1939 in literature

• Early – The Pocket Books mass-market paperback imprint is launched in the United States. The first of the nationally distributed titles is James Hilton's Lost Horizon.
• January
  • American literary magazine The Kenyon Review is founded and edited by John Crowe Ransom.[1]
  • The American pulp science fiction magazine Startling Stories appears, edited by Mort Weisinger. It includes The Black Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum as lead novel.
  • Eando Binder's story "I, Robot" appears in the U.S. science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.
  • The Criterion, a British literary quarterly, is founded and edited by T. S. Eliot.[2]
  • W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood set sail from England for the United States.
• January/February – Poetry London: a Bi-Monthly of Modern Verse and Criticism, founded and edited by Tambimuttu (with Dylan Thomas and others), is first published.
• February 6 – Raymond Chandler's California private detective Philip Marlowe is introduced in his first full-length work of crime fiction, The Big Sleep, which reworks elements from earlier short stories. It is published by Alfred A. Knopf in the United States.[3]
• March – Isaac Asimov's first published short story, "Marooned off Vesta", appears in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine.
• March 4 – BBC Television broadcasts one of the first specially written television plays, Condemned To Be Shot by R. E. J. Brooke (perhaps the actor Reginald Brooke), live from its London studios at Alexandra Palace. The production notably uses a camera as the first-person view by the play's unseen central character.
• March 31 – The 20th Century Fox releases a film version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, first of a Sherlock Holmes film series starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson.
• April 13 – The United Artists film version of Wuthering Heights, starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, is released.
• May – Jorge Luis Borges' first short story in his later characteristic style, "Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote", is published in the Buenos Aires literary magazine Sur.
• May 4 – James Joyce's last work, Finnegans Wake, is published in full by Faber and Faber in London.
• May 15 – Russian writer Isaac Babel is arrested by the NKVD at his dacha as part of the Great Purge in the Soviet Union, and incarcerated in the Lubyanka Building in Moscow.
• c. August – Ernest Vincent Wright publishes his lipogrammatic novel Gadsby, "a story of over 50,000 words without using the letter 'E'", in Los Angeles a few months before his death on October 7.
• August
  • Mikhail Bulgakov, while secretly working on The Master and Margarita, prepares the propaganda play Batumi, to romanticize events in Joseph Stalin's youth. The project is shelved by Stalin himself, once Bulgakov announces he will interview witnesses personally.[4]
  • Robert A. Heinlein's first published short story, "Life-Line", appears in Astounding Science-Fiction.
• Before September – After a pledge drive led by Renaud de Jouvenel and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, the Romanian poet Benjamin Fondane is naturalized French and in September conscripted into the French Army, to serve in the Phony War.[5]
• September 2 – Jean-Paul Sartre is conscripted into the French Army, where he will serve as a meteorologist.
• September 3 – Yorkshire-born novelist and playwright J. B. Priestley reads the first installment of his novel Let the People Sing, a celebration of local democracy specially written for radio, on BBC Home Service radio in the UK, the day war is declared.[6]
• September 18 – The Polish painter, playwright and novelist Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (born 1885) commits suicide after the Soviet invasion of Poland.
• September/October – Famous Fantastic Mysteries, a pulp magazine reprinting American science fiction and fantasy, begins publication in New York.
• Fall – Frank Herbert lies about his age to get his first job as a local newspaper reporter.
• November – The teenage Brendan Behan is arrested in Liverpool for possessing explosives.
• November 8 – Lindsay and Crouse's stage adaptation of Clarence Day's Life with Father opens at the Empire Theatre (42nd Street) in New York. Running until 12 July 1947, it becomes the all-time longest-running non-musical play in Broadway theatre.[7]
• November/December – Captain Marvel makes his first appearance, in Whiz Comics #2 (cover date February 1940).

bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!

