1940 in literature

Events

New Books

• Counter-Clockwise[?] - John M. Lee[?]
• Daniel Boone - James Daugherty[?]
• Darkness at Noon[?] - Arthur Koestler
• The Don Flows Home to the Sea[?] - Mikhail Sholokov[?]
• The Earth is the Lord's[?] - Taylor Caldwell
• Farewell, My Lovely[?] - Raymond Chandler
• The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers[?]
• Horton Hatches the Egg[?] - Dr. Seuss
• King's Row[?] - Henry Bellamann[?]
• Last Train Out[?] - E. Phillipe Oppenheim[?]
• The Man Who Loved Children[?] - Christina Stead
• A Mathematician's Apology[?] - G. H. Hardy
• Native Son - Richard Wright
• The Ox-bow Incident[?] - Walter Clark[?]
• Pal Joey[?] - John O'Hara
• Pat the Bunny[?] - Dorothy Kunhardt[?]
• Sapphira And The Slave[?] - Willa Cather
• Trouble in July[?] - Erskine Caldwell[?]
• When the Whippoorwill[?] - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings[?]

Births

• February 4 - George Romero[?], horror movie writer, producer, director
• February 29 - Edward Frederick Benson, American writer
• March 16 - Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian writer and film director

Deaths

• March 10 - Mikhaïl Boulgakov[?], Russian writer
• March 16 - Selma Lagerlöf, writer
• December 21 - F Scott Fitzgerald

Awards

• Newberry Medal for children's literature: James Daugherty[?], Daniel Boone
• Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Mark Van Doren[?]: Collected Poems
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath