1968 in literature

Events

• January 1 – Cecil Day-Lewis is announced as the new Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.
• March 28 – Glidrose Publications releases the James Bond novel, Colonel Sun by "Robert Markham". Initially intended to relaunch the Bond book series after the death in 1964 of the character's creator, Ian Fleming, Colonel Sun ends up as the final book in the series, discounting a "biography" of Bond and a pair of film-script adaptations, until John Gardner revives it in 1981.
• April – The American edition of Andrew Garve's thriller The Long Short Cut becomes the first book printed completely by electronic composition.
• May – The Action Theater in Munich is disbanded after its building is wrecked by one of its founders, jealous of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's growing power in the group.
• June 17 – Tom Stoppard's parodic comedy The Real Inspector Hound opens at the Criterion Theatre in London's West End, starring Richard Briers and Ronnie Barker.
• July 28 – Last Exit to Brooklyn is cleared of obscenity in the English appeal court. John Mortimer appears for the defence. This is the last prosecution of a book under the U.K. Obscene Publications Acts.
• August – Tom Wolfe's books The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Pump House Gang are published on the same day. Both will become bestsellers and cement Wolfe's status as a leading social critic, chronicler of the counterculture of the 1960s, and practitioner of New Journalism.
• September 26 – Theatres Act 1968 ends censorship of the theater in the United Kingdom.
• October – Colin Spencer's comedy Spitting Image, one of the first plays with openly gay male leads, premières in London
• October 31 – Alan Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, opens at the Apollo Theatre in London's West End under the direction of Patrick Garland, starring Sir John Gielgud, Paul Eddington and the playwright.
• November – The English novelist Antony Burgess and his new wife Liana settle in Lija on Malta.

• The first translations and book-length discussion of the Sumerian Enheduanna's work is published. She is a priestess and poet of the 23rd century BC and the earliest named author known.
• Dean R. Koontz's first novel, Star Quest, is published by Ace Books in the United States.
• N. Scott Momaday's novel House Made of Dawn is published, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969 and initiating the Native American Renaissance.
• The Arvon Foundation is established by young poets John Fairfax and John Moat in the UK to promote creative writing.

  New books

Fiction

• Lloyd Alexander – The High King
• Isaac Asimov – Asimov's Mysteries
• James Blish – Black Easter
• Nelson Bond – Nightmares and Daydreams
• Elizabeth Bowen – Eva Trout
• Richard Brautigan – In Watermelon Sugar
• Rolf Dieter Brinkmann – Keiner weiß mehr
• John Brunner
• *Not Before Time
• *Stand on Zanzibar
• Anthony Burgess – Enderby Outside
• Martin Caidin – The God Machine
• Taylor Caldwell – Testimony of Two Men
• John Christopher – The Pool of Fire
• John Dickson Carr
• *Dark of the Moon
• *Papa La-Bas
• Agatha Christie – By the Pricking of My Thumbs
• Arthur C. Clarke –
• L. Sprague de Camp
• *The Goblin Tower
• *The Tritonian Ring
• *With Lin Carter – Conan of the Isles
• August Derleth
• *The Adventure of the Unique Dickensians
• *Mr. Fairlie's Final Journey
• *A Praed Street Dossier
• *Wisconsin Murders
• Philip K. Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• Allen Drury – Preserve and Protect
• Lawrence Durrell – Tunc
• Haddis Alemayehu – Love to the Grave
• Arthur Hailey – Airport
• Michael Harrison – The Exploits of Chevalier Dupin
• Georgette Heyer – Cousin Kate
• Barry Hines – A Kestrel for a Knave
• Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp
• *Conan the Freebooter
• *With Lin Carter – Conan the Wanderer
• *With Björn Nyberg – Conan the Avenger
• John Irving – Setting Free the Bears
• Dorothy M. Johnson – Indian Country
• James Jones – The Ice-Cream Headache and Other Stories
• Halldór Laxness – Kristnihald undir jökli
• John le Carré – A Small Town in Germany
• John D. MacDonald
• *Pale Gray for Guilt
• *The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper
• Helen MacInnes – The Salzburg Connection
• Norman Mailer – Armies of the Night
• Robert Markham – Colonel Sun
• Patrick Modiano – La Place de l'étoile
• N. Scott Momaday – House Made of Dawn
• Brian Moore – I Am Mary Dunne
• Alice Munro – Dance of the Happy Shades
• Andrew Osmond and Douglas Hurd – Send Him Victorious
• Anthony Powell – The Military Philosophers
• Jean Rhys – Tigers Are Better-Looking
• Mordecai Richler – Cocksure
• Keith Roberts – Pavane
• Giorgio Scerbanenco – I ragazzi del massacro
• Rudi Šeligo – Triptih Agate Schwarzkobler
• Robert Silverberg – The Masks of Time
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• *Cancer Ward
• *In the First Circle
• Muriel Spark – The Public Image
• Angus John Mackintosh Stewart – Sandel
• Sri Lal Sukla – Raag Darbari
• John Updike – Couples
• Jack Vance – City of the Chasch
• Tarjei Vesaas – The Boat in the Evening
• Gore Vidal – Myra Breckinridge
• Christa Wolf – The Quest for Christa T.
• John Wyndham – Chocky

