See also: 1935 in literature, other events of 1936, 1937 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• Life magazine is first published

New books

• The Allegory of Love - C. S. Lewis
• The Big Money - John Dos Passos
• Black Thunder - Arna Wendell Bontemps
• The Brothers Ashkenazi - Israel Joshua Singer
• Caddie Woodlawn - Carol Ryrie Brink
• The Dark Frontier - Eric Ambler
• Dark Metropolis - Arthur Joseph
• Death on the Installment Plan - Louis-Ferdinand Céline
• Double Indemnity - James M. Cain
• Drums Along the Mohawk - Walter D. Edmonds
• Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
• The Gray Man Walks - Henry Bellamann
• The House in Paris - Elizabeth Bowen
• In Dubious Battle - John Steinbeck
• Jamaica Inn - Daphne du Maurier
• John Dawn - Robert P. Tristram Coffin
• The Lady in the Morgue - Jonathan Latimer
• The Long Night - Andrew Lytle
• Nobody's Buddy - John A. Moroso
• Not Under Forty - Willa Cather
• Now that April's Here and Other Stories - Morley Callaghan
• Otto at Sea - William Pène du Bois
• Quel homme es-tu - André Billy
• The Trainee Man - Gottfried Benn
• We The Living - Ayn Rand

New drama

• Noel Coward - 30 and Present Laughter
• Federico García Lorca - Doña Rosita la soltera
• Clare Boothe Luce - The Women

Births

• January 10 - Stephen Ambrose, controversial historian
• January 22 - Joseph Wambaugh, author
• February 18 - Jean M. Auel, Earth's Children author
• May 16 - Kenneth Geist, "Pictures Will Talk" - author, critic

• June 23 - Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull author
• July 22 - Tom Robbins, novelist
• August 24 - A. S. Byatt, novelist
• October 5 - Václav Havel, dramatist and first president of the Czech Republic
• November 17 - John Wells, satirical writer and actor
• November 20 - Don DeLillo, United States novelist
• date unknown - Andrew Davies, TV and film writer
• date unknown - Duff Hart-Davis, biographer and journalist
• date unknown - J. H. Prynne, poet

Deaths

• January 18 - Rudyard Kipling, British writer - Nobel prize for literature (1907)
• March 16 - Marguerite Durand, journalist
• April 30 - A. E. Housman, poet
• June 11 - Robert E. Howard, American fantasy writer (suicide)
• June 12 - M. R. James, writer of ghost stories
• June 14 - G. K. Chesterton, author
• June 14 - Maxim Gorky, dramatist
• August 19 - Federico García Lorca, dramatist and poet
• November 12 - Stefan Grabinski, "the Polish Poe"
• December 10 - Luigi Pirandello, dramatist and novelist
• December 28 - John Cornford, Communist poet
• Grazia Deledda, Sardinian (Italy) writer - Nobel prize for literature (1926)

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize: Winifred Holtby, South Riding
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Carol Ryrie Brink, Caddie Woodlawn
• Nobel Prize for literature: Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, Idiots Delight
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert P. Tristram Coffin: Strange Holiness
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Harold L. Davis - Honey in the Horn

1936 books

1936 en littérature | 1936 - literatura | Litteraturåret 1936