1936 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1936.

• January 8 – Jewish booksellers throughout Nazi Germany are deprived of their Reich Publications Chamber membership cards, without which no one can sell books.^[2]
• May – The Greek poet and Communist activist
  right-wing dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas comes to power in Greece and copies are burned publicly at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens.^[3]
• May 16–17 – About 30 left-wing writers of the Second Polish Republic gather at the Lviv Anti-Fascist Congress of Cultural Workers.
• August 3 – George Heywood Hill establishes the Heywood Hill bookshop in London's Mayfair.
• August 18 – The 38-year-old Spanish dramatist, Federico García Lorca, is arrested by Francoist militia during the White Terror and never seen alive again. His brother-in-law, Manuel Fernández-Montesinos, the leftist mayor of Granada, is shot on the same day.^[4][5] Lorca's play The House of Bernarda Alba (La casa de Bernarda Alba), completed on June 19, will not be performed until 1945.
• November 6 – After United States publication in 1934, the U.K. authorities decide they will not prosecute or seize copies of James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses.^[6]
• November 23 – Life magazine begins to appear as a weekly news magazine in the United States, under the management of Henry Luce.
• unknown dates
  • The
    Commonwealth Government and the play is banned; but the theatre stages the play in private premises.^[7]
  • The first lighthearted crime novel by Scottish-born university teacher of English literature J. I. M. Stewart, writing as Michael Innes, is published: Death at the President's Lodging, set in Oxford. It introduces his long-running character Detective Inspector John Appleby of Scotland Yard.^[8]
  • The
    Carnegie Medal for excellence in children's literature is inaugurated by the Library Association in the United Kingdom. The first winner is Arthur Ransome for Pigeon Post.^[9]

