1974 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1974.

Events

 * February – Novelist Juan Carlos Onetti is one of a group arrested by the Uruguayan dictatorship for selecting as a competition prizewinner and publishing in the newspaper Marcha a short story implicitly critical of the military regime. He subsequently goes into exile in Spain.
 * February 12 – After publication at the end of 1973 of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago (Архипелаг ГУЛАГ), the author is arrested for treason; the following day he is deported from the Soviet Union. In spring and summer the first translations into French and English begin to appear.
 * August 8 – The first of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City is published as a serial in The Pacific Sun (Marin County, California).
 * October 21 – New Guildhall Library opens in the City of London.
 * unknown dates
 * The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman.
 * German writer Uwe Johnson moves to Sheerness on the English Isle of Sheppey.

Fiction

 * Eric Ambler – Doctor Frigo
 * Kingsley Amis – Ending Up
 * René Barjavel – Les Dames à la licorne
 * Augusto Roa Bastos – I, the Supreme (Yo el supremo)
 * Peter Benchley – Jaws
 * Hal Bennett – Wait Until the Evening
 * Heinrich Böll – The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum oder: Wie Gewalt entstehen und wohin sie führen kann)
 * Anthony Burgess – The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End
 * Andrés Caicedo – "Maternidad"
 * Agatha Christie – Poirot's Early Cases
 * Roald Dahl – Switch Bitch
 * Philip K. Dick – Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
 * Annie Dillard – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
 * Lawrence Durrell – Monsieur
 * Frederick Forsyth – The Dogs of War
 * John Fowles – The Ebony Tower
 * Donald Goines – Crime Partners
 * Imil Habibi – The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist (الوقائع الغريبة في اختفاء سعيد أبي النحس المتشائل, Al-Waqāʾiʿ al-gharībah fī 'khtifāʾ Saʿīd Abī 'l-Naḥsh al-Mutashāʾil)
 * John Hawkes – Death Sleep
 * Joseph Heller – Something Happened
 * James Herbert – The Rats
 * Hammond Innes – North Star
 * Anna Kavan – Let Me Alone
 * Stephen King – Carrie
 * Manuel Mujica Láinez
 * El laberinto
 * El viaje de los siete demonios
 * Derek Lambert
 * Blackstone and the Scourge of Europe
 * The Yermakov Transfer
 * Margaret Laurence – The Diviners
 * John le Carré – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
 * Ursula K. Le Guin – The Dispossessed
 * Madeleine L'Engle – A Wind in the Door
 * H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth – The Watchers Out of Time and Others
 * Robert Ludlum – The Cry of the Halidon
 * Brian Lumley – Beneath the Moors
 * Ngaio Marsh – Black as He's Painted
 * Colleen McCullough – Tim
 * Nicholas Meyer – The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
 * James A. Michener – Centennial
 * Elsa Morante – La Storia (History. A Novel, 1978)
 * Gerald Murnane – Tamarisk Row
 * Meja Mwangi – Carcase for Hounds
 * Vladimir Nabokov – Look at the Harlequins!
 * Edith Pargeter – Sunrise in the West (first in the Brothers of Gwynedd quartet)
 * Robert B. Parker – God Save the Child
 * Ellen Raskin – Figgs & Phantoms
 * Ishmael Reed – The Last Days of Louisiana Red
 * Brigitte Reimann (died 1973) – Franziska Linkerhand
 * Harold Robbins – The Pirate
 * Fran Ross – Oreo
 * Leonardo Sciascia – Todo modo
 * Tom Sharpe – Porterhouse Blue
 * Sidney Sheldon – The Other Side of Midnight
 * C. P. Snow – In Their Wisdom

Children and young people

 * Richard Adams – Shardik
 * Stan and Jan Berenstain – The Berenstain Bears' New Baby
 * Robert Cormier – The Chocolate War
 * Paula Danziger – The Cat Ate My Gymsuit
 * Fynn (Sydney Hopkins) – Mister God, This Is Anna
 * Virginia Hamilton – M. C. Higgins, the Great
 * Diana Wynne Jones – The Ogre Downstairs
 * Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Sorcerers and Spells
 * Jill Murphy – The Worst Witch
 * Bill Peet – Merle the High Flying Squirrel
 * Miriam Roth – A Tale of Five Balloons (מעשה בחמישה בלונים)
 * Richard Scarry – The Best Rainy Day Book Ever
 * Jill Paton Walsh – The Emperor's Winding Sheet
 * Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman – Collected Ghost Stories

Drama

 * Nezihe Araz – Bozkır Güzellemesi (An Ode to the Steppe)
 * Michael Cook – Jacob's Wake
 * Dario Fo – Can't Pay? Won't Pay! (Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga!)
 * Paavo Haavikko
 * Ratsumies (The Horseman)
 * Kuningas lähtee Ranskaan (The King Goes Forth to France)
 * Harald Pitkäikäinen
 * Ira Levin – Veronica's Room
 * Mustapha Matura – Play Mas
 * Harold Pinter – No Man's Land
 * David Rudkin – Penda's Fen (television play)
 * Tom Stoppard – Travesties

