A. Michener - Caravans
• Emily Cheney Neville - It's Like This, Cat
• John O'Hara - Elizabeth Appleton
• Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
• Laurens van der Post - The Seed and the Sower
• Thomas Pynchon - V.
• John Rechy - City of Night
• Charles M. Schulz - Happiness Is a Warm Puppy
• Susan Sontag - Benefactor
• Muriel Spark - The Girls of Slender Means
• Rex Stout - The Mother Hunt
• Boris and Arkady Strugatsky - Dalyokaya Raduga
• Rosemary Sutcliff - Sword at Sunset
• Walter Tevis - The Man Who Fell to Earth
• Mario Vargas Llosa - La ciudad y los Perros (The Time of the Hero)
• Jack Vance - The Dragon Masters
• Tarjei Vesaas - Is-slottet (The Ice Palace)
• Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
• Keith Waterhouse - Billy Liar
• David Weiss - Naked Came I
• Manly Wade Wellman - Who Fears the Devil?
• Morris West - The Shoes of the Fisherman

New drama

• John Barton and Peter Hall's adaptation of Shakespeare's history play cycle The War of the Roses
• Václav Havel - The Garden Party

Non-fiction

• Thomas B. Costain - William the Conqueror.
• L. Sprague de Camp - The Ancient Engineers.
• Richard P. Feynman - Six Easy Pieces.
• Shelby Foote – The Civil War: A Narrative – Vol 2: Fredicksburg to Meridian.
• Martin Luther King Jr. - Letter from Birmingham Jail.
• H. P. Lovecraft - Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity.
• William H. McNeill - The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community.
• E. P. Thompson – The Making of the English Working Class.

Poetry

• T. S. Eliot - Collected Poems 1909-1962 - Comprehensive volume of Eliot's poetry, selected by the author, published on his 75th birthday, September 26, 1963.
• Lionel Kearns - Songs of Circumstance
• H. P. Lovecraft - Collected Poems

Births

• June 25 - Yann Martel, author
• date unknown
  • Jeff Abbott, novelist
  • Russell T Davies, television writer
  • Alice Sebold, novelist

Deaths

• January 8 - Kay Sage, poet
• January 29 - Robert Frost, poet
• February 11 - Sylvia Plath, poet/novelist
• March 4 - William Carlos Williams, writer
• May 12 - Aiden Wilson Tozer, religious writer
• June 17 - John Cowper Powys, novelist
• August 1 - Theodore Roethke, poet
• August 18 - Clifford Odets, dramatist
• August 27 - W. E. B. Du Bois, writer/civil rights activist
• September 3 - Louis MacNeice, poet
• November 22
  • Aldous Huxley, novelist
  • C. S. Lewis, novelist/Christian apologist/English professor
• December 25 - Tristan Tzara, poet/essayist

Awards

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry: William Carlos Williams
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Hester Burton, Time of Trial
• Eric Gregory Award: Ian Hamilton, Stewart Conn, Peter Griffith, David Wevill
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Gerda Charles, A Slanting Light
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Georgina Battiscombe, John Keble: A Study in Limitations
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
• Nobel Prize for literature - Giorgos Seferis
• Premio Nadal: Manuel Mejía Vallejo, El día señalado
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: William Faulkner - The Reivers
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: William Carlos Williams: Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: William Plomer