• Felipe Alfau – Locos: A Comedy of Gestures
• Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana – Layar Terkembang (With Sails Unfurled)
• Jorge Amado – Sea of Death (Mar Morto)
• Eric Ambler – The Dark Frontier^[8]
• Arturo Ambrogi – El Jetón
• Nigel Balchin – Lightbody on Liberty
• Djuna Barnes – Nightwood
• Henry Bellamann – The Gray Man Walks
• Stephen Vincent Benét – "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (short story, published in The Saturday Evening Post)
• E. C. Bentley – Trent's Own Case
• Georges Bernanos – The Diary of a Country Priest
• Arna Bontemps – Black Thunder
• Mary Borden - Action for Slander
• Marjorie Bowen – The Poisoners
• Carol Ryrie Brink – Caddie Woodlawn
• John Bude – The Sussex Downs Murder
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan's Quest
• James M. Cain – Double Indemnity
• Morley Callaghan – Now that April's Here and Other Stories
• Karel Čapek – War with the Newts (Válka s mloky)
• John Dickson Carr
  • The Arabian Nights Murder
  • The Punch and Judy Murders (as by Carter Dickson)
• Willa Cather – Not Under Forty
• Mihail Celarianu – Femeia sângelui meu (The Woman in My Blood)
• Death on the Installment Plan
  (Mort à crédit)
• Peter Cheyney – This Man Is Dangerous^[10]
• Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot novels
  • The A. B. C. Murders
  • Cards on the Table
  • Murder in Mesopotamia
• Robert P. Tristram Coffin
  – John Dawn
• Freeman Wills Crofts
  • The Loss of the Jane Vosper
  • Man Overboard!
• Cecil Day-Lewis – Thou Shell of Death
• Warwick Deeping – No Hero–This
• Carmen de Icaza – Cristina Guzmán
• Henry de Montherlant – Les Jeunes Filles (The Young Girls; first part of tetralogy)
• The Big Money
• William Pène du Bois – Otto at Sea
• Daphne du Maurier – Jamaica Inn
• Walter D. Edmonds – Drums Along the Mohawk
• Mircea Eliade – Miss Christina (Domnișoara Christina)
• William Faulkner – Absalom, Absalom!
• Gilbert Frankau – Farewell Romance
• Konstantine Gamsakhurdia – Stealing the Moon (Georgian: მთვარის მოტაცება, romanized: mtvaris mot'atseba)
• Anthony Gilbert – Murder by Experts
• Jean Giono – Joy of Man's Desiring (Que ma joie demeure)
• Maxim Gorky (posthumous) – The Life of Klim Samgin (the final fourth volume, unfinishes, translated as The Specter)
• Graham Greene – A Gun for Sale
• Walter Greenwood – Standing Room Only
• Winifred Holtby – South Riding^[11]
• Aldous Huxley – Eyeless in Gaza
• Michael Innes – Death at the President's Lodging
• C. L. R. James – Minty Alley
• Mikheil Javakhishvili – A Woman's Burden (Georgian: ქალის ტვირთი, Qalis tvirti)
• Storm Jameson
  • None Turn Back (The Mirror in Darkness III)
  • In the Second Year
• Arthur Joseph – Dark Metropolis
• Margaret Kennedy – Together and Apart
• Leo Kiacheli – Gvadi Bigva
• Jonathan Latimer – The Lady in the Morgue
• Jean de La Varende – Leather-Nose (Nez-de-Cuir)
• Alexander Lernet-Holenia – Baron Bagge (Der Baron Bagge)
• Haniel Long – Interlinear to Cabeza de Vaca
• E. C. R. Lorac
  • Crime Counter Crime
  • A Pall for a Painter
  • Post After Post-Mortem
• Andrew Lytle – The Long Night
• Compton Mackenzie – Figure of Eight
• Klaus Mann – Mephisto
• Ngaio Marsh – Death in Ecstasy
• A. E. W. Mason – Fire Over England^[12]
• Alan Melville – Death of Anton
• Black Spring
• Gladys Mitchell – Dead Men's Morris
• Margaret Mitchell – Gone with the Wind
• Naomi Mitchison – The Fourth Pig
• John A. Moroso – Nobody's Buddy
• Anaïs Nin – House of Incest
• George Orwell – Keep the Aspidistra Flying
• John Cowper Powys – Maiden Castle
• Hindi
  : गोदान, Gōdān, The Gift of a Cow)
• Ellery Queen – Halfway House
• Ayn Rand – We the Living
• Erich Maria Remarque – Three Comrades (Drei Kameraden)
• Kate Roberts – Traed mewn cyffion (Feet in the Stocks)
• Rafael Sabatini – The Fortunes of Captain Blood
• Sim Hun – Sangnoksu (Korean: 상록수; Hanja: 常綠樹; "Evergreen (Tree)"; serialization concludes and book publication)
• Israel Joshua Singer – The Brothers Ashkenazi (Di brider Ashkenazy, in book format)
• Eleanor Smith – Portrait of a Lady
• John Steinbeck – In Dubious Battle
• Rex Stout – The Rubber Band
• Cecil Street
  • Death at Breakfast
  • Death in the Tunnel
  • In Face of the Verdict
  • Murder of a Chemist
• Phoebe Atwood Taylor
  • The Crimson Patch
  • Out of Order
• Frank Thiess – Tsushima
• Aleksey Tolstoy – «Золотой ключик, или Приключения Буратино» (The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino)
• S. S. Van Dine – The Kidnap Murder Case
• Vũ Trọng Phụng – Số đỏ (Dumb Luck)
• Henry Wade – Bury Him Darkly
• Sylvia Townsend Warner – Summer Will Show
• Carolyn Wells – Murder in the Bookshop
• The Lady Vanishes
  )
• Far Forest

• Edward Ardizzone – Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain (Journal d'un curé de campagne)
• M. E. Atkinson – August Adventure
• Carol Ryrie Brink – Caddie Woodlawn
• Joanna Cannan – A Pony for Jean (first of nine Pony series books)
• Noel Langley – The Tale of the Land of Green Ginger
• Munro Leaf – The Story of Ferdinand
• John A. Moroso – Nobody's Buddy
• Carola Oman – Ferry the Fearless
• Arthur Ransome – Pigeon Post
• Ruth Sawyer – Roller Skates
• Lester Basil Sinclair (as John Mystery) – Why Cows Moo
• Noel Streatfeild – Ballet Shoes (illustrated by Ruth Gervis)
• Barbara Euphan Todd – Worzel Gummidge (first in the Worzel Gummidge series of eleven books)
• Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy – The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Buratino

