See also: 1940 in literature, other events of 1941, 1942 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• Frank Herbert marries Flora Parkinson.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished work, The Last Tycoon, is edited and published by Edmund Wilson.

New books

• Barometer Rising - Hugh MacLennan
• Blood On The Forge - William Attaway
• Call It Courage - Armstrong Sperry
• Curious George - H.A. Rey and Margret Rey
• A Curtain of Green - Eudora Welty
• Death Comes as the End - Agatha Christie
• Herself Surprised - Joyce Cary
• The Keys of the Kingdom - A.J. Cronin
• Lest Darkness Fall - L. Sprague de Camp (Complete novel)
• Make Way for Ducklings - Robert McCloskey
• Mildred Pierce - James M. Cain
• Random Harvest - James Hilton
• The Real Life of Sebastian Knight - Vladimir Nabokov
• The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
• The Shy Plutocrat - E. Phillips Oppenheim
• The Song of Bernadette - Franz Werfel
• Under the Cottonwood - Katheryn Campbell Graham
• Up at the Villa - W. Somerset Maugham
• What Makes Sammy Run? - Budd Schulberg
• The Wind From Nowhere - Oscar Micheaux

New drama

• Noel Coward - Blithe Spirit

Births

• March 13 - Donella Meadows, Limits to Growth author
• April 10 - Paul Theroux, novelist and travel writer
• May 19 - Nora Ephron, novelist and screenwriter
• June 5 - Spalding Gray, screenwriter and dramatist
• June 27 - James P. Hogan, science fiction author
• October 2 - John Sinclair, poet
• October 4 - Anne Rice, horror/fantasy writer
• October 13 - John Snow, cricketer and poet
• October 25 - Anne Tyler, novelist
• date unknown - Pepetela, novelist
• date unknown - Miles Kington, journalist

Deaths

• January 4 - Henri Bergson, writer
• January 6 - F. R. Higgins, poet
• January 13 - James Joyce, writer
• January 23 - John Oxenham, novelist and poet
• February 7 - Banjo Paterson, poet
• February 9 - Elizabeth von Arnim, novelist
• March 28 - Virginia Woolf, author
• June 1 - Hugh Walpole, novelist
• June 15 - Evelyn Underhill, poet
• August 7 - Rabindranath Tagore, author
• November 18 – Émile Nelligan, poet

Awards

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Armstrong Sperry, Call It Courage
• Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, There Shall Be No Night
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Leonard Bacon: Sunderland Capture
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: no award given

1941 books

1941 en littérature | 1941 - literatura | Litteraturåret 1941