  Children and young people

• Joan Aiken – The Whispering Mountain
• Elisabeth Beresford – The Wombles
• Don Freeman – Corduroy
• Clement Freud – Grimble
• John Grant – Littlenose
• Rosemary Harris – The Moon in the Cloud
• Russell Hoban – The Mouse and His Child
• Ted Hughes – The Iron Man
• Judith Kerr – The Tiger Who Came to Tea
• Alexander Key – Escape to Witch Mountain
• Ursula Le Guin – A Wizard of Earthsea
• Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Mermaids
• David McKee – Elmer the Patchwork Elephant
• Robert C. O'Brien – The Silver Crown
• Seymour Simon – The Look-it-up Book of the Earth
• Jill Tomlinson – The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark
• Paul Zindel – The Pigman

  Drama

• Alan Bennett – Forty Years On
• Hugo Claus – Vrijdag
• Mart Crowley – The Boys in the Band
• Thomas Kilroy – The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche
• Colin Spencer – Spitting Image
• Tom Stoppard – The Real Inspector Hound
• Shūji Terayama – Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets
• Michel Tremblay – Les Belles-Sœurs

  Poetry

• Rod McKuen – Lonesome Cities
• George Oppen – Of Being Numerous

  Non-fiction

• Peter Brook – The Empty Space
• L. Sprague de Camp
• *The Conan Reader
• *The Great Monkey Trial
• *With Catherine Crook de Camp – The Day of the Dinosaur
• Carlos Castaneda – The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
• Eldridge Cleaver – Soul on Ice
• Paul R. Ehrlich – The Population Bomb
• Esther Hautzig – The Endless Steppe
• Bevis Hillier – Art Deco of the 20s and 30s
• H. P. Lovecraft – Selected Letters II
• Peter Maas – The Valachi Papers
• Norman Mailer – Miami and the Siege of Chicago
• William Manchester – The Arms of Krupp: 1597-1968
• James Morris – Pax Britannica: The Climax of Empire
• Charles Rembar – The End of Obscenity: The Trials of Lady Chatterley, Tropic of Cancer and Fanny Hill
• Adam Smith – The Money Game
• Erich von Däniken – Chariots of the Gods?
• James D. Watson – The Double Helix

  Births

• January 30 – Rhoda Shipman, American comic book writer
• March 23 – Mitch Cullin, American novelist
• May 27 – Ekow Eshun, British Ghanaian writer, journalist and broadcaster
• June 11 – Bryan Perro, Canadian author
• July 6 – Tiit Aleksejev, Estonian novelist and playwright
• September 14 – Shuichi Yoshida, Japanese novelist
• December 6 – Karl Ove Knausgård, Norwegian autobiographical novelist
• December 31 – Junot Díaz, Dominican American novelist

• K. V. Johansen, Canadian children's author

  Deaths

• January 1 – Donagh MacDonagh, Irish poet, playwright and judge
• January 14 – Dorothea Mackellar, Australian poet
• February 23 – Fannie Hurst, American novelist
• March 22 - Margaret Duley, Newfoundland novelist
• April 9 - Zofia Kossak, Polish writer
• April 16 – Edna Ferber, American novelist, short story writer and playwright
• April 25 – Donald Davidson, American poet
• May 1 – Sir Harold Nicolson, British biographer
• May 30
• *Constantin S. Nicolăescu-Plopșor, Romanian anthropologist, ethnographer and children's writer
• *Martin Noth, German Hebraist
• June 1 – Helen Keller, deaf-blind American author, activist and lecturer
• June 2 – A. A. Thomson, English cricket and travel writer
• August 21 - Germaine Guèvremont, Canadian writer
• September 29 – Sixto Pondal Ríos, Argentine screenwriter, poet and dramatist
• October 30 – Conrad Richter, American novelist
• November 17 – Mervyn Peake, English novelist
• November 25 – Upton Sinclair, American novelist and politician
• December 5 – Anna Kavan, British novelist, short story writer and painter
• December 10 – Tian Han, Chinese dramatist
• December 20 – John Steinbeck, American novelist
• December 24 – D. Gwenallt Jones, Welsh poet

  Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Yasunari Kawabata

  Canada

• See 1968 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

  France

• Prix Goncourt: Bernard Clavel, Les Fruits de l'hiver
• Prix Médicis: Élie Wiesel, Le Mendiant de Jérusalem

  United Kingdom

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Rosemary Harris, The Moon in the Cloud
• Cholmondeley Award: Harold Massingham, Edwin Morgan
• Eric Gregory Award: James Aitchison, Douglas Dunn, Brian Jones
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Maggie Ross, The Gasteropod
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Gordon Haight, George Eliot
• Newdigate prize: James Fenton
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Robert Graves

  United States

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry, W. H. Auden
• Hugo Award: Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
• Nebula Award: Alexei Panshin, Rite of Passage
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: E. L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Anthony Hecht, The Hard Hours
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Anthony Hecht, Mijn moeder

  Elsewhere

• Miles Franklin Award: Thomas Keneally, Three Cheers for the Paraclete
• Alfaguara Prize: Daniel Sueiro, Corte de corteza
• Premio Nadal: Álvaro Cunqueiro, El hombre que se parecía a Orestes
• Viareggio Prize: Libero Bigiaretti, La controfigura