• Pralhad Keshav Atre
  • Lagnāchi Bedi
  • Udyāchā Sansār
• W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood – The Ascent of F6 (published English edition)
• S. N. Behrman – End of Summer
• Charles Bennett – Page From a Diary
• Bertolt Brecht – Round Heads and Pointed Heads (Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe)
• Max Catto – Green Waters
• Noël Coward
  • Tonight at 8.30
  • Present Laughter
• Mazo de la Roche and Nancy Price – Whiteoaks
• Henry de Montherlant – Pasiphaé
• Harley Granville-Barker – Waste (first public performance, 1927 version; originally written 1906)
• Ian Hay – The Frog
• George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart – You Can't Take It with You
• John C. Moffitt – It Can't Happen Here
  (dramatisation)
• Federico García Lorca – The House of Bernarda Alba (La casa de Bernarda Alba; written)
• Clare Boothe Luce – The Women
• Barré Lyndon – The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse
• Hugh Mills – Laughter in Court
• J. B. Priestley – Bees on the Boat Deck
• French Without Tears
• Dorothy L. Sayers and Muriel St. Clare Byrne – Busman's Honeymoon: A Detective Comedy in Three Acts
• Irwin Shaw – Bury the Dead
• George Shiels
  • The Jailbird
  • The Passing Day
• Ödön von Horváth
  • Don Juan kommt aus dem Krieg (Don Juan Comes Back From the War)
  • Figaro läßt sich scheiden (Figaro Gets a Divorce)

• W. H. Auden – Look, Stranger!^[13]
• Gottfried Benn – Ausgewählte Gedichte (Selected Poems)
• T. S. Eliot – Collected Poems 1909–35^[13] including "Burnt Norton", first of the Four Quartets
• Patrick Kavanagh – Ploughman, and Other Poems
• Michael Roberts (ed.) – The Faber Book of Modern Verse
• Dylan Thomas – Twenty-five Poems^[13]
• W. B. Yeats (ed.) – The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892–1935

• A. J. Ayer – Language, Truth, and Logic
• John Dickson Carr – The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey
• Victor Hugo Green – The Negro Motorist Green Book (1st edn)
• Graham Greene – Journey Without Maps
• Richard Foster Jones – Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Background of The Battle of the Books
• Carl Gustav Jung
  – The Idea of Redemption in Alchemy (Die Erlösungsvorstellungen in der Alchemie)
• John Maynard Keynes – The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
• Osbert Lancaster – Progress at Pelvis Bay
• F. R. Leavis – Revaluation: Tradition and Development in English Poetry
• C. S. Lewis – The Allegory of Love
• Karl Mannheim – Ideology and Utopia
• Edwin Muir – Scott and Scotland
• George Orwell – "Bookshop Memories"
• Olavi Paavolainen – Kolmannen valtakunnan vieraana (Guest of the Third Reich)
• J. R. R. Tolkien – "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (version of a lecture)

• January 5 – Florence King, American writer (died 2016)
• January 10 – Stephen E. Ambrose, American historian (died 2002)
• January 28 – Ismail Kadare, Albanian novelist and poet (died 2024)
• February 12 – Shawkat Ali, Bangladeshi writer (died 2018)
• February 18 – Jean M. Auel, American historical novelist
• March 1 – Jean-René Huguenin, French novelist and literary critic (died in 1962)
• March 7 – Georges Perec, French novelist, filmmaker and essayist (died 1982)
• March 28
  • Peter Mayer, English-born publisher (died 2018)
  • Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian writer, politician, journalist and essayist, Nobel Prize laureate
• March 31 – Marge Piercy, American poet and activist
• April 12 – Frankétienne, Haitian writer (died 2025)
• April 30 – Viktor Likhonosov, Soviet Russian writer and editor (died 2021)
• May 10 – Anthea Bell, English translator (died 2018)
• May 23 – Ian Kennedy Martin, English scriptwriter and novelist
• May 27 – Ivo Brešan, Croatian playwright, novelist, screenwriter and satirist (died 2016)
• June 3
  • Duff Hart-Davis, English biographer and journalist
  • Larry McMurtry, American novelist, essayist and screenwriter (died 2021)
• June 9 – Nell Dunn, English playwright and author
• June 18 – Dick Wimmer, American novelist (died 2011)
• June 23 – Richard Bach, American novelist and non-fiction writer
• June 24 – J. H. Prynne, English poet
• June 29 – David Rudkin, English playwright
• July 5 – Valerie Flint, English medieval historian (died 2009)
• July 6 – Abidullah Ghazi, Indian-American author, educator and poet
• July 22 – Tom Robbins, American novelist
• August 8 – Jan Pieńkowski, Polish-born British children's writer and illustrator (died 2022)
• August 24 – A. S. Byatt, English novelist (died 2023)
• September 1 – Roderick Thorp, American novelist (died 1999)
• September 2 – Károly Krajczár, Hungarian Slovene teacher, writer and collector (died 2018)
• September 20 – Andrew Davies, Welsh novelist and screenwriter
• September 26 – Victor Watson, English children's writer and academic
• October 1 – Kailayar Sellanainar Sivakumaran, Sri Lankan writer, art and literary critic, journalist and radio and TV personality
• October 5 – Václav Havel, Czech dramatist and first president of Czech Republic (died 2011)
• November 4 – C. K. Williams, American poet (died 2015)
• November 17 – John Wells, English satirical writer and actor (died 1998)
• November 18 – Suzette Haden Elgin, American science fiction writer (died 2015)^[14]
• November 20 – Don DeLillo, American novelist
• November 25 – William McIlvanney, Scottish novelist, short story writer and poet (died 2015)
• November 27 – Dahlia Ravikovitch, Israeli poet (died 2005)
• December 1 – Ma Văn Kháng, Vietnamese writer
• December 2 – Hebe Uhart, Argentine writer (died 2018)
• December 5
  • James Lee Burke, American writer
  • Lewis Nkosi, Zulu writer (died 2010)
• December 11 – Ingvar Moe, Norwegian poet, novelist and children's writer (died 1993)
• December 17 – Frank Martinus Arion, Curaçaoan novelist and poet (died 2015)

