1952 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1952.

Events

 * February – The historical periodical Past & Present is launched in Oxford, U.K.
 * February 29 – Derek J. de Solla Price reveals his discovery of a lost medieval scientific work entitled Equatorie of the Planetis, initially attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer, in the Times Literary Supplement.
 * March 3 – J. L. Carr takes over as Headmaster of Highfields Primary School, Kettering, which will later feature in his novel The Harpole Report.
 * May – The works of André Gide are placed on the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books by Pope Pius XII.
 * July 10 – The first issue of Mad appears, edited by Harvey Kurtzman and published by William M. Gaines' EC Comics.
 * August 12 – The Night of the Murdered Poets brings the execution of 13 Soviet Jews in Lubyanka Prison, Moscow, including several writers.
 * September 6 – The Universal Copyright Convention is adopted at Geneva.
 * October 17 – Samuel Beckett's play Waiting For Godot is published in Paris as En attendant Godot by Les Éditions de Minuit.
 * October 28 – E. E. Cummings delivers the first of his Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard University.
 * November 25 – Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap opens at the New Ambassadors Theatre, London. It will still be running as of 2021, next door at St Martin's Theatre from 1974.
 * unknown dates
 * The publisher Diogenes Verlag is founded in Zürich, Switzerland, by Daniel Keel.
 * The National Library of Burma is established in Rangoon.

Fiction

 * Margery Allingham – The Tiger in the Smoke
 * Anthony Armstrong – He Was Found in the Road
 * Thomas Armstrong – Adam Brunskill
 * Isaac Asimov
 * The Currents of Space
 * Foundation and Empire
 * H. E. Bates – Love for Lydia
 * Margot Bennett – The Widow of Bath
 * John Bingham – My Name Is Michael Sibley
 * Christianna Brand – London Particular
 * Pearl S. Buck – The Hidden Flower
 * John Bude
 * Death on the Riviera
 * When the Case Was Opened
 * Ivan Bunin – The Life of Arseniev
 * Italo Calvino
 * The Argentine Ant (La Formica Argentina)
 * The Cloven Viscount (l visconte dimezzato, first of the Our Ancestors trilogy)
 * Victor Canning – The House of the Seven Flies
 * John Dickson Carr
 * The Nine Wrong Answers
 * Behind the Crimson Blind (as Carter Dickson)
 * Henry Cecil – No Bail for the Judge
 * Louis-Ferdinand Céline – Fable for Another Time
 * Agatha Christie
 * Mrs McGinty's Dead
 * They Do It with Mirrors
 * A Daughter's a Daughter (as Mary Westmacott)
 * Brian Cleeve – The Far Hills
 * Branko Ćopić – Prolom (The Break-out)
 * Thomas B. Costain – The Silver Chalice
 * A. J. Cronin – Adventures in Two Worlds
 * August Derleth
 * Three Problems for Solar Pons
 * Night's Yawning Peal: A Ghostly Company (as editor)
 * David F. Dodge – To Catch a Thief
 * Jean Dutourd – The Best Butter
 * Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man
 * Edna Ferber – Giant
 * C. S. Forester – Lieutenant Hornblower
 * Paul Gallico – The Small Miracle
 * Anthony Gilbert – Miss Pinnegar Disappears
 * Michael Gilbert – Death in Captivity
 * Jean Giono – The Malediction
 * Richard Gordon – Doctor in the House
 * Winston Graham – Fortune Is a Woman
 * Walter Greenwood – So Brief the Spring
 * Edward Grierson – Reputation for a Song
 * Vasily Grossman – Stalingrad («Сталингра́д»)
 * Han Suyin – A Many-Splendoured Thing
 * Robert A. Heinlein – The Rolling Stones
 * Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea
 * Willem Frederik Hermans – Het behouden huis (The House of Refuge or An Untouched House, novella)
 * Patricia Highsmith – The Price of Salt (as Claire Morgan)
 * Dorothy B. Hughes – The Davidian Report
 * Hammond Innes – Campbell's Kingdom
 * Michael Innes – A Private View
 * Ernst Jünger – Visit to Godenholm
 * Frances Parkinson Keyes – Steamboat Gothic
 * David H. Keller – Tales from Underwood
 * Arthur Koestler – Arrow in the Blue
 * Halldór Laxness – Gerpla
 * Doris Lessing – Martha Quest
 * E. C. R. Lorac
 * Crossed Skis
 * The Dog It Was That Died
 * Murder in the Mill-Race
 * Ross Macdonald – The Ivory Grin
 * Compton Mackenzie – The Rival Monster
 * Bernard Malamud – The Natural
 * Wolf Mankowitz – Make Me an Offer
 * Ana Maria Matute – Fiesta al noroeste
 * Gladys Mitchell – The Echoing Strangers
 * Harry Mulisch – Archibald Strohalm
 * C. L. Moore – Judgment Night (science fiction short stories)
 * R. K. Narayan – The Financial Expert
 * Patrick O'Brian – Testimonies
 * Flannery O'Connor – Wise Blood
 * Vin Packer – Spring Fire
 * Anthony Powell – A Buyer's Market
 * Maurice Procter – Rich Is the Treasure
 * John Pudney – The Net
 * Barbara Pym – Excellent Women
 * Ellery Queen – The King is Dead
 * Lucien Rebatet – Les Deux étendards
 * John Rhode – Death in Wellington Road
 * Anne Scott-James – In the Mink
 * Charles Shaw – Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison
 * John Steinbeck – East of Eden
 * Rex Stout
 * Triple Jeopardy
 * Prisoner's Base
 * Noel Streatfeild – Aunt Clara
 * A. C. Swinburne (died 1909) – Lesbia Brandon (completed c.1868)
 * Edith Templeton – The Island of Desire
 * Jim Thompson – The Killer Inside Me
 * Agnes Sligh Turnbull – The Gown of Glory
 * Amos Tutuola – The Palm-Wine Drunkard
 * Sachchidananda Vatsyayan (Agyeya) – Nadi ke dweep (Islands in the stream)
 * Vercors – Les Animaux dénaturés
 * Arved Viirlaid – Ristideta hauad (Graves Without Crosses)
 * Kurt Vonnegut – Player Piano
 * Henry Wade – Be Kind to the Killer
 * Evelyn Waugh – Men at Arms
 * Hillary Waugh – Last Seen Wearing...
 * Vaughan Wilkins – A King Reluctant
 * Antonia White – The Sugar House
 * Angus Wilson – Hemlock and After
 * Frank Yerby – The Saracen Blade