—From Finnegans Wake

• January 10 – Jared Carter, American poet and author
• January 12 – Jacques Hamelink, Dutch poet, novelist and literary critic, best known for short stories
• January 29 – Germaine Greer, Australian-born feminist author
• February 19 – Erin Pizzey, English novelist and founder of world's first domestic violence shelter[11]
• February 25 – Gerald Murnane, Australian novelist
• March 15 – Alicia Freilich, Venezuelan novelist
• March 25 – Toni Cade Bambara, African-American writer (died 1995)
• April 10 – Penny Vincenzi, née Hannaford, English novelist (died 2018)
• April 12 – Alan Ayckbourn, English dramatist
• April 13 – Seamus Heaney, Irish poet (died 2013)
• April 22 – Jason Miller, American playwright and actor (died 2001)
• May 4 – Amos Oz, né Klausner, Israeli author (died 2018)
• June 5 – Margaret Drabble, English novelist[12]
• June 14 – Penelope Farmer, English children's writer
• June 15 – Brian Jacques, English writer (died 2011)
• July 2 – Ferdinand Mount, English journalist and novelist
• August 1 – Robert James Waller, American novelist (died 2017)
• September 6 – Dan Cragg, American science-fiction author
• September 9 – Ed Victor, American-born literary agent (died 2017)
• October 6 – Melvyn Bragg, English novelist, critic and broadcast presenter
• October 7 – Clive James, Australian writer, humorist and television personality (died 2019)[13]
• October 8 – Harvey Pekar, American memoirist and graphic-novel scriptwriter (died 2010)
• October 9 – John Pilger, Australian-born journalist and documentary filmmaker[14]
• October 28 – Giulio Angioni, Italian writer and anthropologist (died 2017)
• October 29 – Malay Roy Choudhury, Bengali poet, novelist and creator of the Indian Hungry generation literary and cultural movement
• November 17 – Auberon Waugh, English journalist and novelist (died 2001)[15]
• November 18 – Margaret Atwood, Canadian novelist and poet
• November 25 – Shelagh Delaney, English dramatist (died 2011)
• December 3 – Lee Israel, American biographer and literary forger (died 2014)
• December 11 – Thomas McGuane, American writer
• December 18 – Michael Moorcock, English science fiction writer[16]

• January 8 – Caton Theodorian, Romanian dramatist and novelist (born 1871)
• January 28 – W. B. Yeats, Irish poet (born 1865)[17]
• February 2 – Amanda McKittrick Ros, Irish novelist and poet noted for her purple prose (born 1860)
• February 18 – Okamoto Kanoko (岡本 かの子, Ohnuki Kano), Japanese tanka poet (born 1889)
• February 22 – Antonio Machado, Spanish poet (born 1875)
• March 7 – Ludwig Fulda, German poet and playwright (born 1862)
• March 23 – Richard Halliburton, American travel writer (born 1900)
• April 11 – S. S. Van Dine (Willard Huntington Wright), American crime novelist and art critic (born 1888)
• May 23 – Margarete Böhme, German novelist (born 1867)
• May 27 – Joseph Roth, Austrian novelist (born 1894)
• June 13 – Volter Kilpi, Finnish novelist (born 1874)
• June 14 – Vladislav Khodasevich, Russian poet and critic (born 1886)
• June 26 – Ford Madox Ford (Ford Hermann Hueffer), English novelist (born 1873)
• July 5 – Mrs. O. F. Walton, English writer of Christian children's books (born 1849)
• July 8 – Havelock Ellis, English sexual psychologist and writer (born 1859)
• August 7 – Leonard Merrick, English novelist (born 1864)
• August 20 – Agnes Giberne, English children's writer (born 1845)
• August 23 – Robin Hyde (Iris Guiver Wilkinson), South African-born New Zealand poet and novelist (born 1906)
• September 6 – Arthur Rackham, English book illustrator (born 1867)
• September 19 – Ethel M. Dell, English romantic novelist (born 1881)
• October 23 – Zane Grey, American western novelist (born 1872)
• December 2 – Llewelyn Powys, English novelist and autobiographer (born 1884)
• unknown dates
  • Solomon Cleaver, Canadian storyteller and novelist (born 1855)
  • Mary Frances Dowdall, English novelist and non-fiction writer (born 1876)

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Eleanor Doorly, The Radium Woman
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Aldous Huxley After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: David C. Douglas, English Scholars
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Enright, Thimble Summer
• Nobel Prize in literature: Frans Eemil Sillanpää
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, Abe Lincoln in Illinois
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: John Gould Fletcher, Selected Poems
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling[18]