The year 1962 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• January 7 - In an article in the New York Times Book Review, Gore Vidal calls Evelyn Waugh "our time's first satirist."
• Arthur Miller marries photographer Inge Morath.
• Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell are prosecuted and jailed for defacing library books.
• A tape-recorded conversation on science fiction took place between Kingsley Amis, C. S. Lewis and Brian Aldiss in Lewis's rooms at Cambridge.
• The works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are denounced by the Roman Catholic Church.
• Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath separate.
• Lynne Reid Banks goes to live in a kibbutz.
• George Oppen published his first collection of poetry since Discrete Series in 1934, breaking a 28 year silence. Goes on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1969.
• L. Frank Baum's short story "The Tiger's Eye" is first published in December, nearly six decades after it was written.

New books

• James Baldwin - Another Country
• Isaac Asimov, editor - The Hugo Winners
• J. G. Ballard - The Drowned World
• William Barrett - Lilies of the Field
• Giorgio Bassani - The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini)
• Thomas Berger - Reinhart in Love
• Ray Bradbury
  • R is for Rocket
  • Something Wicked This Way Comes
• John Braine - Life at the Top
• John Brunner
  • Secret Agent of Terra
  • The Super Barbarians
• Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler - Fail-Safe
• Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
• William S. Burroughs - The Ticket That Exploded
• Taylor Caldwell - A Prologue To Love
• John Dickson Carr - The Demoniacs
• Agatha Christie - The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
• James Clavell - King Rat
• Len Deighton - The IPCRESS File
• August Derleth
  • Lonesome Places
  • The Trail of Cthulhu
• August Derleth, editor - Dark Mind, Dark Heart
• Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle
• Allen Drury - A Shade of Difference
• William Faulkner - The Reivers
• Ian Fleming - The Spy Who Loved Me
• Aldous Huxley - Island
• Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle
• James Jones - The Thin Red Line
• Ken Kesey - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• Fletcher Knebel & Charles W. Bailey II– Seven Days in May
• John le Carr - A Murder of Quality
• Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
• Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
• Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Dearly Beloved
• H. P. Lovecraft - Dreams and Fancies
• Alistair MacLean - The Satan Bug
• Eloise McGraw - The Golden Goblet
• Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
• Anthony Powell - The Kindly Ones
• Katherine Anne Porter - Ship of Fools
• Mary Renault - The Bull from the Sea
• Isaac Bashevis Singer - The Slave
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
• Noel Streatfeild - Travelling Shoes (first published as Apple Bough)
• Mary Stewart - The Moon-Spinners
• Rex Stout - Homicide Trinity
• Rex Stout - Gambit
• Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night
• Irving Wallace - The Prize
• Elie Wiesel - Day
• David Wilkerson - The Cross and the Switchblade
• Herman Wouk - Youngblood Hawke

New drama

• Edward Albee - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• Friedrich D rrenmatt - Die Physiker (The Physicists)
• Witold Gombrowicz - Historia

Poetry

• George Oppen - The Materials
• Al Purdy - Poems for all the Annettes
• William Carlos Williams - Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems

Non-fiction

• W. H. Auden - The Dyer's Hand and other essays
• Helen Gurley Brown - Sex and the Single Girl
• Rachel Carson – Silent Spring
• Thomas B. Costain – The Last Plantagenets (Fourth book in the Plantagenet or Pageant of England series)
• L. Sprague de Camp – Energy and Power
• August Derleth – 100 Books by August Derleth
• Milton Friedman – Capitalism and Freedom
• Thomas Kuhn – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
• W. Somerset Maugham – Looking Back
• V. S. Naipaul – The Middle Passage: Impressions of Five Societies - British, French and Dutch in the West Indies and South America
• Louis Nizer - My Life in Court
• John Steinbeck – Travels With Charley: In Search of America
• Barbara Tuchman – The Guns of August

Births

• January 17 - Sebastian Junger, novelist, journalist, documentarian
• February 21 - David Foster Wallace, novelist
• February 21 - Chuck Palahniuk, author, journalist
• March 31 - Michal Viewegh, Czech language writer
• October 19 - Tracy Chevalier, novelist
• October 28 - Mark Haddon, novelist
• unknown date - David Edwards, journalist

Deaths

• February 16 - Frank Prewett, poet
• April 24 - Emilio Prados, poet
• May 26 - Wilfred Wilson Gibson, poet
• June 2 - Vita Sackville-West, poet and gardener
• July 6 - William Faulkner, American novelist
• July 21 - G. M. Trevelyan, historian
• July 27 - Richard Aldington, World War I writer
• August 9 - Hermann Hesse, novelist
• September 3 - E. E. Cummings, poet
• September 23 - Patrick Hamilton, dramatist
• December 3 - Dame Mary Gilmore, poet and journalist

Awards

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction: William Faulkner
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Pauline Clarke, The Twelve and the Genii
• Eric Gregory Award: Donald Thomas, James Simmons, Brian Johnson, Jenny Joseph
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Ronald Hardy, Act of Destruction
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Meriol Trevor, Newman: The Pillar and the Cloud and Newman: Light in Winter
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth George Speare, The Bronze Bow
• Newdigate Prize: Stanley Johnson
• Nobel Prize for Literature: John Steinbeck
• Premio Nadal: Jos Mar a Mendiola, Muerte por fusilamiento
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Frank Loesser, Abe Burrows, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Edwin O'Connor, The Edge of Sadness
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Alan Dugan, Poems
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Christopher Fry

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