1979 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1979.

Events

 * May – The Merchant Ivory Productions film The Europeans is released. Its screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala draws on the 1878 Henry James novel of the same name.
 * October 25 – The London Review of Books is first issued, its founding editors being Karl Miller, Mary-Kay Wilmers and Susannah Clapp. For its first six months it appears as an insert to The New York Review of Books.
 * November – Dambudzo Marechera's The House of Hunger wins the Guardian Fiction Prize.
 * unknown dates
 * K. W. Jeter's novel Morlock Night pioneers full-length fiction in the genre he later calls steampunk.
 * August Wilson's Jitney is first produced; it becomes the eighth in his "Pittsburgh Cycle".

Fiction

 * Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
 * V. C. Andrews – Flowers in the Attic
 * Jeffrey Archer – Kane and Abel
 * Barbara Taylor Bradford – A Woman of Substance
 * Octavia Butler – Kindred
 * Italo Calvino — If on a winter's night a traveler
 * Orson Scott Card – A Planet Called Treason
 * Angela Carter – The Bloody Chamber
 * Eileen Chang – Lust, Caution
 * Agatha Christie – Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories
 * L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter – Conan the Liberator
 * Michael Ende – The Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte)
 * José Pablo Feinmann – Últimos días de la víctima
 * Thomas Flanagan — Year of the French
 * Alan Dean Foster – Alien (movie novelization)
 * Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini — A che punto è la notte
 * Brian Garfield – The Paladin
 * William Golding – Darkness Visible
 * William Goldman – Tinsel
 * Nadine Gordimer – Burger's Daughter
 * Arthur Hailey – Overload
 * Stratis Haviaras – When the Tree Sings
 * Douglas Hill – Galactic Warlord
 * Stephen King – The Dead Zone
 * Russell Kirk – The Princess of All Lands
 * Milan Kundera – The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (first published in French as Le Livre du rire et de l'oubli)
 * John le Carré – Smiley's People
 * Morgan Llywelyn – Lion of Ireland: The Legend of Brian Boru
 * Robert Ludlum – The Matarese Circle
 * Norman Mailer – The Executioner's Song
 * Cormac McCarthy – Suttree
 * Roger McDonald – 1915: a novel
 * Haruki Murakami – Hear the Wind Sing (風の歌を聴け, Kaze no uta o kike)
 * Ellis Peters – One Corpse Too Many
 * Jerry Pournelle – Janissaries
 * Satyajit Ray – Hatyapuri
 * Harold Robbins – Memories of Another Day
 * Philip Roth – The Ghost Writer
 * Scott Spencer – Endless Love
 * Mary Stewart – The Last Enchantment
 * Peter Straub – Ghost Story
 * William Styron – Sophie's Choice
 * Trevanian – Shibumi
 * Kaari Utrio – Rautalilja
 * Jack Vance – The Face
 * Kurt Vonnegut – Jailbird
 * Elizabeth Walter – In the Mist and Other Uncanny Encounters
 * William Wharton – Birdy
 * Kit Williams – Masquerade
 * Raymond Williams – The Fight for Manod
 * Robert Anton Wilson – Schrodinger's Cat
 * Tom Wolfe – The Right Stuff
 * Roger Zelazny – Roadmarks

Children and young people

 * Chris Van Allsburg – The Garden of Abdul Gasazi
 * Katharine Mary Briggs (with Anne Yvonne Gilbert) – Abbey Lubbers, Banshees, & Boggarts: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies
 * Raymond Briggs – Fungus the Bogeyman
 * Roald Dahl – The Twits
 * Colin Dann – The Animals of Farthing Wood
 * Peter Dickinson (with Wayne Anderson) – The Flight of Dragons
 * Elizabeth Laird – Rosy's Garden
 * Robie Macauley – A Secret History of Time to Come
 * Robert Munsch – Mud Puddle
 * Bill Peet – Cowardly Clyde
 * Daniel Pinkwater – Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario
 * Ellen Raskin – The Westing Game
 * Jane Severance (with Tea Schook) – When Megan Went Away
 * Barbara Sleigh – Carbonel and Calidor
 * Angela Sommer-Bodenburg – Der kleine Vampir
 * Rosemary Wells – Max & Ruby

Drama

 * Bahram Beyzai – Death of Yazdgerd (مرگ یزدگرد)
 * Caryl Churchill – Cloud Nine
 * David Fennario – Balconville
 * Richard Harris – Outside Edge
 * Elfriede Jelinek – Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte; oder Stützen der Gesellschaften (What Occurred after Nora Left her Husband, or Supports of Society)
 * Heiner Müller – Hamletmachine (first performance)
 * Mark Medoff – Children of a Lesser God
 * Neil Oram – The Warp
 * Peter Shaffer – Amadeus
 * Sam Shepard – Buried Child
 * Martin Sherman – Bent
 * Tom Stoppard – Undiscovered Country

