The year 1940 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Aldous Huxley is a screenwriter for the movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
• Jean-Paul Sartre is taken prisoner by the Germans.
• Robertson Davies joins the Old Vic repertory company.

New book

• Giorgio Basssani - Una citt di pianura
• Henry Bellamann - King's Row
• Adolfo Bioy Casares - The Invention of Morel
• Karin Boye - Kallocain
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - Synthetic Men of Mars
• Dino Buzzati - The Tartar Steppe (Il deserto dei Tartari)
• Erskine Caldwell - Trouble in July
• Taylor Caldwell - The Earth is the Lord's
• John Dickson Carr
  • The Department of Queer Complaints
  • The Man Who Could Not Shudder
  • And So To Murder (as by Carter Dickson)
  • Murder in the Submarine Zone (as by Carter Dickson)
• Willa Cather - Sapphira And The Slave
• Raymond Chandler - Farewell, My Lovely
• Agatha Christie
  • Sad Cypress
  • One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
• Walter Clark - The Ox-bow Incident
• James Daugherty - Daniel Boone
• Georges Duhamel - Les Ma tres
• Graham Greene - The Power and the Glory
• Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls
• Georgette Heyer - The Corinthian
• Arthur Koestler - Darkness at Noon
• Dorothy Kunhardt- Pat the Bunny
• John M. Lee - Counter-Clockwise
• Carson McCullers - The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
• John O'Hara - Pal Joey
• Raymond Postgate - Verdict of Twelve
• Arthur Ransome - The Big Six
• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - When the Whippoorwill
• Clayton Rawson -- The Headless Lady
• Michael Sadleir - Fanny by Gaslight
• Mikhail Sholokov - The Don Flows Home to the Sea
• Dr. Seuss - Horton Hatches the Egg
• C. P. Snow - George Passant (first of the Strangers and Brothers series)
• Christina Stead - The Man Who Loved Children
• Rex Stout
  • Over My Dead Body
  • Where There's a Will
• Phoebe Atwood Taylor
  • The Criminal C.O.D.
  • The Deadly Sunshade
  • The Left Leg (as by Alice Tilton)
• Richard Wright -Native Son

New drama

<onlyinclude>

• Agatha Christie - Peril at End House
• Jean Cocteau - Le Bel Indiff rent
• Lawrence Riley - Return Engagement
• George Shiels - The Rugged Path</onlyinclude>

Non-fiction

• "Cato" (Michael Foot and others) - Guilty Men
• G. H. Hardy - A Mathematician's Apology
• C. S. Lewis - The Problem of Pain
• Arthur Marder - The Anatomy of British Sea Power: a history of British naval policy in the pre-Dreadnought era, 1880-1905
• A. A. Milne - War with Honour
• Edmund Wilson - To the Finland Station

Births

• January 14 - Sir Trevor Nunn, theatre director
• February 4 - George A. Romero, horror film writer, producer, director
• March 16 - Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian writer and film director
• March 28 - Russell Banks, novelist
• April 15 - Jeffrey Archer, novelist
• May 7 - Angela Carter, English magical realist author (died 1992)
• May 8 - Peter Benchley, novelist (died 2006)
• May 13 - Bruce Chatwin, novelist and travel writer (died 1989)
• May 24 - Joseph Brodsky, poet (died 1996)
• May 28 - Maeve Binchy, novelist
• July 17 - Tim Brooke-Taylor, comedy writer and actor
• October 20 - Robert Pinsky, poet
• December 5 - Peter Pohl, novelist

Deaths

• January 5 - Humbert Wolfe, poet and epigrammist
• January 27 - Isaac Babel, journalist and dramatist
• February 11 - John Buchan, Scottish author
• February 29 - E. F. Benson, novelist
• March 7 - Edwin Markham, poet
• March 10 - Mikha l Boulgakov, Russian writer (born 1891)
• March 16
  • Selma Lagerl f, writer
  • Thomas Heath, historian and translator
• June 10 - Marcus Garvey, journalist and publisher
• June 20 - Charley Chase, screenwriter
• September - W. H. Davies, poet and Supertramp
• December 21 - F Scott Fitzgerald (born 1896)
• December 22 - Nathanael West (born 1903)
• date unknown - T. O'Conor Sloane, editor of Amazing Stories

Awards

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Kitty Barne, Visitors from London
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Charles Morgan, The Voyage
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Hilda F. M. Prescott, Spanish Tudor: Mary I of England
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: James Daugherty, Daniel Boone
• Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Mark Van Doren: Collected Poems
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
• King's Gold Medal for Poetry: Michael Thwaites

fr:1940 en litt rature mk:1940 no:Litteratur ret 1940 pl:1940 w literaturze pt:1940 na literatura ro:1940 n literatur ru:1940 sq:1940 n literatur sv:Litteratur ret 1940 uk:1940