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George Orwell resigns from the BBC to become literary editor of Tribune.

Isaac Bashevis Singer becomes a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Jack Kerouac joins the US Navy.

C. S. Lewis makes a series of radio broadcasts that will be adapted as Mere Christianity.

Tristan Bernard is released from the Drancy deportation camp.

CIA and FBI place Richard Wright under surveillance.

Philip Larkin graduates from Oxford and obtains his first post as a librarian.

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Adam of the Road - Elizabeth Janet Gray

The Apostle - Sholem Asch

Citizen Tom Paine - Howard Fast

Claudius the God - Robert Graves

Crux Ansata - H. G. Wells

Earth's Last Citadel - C. L. Moore

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

Gremlins - Roald Dahl

A Haunted House and other stories - Virginia Woolf (published anonymously)

Le Képi - Colette

The Lady in the Lake - Raymond Chandler

The Last of Summer - Kate O'Brien

The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Nature and Destiny of Man - Reinhold Niebuhr

Mr. Mirakel - E. Phillips Oppenheim

The Ship - C.S. Forester

The Raven - Chancellor Williams

Rhadopis of Nubia - Naguib Mahfouz

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith

Towards Zero - Agatha Christie

Victoria Grandolet - Henry Bellamann

The White Face - Carl Offord

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Thornton Wilder - The Skin of Our Teeth

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A Choice of Kipling's Verse edited by T. S. Eliot

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C. S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man

Jean-Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness

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January 4 - Doris Kearns Goodwin, writer

January 11 - Jim Hightower, radio host, author

February 15 - Elke Heidenreich, journalist and writer

February 18 - Graeme Garden, writer, comedian, actor

February 22 - Terry Eagleton, critic

March 26 - Bob Woodward, journalist

April 30 - Paul Jennings, children's author

May 5 - Michael Palin, comedy writer and television personality

May 7 - Peter Carey, Booker Prize-winning novelist

May 8 - Pat Barker, Booker Prize-winning novelist

June 15 - Xaviera Hollander, Happy Hooker author

November 5 - Sam Shepard, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, writer, actor

November 12 - Wallace Shawn, actor and dramatist

December 9 - Joanna Trollope, novelist

date unknown - L. E. Modesitt, Jr., fantasy and science fiction writer

date unknown - Gwynne Dyer, journalist

date unknown - Max Clifford, publicist

date unknown - Simon Jenkins, journalist

date unknown - Charles Murray, Bell Curve author

date unknown - Sheila Rowbotham, feminist author

date unknown - Christopher Priest, science fiction author

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January 9 - R. G. Collingwood, philosopher and historian

March 10 - Lawrence Binyon, poet and scholar

April 30 - Beatrice Webb

May - Arthur Mee, editor of the Children's Encyclopaedia

August 24 - Simone Weil, philosopher

October 7 - Radclyffe Hall, controversial author

December 22 - Beatrix Potter, Children's author

date unknown - Guido Mazzoni, poet

date unknown - F. M. Cornford, poet

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Frost Medal: Edna St. Vincent Millay

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Janet Elizabeth Gray, Adam of the Road

Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Frost: A Witness Tree

Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Upton Sinclair - Dragon's Teeth