• January 4 – James Churchward, British writer (born 1851)
• January 5 – Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Spanish dramatist and novelist (born 1866)
• January 17 – Mateiu Caragiale, Romanian novelist and poet (stroke, born 1885)
• January 18 – Rudyard Kipling, English writer and Nobel laureate (born 1865)
• February 7 – Elizabeth Robins Pennell, American biographer and critic based in London (born 1855)
• February 8 – Rahel Sanzara, German dancer, actress and novelist (cancer, born 1894)
• February 23 – Lidia Veselitskaya (V. Mikulich), Russian novelist, memoirist and translator (born 1857)
• March 1 – Mikhail Kuzmin, Russian poet, musician and novelist (born 1872)
• March 9 – A. de Herz, Romanian playwright and journalist (hemoptysis, born 1887)
• March 16 – Marguerite Durand, French actress and journalist (born 1864)
• April 30 – A. E. Housman, English poet (born 1859)
• June 11 – Robert E. Howard, American fantasy writer (suicide, born 1906)
• June 12:
  • M. R. James, English ghost story writer and scholar (born 1862)
  • Karl Kraus, Austrian writer and journalist (born 1874)
• June 14 – G. K. Chesterton, English novelist, poet and Catholic apologist (born 1874)
• June 18 – Maxim Gorky, Russian dramatist (born 1868)
• July 25 – Donald Maxwell, English travel writer and illustrator (born 1877)
• July 26 – F. J. Harvey Darton English children's literature historian and publisher (born 1878)
• August 8 – Mourning Dove, Native American writer (born 1884)
• August 15 – Grazia Deledda, Sardinian-born novelist and Nobel laureate (born 1871)
• August 19 – Federico García Lorca, Spanish dramatist and poet (shot, born 1898)
• August 26 – Juliette Adam, French author (born 1836)^[15]
• October 5 – J. Slauerhoff, Dutch poet and novelist (born 1898)
• October 9 – Harriette A. Keyser, American industrial reformer (born 1841)
• November 12 – Stefan Grabiński, Polish horror writer (born 1887)
• December – Emma Sheridan Fry, American actor, playwright, and drama teacher (born 1864)
• December 10 – Luigi Pirandello, Italian dramatist and novelist (born 1867)
• December 24 – Frances Garnet Wolseley, 2nd Viscountess Wolseley, English horticulturist and garden writer (born 1872)
• December 27 – Kristína Royová, Slovak novelist, religious writer and poet (born 1860)
• December 28 – John Cornford, English poet (killed in action, born 1915)^[16]
• December 31 – Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish novelist, poet and scholar (born 1864)
• date unknown – Bertha M. Wilson, American playwright, critic and actress (born 1874)

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Arthur Ransome, Pigeon Post
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Winifred Holtby, South Riding
• Thomas de Quincey
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Carol Ryrie Brink, Caddie Woodlawn
• Nobel Prize in Literature: Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
• Maxence Van Der Meersch, L'Empreinte de Dieu^[17]
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, Idiot's Delight
• Robert P. Tristram Coffin
  , Strange Holiness
• Harold L. Davis
  , Honey in the Horn