Children and young people

 * Rev. W. Awdry – Toby the Tram Engine (seventh in The Railway Series of 42 books by him and his son Christopher Awdry)
 * Enid Blyton – Noddy and Big Ears
 * Bruce Carter – The Perilous Descent (Into a Strange Lost World)
 * Alice Dalgliesh – The Bears on Hemlock Mountain
 * Dorothy Edwards – My Naughty Little Sister. Stories from "Listen With Mother"
 * Rumer Godden – Mouse House
 * C. S. Lewis – The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
 * Eloise Jarvis McGraw – Moccasin Trail
 * Farley Mowat – People of the Deer
 * Mary Norton – The Borrowers (first in the eponymous series of 6 books)
 * Rhoda Power – Redcap Runs Away
 * William Matthew Scott – The Cherrys of River House (first in The Cherrys series of 14 books)
 * Louis Slobodkin – The Space Ship Under the Apple Tree
 * Geoffrey Trease – The Crown of Violet (also Web of Traitors)
 * E. B. White – Charlotte's Web

Drama

 * Rodney Ackland – The Pink Room
 * Jean Anouilh
 * The Lark (L'Alouette)
 * The Waltz of the Toreadors (La Valse des toréadors)
 * Jacinto Benavente – Ha llegado Don Juan
 * Alice Childress – Gold Through the Trees
 * Noël Coward – Quadrille
 * Constance Cox – Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
 * Robertson Davies – A Masque of Aesop
 * Henry de Montherlant – La Ville dont le prince est un enfant (The City Whose Prince is a Child; first performance in first published version)
 * Friedrich Dürrenmatt – The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi (Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi, first performance)
 * Joseph Kramm – The Shrike
 * Charles Langbridge Morgan – The River Line
 * Eric Linklater – The Mortimer Touch
 * Roger MacDougall – Escapade
 * J. B. Priestley and Jacquetta Hawkes – Dragon's Mouth
 * Terence Rattigan – The Deep Blue Sea
 * Dodie Smith – Letter from Paris
 * Ben Travers – Wild Horses
 * John Van Druten – I've Got Sixpence
 * Arthur Watkyn – The Moonraker

Poetry

 * Paul Celan – Poppy and Memory (Mohn und Gedächtnis)
 * David Jones – The Anathemata: fragments of an attempted writing
 * Gabriela Mistral – Los sonetos de la muerte y otros poemas elegíacos
 * Sean O Riordain – Eireaball Spideoige

Non-fiction

 * Roland Bainton – The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century
 * L. Sprague de Camp and Willy Ley – Lands Beyond
 * Dorothy Day – The Long Loneliness
 * Lawrence Gowing – Vermeer
 * Heinrich Harrer – Sieben Jahre in Tibet. Mein Leben am Hofe des Dalai Lama (Seven Years in Tibet, 1954)
 * Aldous Huxley
 * The Devils of Loudun
 * Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
 * Maurice Nicoll – Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky
 * Norman Vincent Peale – The Power of Positive Thinking
 * Gwen Raverat – Period Piece
 * P. R. Reid – The Colditz Story
 * Jean-Paul Sartre – Saint Genet, comédien et martyr
 * Pierre Schaeffer – In Search of a Concrete Music (À la Recherche d'une Musique Concrète)
 * F. Sherwood Taylor – The Alchemists
 * Paul Tillich – Courage To Be
 * Immanuel Velikovsky – Ages in Chaos
 * J. M. Wallace-Hadrill – The Barbarian West, 400–1000
 * Raymond Williams – Drama from Ibsen to Eliot

