See also: 1938 in literature, other events of 1939, 1940 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• December 25 - A Christmas Carol is read before a radio audience for the first time.
• Frank Herbert lies about his age to get his first job as a local newspaper reporter.
• Jean-Paul Sartre is drafted into the French Army.
• Robert A. Heinlein's first published short story appears in Astounding Magazine.

New books

• And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie
• The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
• Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal - Aime Cesaire
• Children of God - Vardis Fisher
• Coming Up for Air - George Orwell
• The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
• Drums at Dusk - Arna Wendell Bontemps
• Files on Parade - John O'Hara
• Finnegans Wake - James Joyce
• The Gladiators - Arthur Koestler
• The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
• If I Forget Thee Jerusalem (The Wild Palms/Old Man) - William Faulkner
• Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo
• Let Me Breathe Thunder - William Attaway
• Listen for the Voices - Anne Colver
• Magna - Zona Gale
• The Mask of Dimitrios - Eric Ambler
• The Mysterious Mickey Finn - Elliot Paul
• Melbourne - David Cecil
• Moses, Man Of The Mountain - Zora Neale Hurston
• The Nazarene - Sholem Asch
• Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats – T. S. Eliot
• The Outsider and Others - H. P. Lovecraft
• Pale Horse, Pale Rider - Katherine Anne Porter
• The Patriot - Pearl S. Buck
• The Snows of Kilimanjaro - Ernest Hemingway
• Studies in Iconology - Erwin Panofsky
• Thimble Summer - Elizabeth Enright
• The Tree of Liberty - Elizabeth Page

New drama

• Philip Barry - The Philadelphia Story
• T. S. Eliot - The Family Reunion
• Lillian Hellman - The Little Foxes
• George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart - The Man Who Came to Dinner
• Clare Boothe Luce - Margin of Error

Births

• Michael Moorcock, British science fiction author
• January 29 - Germaine Greer, feminist author
• April 12 - Alan Ayckbourn, dramatist
• June 5 - Margaret Drabble, novelist
• August 1 - Robert James Waller, American novelist
• October 6 - Melvyn Bragg, novelist, critic and television presenter
• October 9 - John Pilger, journalist
• October 10 - Clive James, writer, humorist and television personality
• November 17 - Auberon Waugh, journalist and son of Evelyn Waugh
• November 18 - Margaret Atwood, novelist and poet
• date unknown - Ferdinand Mount, journalist and novelist
• date unknown - Iris Gower, romantic novelist
• date unknown - Alan Coren, satirist

Deaths

• Solomon Cleaver, storyteller and novelist
• January 28 - William Butler Yeats, poet
• February 18 - Okamoto Kanoko, tanka poet
• February 22 - Antonio Machado, poet
• March 7 - Ludwig Fulda
• March 23 - Richard Halliburton, travel writer
• April 11 - S. S. Van Dine, crime fiction writer
• May 27 - Joseph Roth, novelist
• June 26 - Ford Madox Ford, novelist
• July 8 - Havelock Ellis, sexual psychologist and controversial writer
• September - Ethel M. Dell, romantic novelist
• September 6 - Arthur Rackham, book illustrator
• October 23 - Zane Grey, popular author of westerns
• December 2 - Llewelyn Powys, biographer and autobiographer

Awards

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Enright, Thimble Summer
• Nobel Prize for 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

1939 books

1939 en littérature | 1939 - literatura | Litteraturåret 1939