Poetry

 * Kingsley Amis – Collected Poems

Non-fiction

 * Alison Adburgham – Shopping in Style: London from the Restoration to Edwardian Elegance
 * David Attenborough – Life on Earth
 * Harold Walter Bailey – Dictionary of Khotan Saka
 * Ion Biberi – Lumea de azi (World of Today)
 * Jerome Bruner – On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand
 * L. Sprague de Camp (editor) – The Blade of Conan
 * Elizabeth Eisenstein – The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
 * Peter Evans – The Music of Benjamin Britten
 * John Fowles – The Tree
 * Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar – The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
 * Eloise Greenfield, Lessie Jones Little, Pattie Ridley Jones – Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir
 * Douglas Hofstadter – Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
 * Henry Kissinger – The White House Years
 * Leon Litwack – Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery
 * Jean-François Lyotard – The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (La Condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir)
 * Jessica Mitford – Poison Penmanship: the Gentle Art of Muckraking
 * Stephen Pile – The Book of Heroic Failures
 * Clark Ashton Smith – The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith
 * Margaret Trudeau – Beyond Reason
 * Tom Wolfe – The Right Stuff

Births

 * February 4 – Ben Lerner, American poet, novelist and critic
 * February 10 – Johan Harstad, Norwegian novelist
 * February 27 - Alexander Gordon Smith, British children's and young-adult author
 * March 28 – Benjamin Percy, American short story writer
 * April 14 – Patrick Somerville, American novelist and short story writer
 * May 21 - James Clancy Phelan, American young-adult and thriller writer
 * June 28 – Florian Zeller, French novelist and dramatist
 * July 14 – Yukiko Motoya, Japanese fiction writer, playwright, theatre director and voice actress
 * unknown dates
 * D.D. Johnston, Scottish political novelist and university lecturer
 * Emily St. John Mandel, Canadian-born novelist

Deaths

 * January – Dilys Cadwaladr, Welsh-language poet (born 1902)
 * January 27 – Victoria Ocampo, Argentine publisher, writer and critic (born 1890)
 * February 9 – Allen Tate, American poet and essayist (born 1899)
 * February 25 – John L. Wasserman, American entertainment critic (car accident, born 1938)
 * February 27 – Sir George Clark, English historian (born 1890)
 * March 26 – Jean Stafford, American short story writer and novelist (heart failure; born 1915)
 * April 8 – Breece D'J Pancake, American short story writer (suicide, born 1952)
 * May 10 – J. B. Morton (Beachcomber), English humorous newspaper columnist (born 1893)
 * May 14 – Jean Rhys, Dominica-born English novelist (born 1890)
 * June 1 – Eric Partridge, New Zealand/British lexicographer (born 1894)
 * June 3 – Arno Schmidt, German novelist (born 1914)
 * June 7 – Forrest Carter, American genre novelist (heart failure, born 1925)
 * July 6 – Malcolm Hulke, English television writer (born 1924)
 * July 7 – Ahmad Qandil, Saudi Arabian poet (born 1911)
 * July 15 – Juana de Ibarbourou, Uruguayan poet (born 1892)
 * July 21 – Eugène Vinaver, Russian-born English literary scholar (born 1899)
 * July 23 – Joseph Kessel, French journalist and novelist (born 1898)
 * July 29 – Herbert Marcuse, German Jewish philosopher (born 1898)
 * August 8 – Nicholas Monsarrat, English novelist (born 1910)
 * August 16 – Jerzy Jurandot (Jerzy Glejgewicht), Polish poet and dramatist (born 1911)
 * August 20 – Christian Dotremont, Belgian painter and writer (born 1922)
 * August 22 – James T. Farrell, American novelist (born 1904)
 * September 5 – John Bradburne, English poet and missionary (killed by guerillas; born 1921)
 * September 6 – Guy Bolton, British playwright (born 1884)
 * September 25 – Zhou Libo (周立波), Chinese novelist and translator (born 1908)
 * October 6 – Elizabeth Bishop, American poet (born 1911)
 * October 17 – S. J. Perelman, American humorist (born 1904)
 * October 18 – Virgilio Piñera, Cuban poet and short-story writer (born 1912)
 * December 12 – Goronwy Rees, Welsh journalist and academic (born 1909)
 * December 19 – Donald Creighton, Canadian historian (born 1902)

Awards

 * Nobel Prize for Literature: Odysseus Elytis

Canada

 * See 1979 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

 * Prix Goncourt: Antonine Maillet, Pélagie-la-Charrette
 * Prix Médicis French: Claude Durand, La Nuit zoologique
 * Prix Médicis International: Alejo Carpentier, La harpe et l'ombre

Spain

 * Miguel de Cervantes Prize: Jorge Luis Borges and Gerardo Diego

United Kingdom

 * Booker Prize: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore
 * Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Peter Dickinson, Tulku
 * Cholmondeley Award:
 * Guardian Fiction Prize: Neil Jordan, Night in Tunisia and Dambudzo Marechera, The House of Hunger
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: William Golding, Darkness Visible
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Brian Finney, Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography

United States

 * American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction :
 * Nebula Award: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
 * Hugo Award: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
 * Locus Award for Best Novel: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature:
 * Bancroft Prize: Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan, 1941–1945
 * Bancroft Prize: Anthony F. C. Wallace, Rockdale: The Growth of An American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Sam Shepard, Buried Child
 * Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography: Leonard Baker, Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews
 * Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Penn Warren, Now and Then: Poems 1976–1978
 * Pulitzer Prize for History: Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics
 * Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction: E. O. Wilson, On Human Nature

Elsewhere

 * Miles Franklin Award: David Ireland, A Woman of the Future
 * Premio Nadal: Carlos Rojas, El ingenioso hidalgo y poeta Federico García Lorca asciende a los infiernos
 * Viareggio Prize: Giorgio Manganelli, Centuria