Births

 * January 4 – Michele Wallace, American feminist author
 * January 12 – Walter Mosley, American novelist
 * January 21 – Louis Menand, American author and academic
 * February 10 – Gail Rebuck, English publisher
 * February 19
 * Ryū Murakami (村上 龍), Japanese novelist, essayist and filmmaker
 * Amy Tan, American novelist
 * February 29 – Tim Powers, American fantasy author
 * March 5 – Robin Hobb (Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, Megan Lindholm), American fantasy author
 * March 7 – William Boyd, Gold Coast-born Scottish novelist and screenwriter
 * March 11 – Douglas Adams, English science fiction author (died 2001)
 * March 13 – Ágnes Rapai, Hungarian poet, writer and translator
 * March 23 – Kim Stanley Robinson, American science fiction author
 * March 26 – T. A. Barron, American novelist
 * May 5 – Hafsat Abdulwaheed, Nigerian author and poet
 * May 31 – Carole Achache, French writer, photographer and actress (died 2016)
 * June 4 – Dambudzo Marechera, Zimbabwean writer (died 1987)
 * June 7 – Orhan Pamuk, Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate
 * June 20
 * Vince Gotera, American poet and critic
 * Vikram Seth, Indian novelist
 * June 29 – Breece D'J Pancake (Breece Dexter Pancake), American short story writer (suicide 1979)
 * July 3 – Rohinton Mistry, Indian-born Canadian novelist
 * July 6 – Hilary Mantel, English novelist (died 2022)
 * July 10 – Candice F. Ransom, American children's and young-adult author
 * July 18 – Per Petterson, Norwegian novelist
 * August 28 – Rita Dove, American poet
 * September 29 - Pete Hautman, American young-adult novelist
 * October 18 – Bảo Ninh, Vietnamese author
 * November 15 – Rick Atkinson, American journalist, historian and author
 * November 21 – Pedro Lemebel, Chilean novelist
 * December 19 – Sean O'Brien, English poet
 * December 22 – Mick Inkpen, English children's writer and illustrator
 * December 28 – Hemant Shesh, Indian Hindi writer

Deaths

 * January 22 – Roger Vitrac, French poet and dramatist (born 1899)
 * January 26 – Lodewijk van Deyssel, Dutch novelist (born 1864)
 * January 28 – Nicolae Constantin Batzaria, Ottoman-born Romanian humorist, novelist, editor, and journalist (spinal cancer, born 1874)
 * February 7 – Norman Douglas, Austrian-born Scottish novelist (born 1868)
 * February 13 – Josephine Tey (Elizabeth MacKintosh), Scottish crime novelist (born 1896)
 * February 19 – Knut Hamsun, Norwegian novelist and Nobel laureate (born 1859)
 * March 1
 * Mariano Azuela, Mexican novelist, dramatist and critic (born 1873)
 * Masao Kume (久米 正雄), Japanese playwright, novelist and haiku poet (born 1891)
 * March 27 – Ioan A. Bassarabescu, Romanian short story writer and politician (born 1870)
 * April 1 – Ferenc Molnár (Ferenc Neumann), Hungarian dramatist and novelist (born 1878)
 * April 30 – Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaș – Romanian art historian, ethnographer and journalist (born 1872)
 * May 17 – Paul Bujor, Romanian politician, zoologist and short story writer (born 1862)
 * May 26 – Eugene Jolas, American/French writer, literary translator and critic (born 1894)
 * June 1 – John Dewey, American philosopher and psychologist (born 1859)
 * July 1 – A. S. W. Rosenbach, American book collector (born 1876)
 * July 8 – August Alle, Estonian writer (born 1890)
 * August 9 – Jeffery Farnol, English historical novelist (born 1878)
 * August 22 – H. J. Massingham, English countryside writer (born 1888)
 * September 26 – George Santayana, Spanish philosopher, poet and novelist writing in English (born 1863)
 * October 4 – Keith Murdoch, Australian journalist (born 1885)
 * October 6 – Teffi (Nadezhda Alexandrovna Buchinskaya), Russian humorist (born 1872)
 * November 3 – Louis Verneuil, French playwright (suicide, born 1893)
 * November 4 – Gilbert Frankau, English novelist (born 1884)
 * November 13 – Margaret Wise Brown, American children's author (embolism, born 1910)
 * November 16 – Charles Maurras, French poet and critic (born 1868)
 * November 18 – Paul Éluard, French surrealist poet (heart attack, born 1895)
 * November 23 – Aaro Hellaakoski, Finnish poet (born 1893)
 * December 6 – Cicely Hamilton, English dramatist and suffragist (born 1872)

Awards

 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Mary Norton, The Borrowers
 * Frost Medal: Carl Sandburg
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: G. M. Young, Stanley Baldwin
 * National Book Award: James Jones, From Here to Eternity.
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Eleanor Estes, Ginger Pye
 * Newdigate prize: Donald Hall
 * Nobel Prize for Literature: François Mauriac
 * Premio Nadal: María Medio Estrada, Nosotros, los Rivero
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Joseph Kramm, The Shrike
 * Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Herman Wouk – The Caine Mutiny
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Marianne Moore, Collected Poems
 * King's Gold Medal for Poetry: Andrew Young
 * National Book Award for Fiction: James Jones – From Here to Eternity