Poetry

 * Duncan Bush, Tony Curtis, Nigel Jenkins – Three Young Anglo-Welsh Poets

Non-fiction

 * Maya Angelou – Gather Together in My Name
 * Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward – All the President's Men
 * Augusto Boal – Teatro del oprimido y otras poéticas políticas (translated as Theatre of the Oppressed 1979)
 * Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry – Helter Skelter
 * Robert A. Caro – The Power Broker
 * David Clark – Social Therapy in Psychiatry
 * Shelby Foote – The Civil War: A Narrative – Vol 3: Red River to Appomattox
 * The Freud/Jung Letters
 * Dumas Malone – Jefferson the President: Second Term, 1805-1809
 * Robert M. Pirsig – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
 * Erin Pizzey – Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear
 * Jonathan Raban – Soft City
 * Piers Paul Read – Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors
 * Barbu Solacolu – Evocări. Confesiuni. Portrete (Memoirs. Confessions. Portraits)
 * Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia (Հայկական Սովետական Հանրագիտարան, Haykakan sovetakan hanragitaran; begins publication)
 * Lewis Thomas – The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
 * Studs Terkel – Working
 * Joseph Wambaugh – The Onion Field

Births

 * January 6 – Romain Sardou, French novelist
 * January 26 – Shannon Hale, American fantasy author
 * February 15 – Miranda July (née Grossinger), American filmmaker, performance artist and fiction writer
 * April 13 – K. Sello Duiker, South African novelist (died 2005)
 * June 12 – Chika Unigwe, Nigerian novelist writing in English and Dutch
 * August 7 – Faisal Tehrani, Malaysian novelist
 * August 9 – Ryūsui Seiryōin (清涼院 流水), Japanese novelist
 * August 18 – Nicole Krauss, American novelist
 * August 23 – Serhiy Zhadan, Ukrainian poet, novelist and essayist
 * September 20 – Owen Sheers, Fijian-born Welsh poet, playwright and novelist
 * November 4 – Carlos Be, Spanish playwright
 * December 26 – Joshua John Miller, American novelist and screenwriter
 * unknown dates
 * Naomi Alderman, English novelist
 * Sarah Hall, English novelist
 * Joanna Kavenna, English novelist and travel writer
 * Joe Meno, American novelist and journalist
 * Roger Williams, Welsh dramatist and screenwriter

Deaths

 * January 20 – Edmund Blunden, English poet and critic (born 1896)
 * January 25 – James Pope-Hennessy, English biographer (murdered, born 1916)
 * January 29
 * H. E. Bates, English novelist (born 1905)
 * Sheila Stuart, Scottish author and children's writer (born 1892)
 * February 2 – Marieluise Fleißer, German dramatist (born 1901)
 * February 24 – Martin Armstrong, English poet and short story writer (born 1882)
 * March 3 – Carl Jacob Burckhardt, Swiss historian (born 1891)
 * March 8 – Buddhadeb Bosu, Bengali poet and writer (born 1908)
 * March 19 – Austin Clarke, Irish poet, playwright and novelist (born 1896)
 * March 24 – Olive Higgins Prouty, American novelist (born 1882)
 * April 14 – Howard Pease, American novelist (born 1894)
 * May 9 – L. T. C. Rolt, English biographer and writer of ghost stories (born 1910)
 * May 13 – Arthur J. Burks, American writer (born 1898)
 * June 2 – Tom Kristensen, Danish novelist and poet (born 1893)
 * June 11 – Julius Evola, Italian esotericist, journalist and philosopher (born 1898)
 * June 9 – Miguel Ángel Asturias, Guatemalan Nobel Prize-winning novelist (born 1899)
 * July 3 – Samuel Roth, American publisher (born 1893)
 * July 4 – Georgette Heyer, English novelist (born 1902)
 * July 16 – Oduvaldo Vianna Filho, Brazilian playwright (born 1936)
 * July 29 - Erich Kästner, German children's author (born 1899)
 * August 7 – Rosario Castellanos, Mexican writer and diplomat (electric shock, born 1925)
 * August 11 – Jan Tschichold, German-born typographer and writer (born 1902)
 * August 17 – Emma L. Brock, American children's author and illustrator (born 1886)
 * September 11 – Lois Lenski, American author and illustrator (born 1893)
 * September 21 – Jacqueline Susann, American novelist (born 1918)
 * October 4 – Anne Sexton, American poet (born 1928)
 * October 28 – David Jones, Anglo-Welsh poet and artist (born 1895)
 * October 29 – Victor E. van Vriesland, Dutch writer (born 1892)
 * November 5 – William Gardner Smith, expatriate American novelist and journalist (born 1927)
 * November 7 – Eric Linklater, Welsh-born Scottish novelist and travel writer (born 1899)
 * November 26 – Cyril Connolly, English critic and writer (born 1903)
 * December 14 – Walter Lippmann, American writer (born 1889)

Awards

 * Nobel Prize for Literature: Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson

Canada

 * See 1974 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

 * Prix Goncourt: Pascal Lainé, La Dentellière
 * Prix Médicis French: Porporino ou les Mystèrs de Naples
 * Prix Médicis International: Julio Cortázar, Libro de Manuel

United Kingdom

 * Booker Prize: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist and Stanley Middleton, Holiday.
 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Mollie Hunter, The Stronghold
 * Cholmondeley Award: D.J. Enright, Vernon Scannell, Alasdair Maclean
 * Eric Gregory Award: Duncan Forbes, Roger Garfitt, Robin Hamilton, Frank Ormsby, Penelope Shuttle
 * Newdigate prize: Alan Hollinghurst
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, or the Prince of Darkness
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: John Wain, Samuel Johnson
 * Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Ted Hughes

United States

 * Frost Medal: John Hall Wheelock
 * Hugo Award: Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama
 * Nebula Award: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Paula Fox, The Slave Dancer
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
 * Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: no award given
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Lowell, The Dolphin

Elsewhere

 * Miles Franklin Award: Ronald McKie, The Mango Tree
 * Premio Nadal: Luis Gasulla, Culminación de Montoya
 * Viareggio Prize: Clotilde Marghieri, Amati enigmi