1964 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1964.

Events

• January 10 – Federico García Lorca's play The House of Bernarda Alba, completed just before his assassination in 1936, receives its first performance in Spain.
• January 12 – The Royal Shakespeare Company Experimental Group open a four-week Theatre of Cruelty season at the LAMDA Theatre Club, London.
• January 23 – Arthur Miller's play After the Fall opens at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre Off-Broadway in New York City, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Jason Robards and Kazan's wife Barbara Loden. A semi-autobiographical work, it arouses controversy over Miller's portrayal of his late ex-wife Marilyn Monroe.
• February 11 – A London retailer, in the case of R. v. Gold, is found guilty under section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 of stocking a 1963 edition of John Cleland's novel Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, 1748–1749).
• February 28 – The Dutch comic artist and writer Jan Cremer publishes his autobiographical novel I, Jan Cremer, which provokes controversy for its frank content and style and becomes a bestseller.
• April 23 – Shakespeare Birthplace Trust opens the Shakespeare Centre in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, to house its library and research facilities.
• April 29 – Peter Weiss's play with music Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade (The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, known as Marat/Sade) premières at the Schiller Theater in West Berlin. In August it receives its English-language première by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London at the Aldwych Theatre.
• May – Michael Moorcock becomes editor of the science fiction magazine New Worlds.
• May 5 – W. H. Auden's preface to the anthology The Protestant Mystics describes the supernatural "Vision of Agape" he experienced in June 1933.
• May 6 – Joe Orton's black comedy Entertaining Mr Sloane premières at the New Arts Theatre in London with Dudley Sutton in the title rôle.
• May 29 – Le Théâtre du Soleil is established as a collective avant-garde stage ensemble by Ariane Mnouchkine, Philippe Léotard and fellow students of L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. It opens with Les Petits Bourgeois (adapted from Maxim Gorky's Мещане), at Théâtre Mouffetard.
• June 22 – Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer is allowed to circulate legally in the United States by the U.S. Supreme Court three decades after its publication in France, after the U.S. Supreme Court, in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, cites Jacobellis v. Ohio (decided the same day) and overrules state court findings that the book is obscene.
• August 11 – Ian Fleming walks to the Royal St George's Golf Club near Sandwich, Kent, for lunch with friends, collapsing shortly afterward with a heart attack. His last recorded words are an apology to the ambulance drivers: "I am sorry to trouble you chaps. I don't know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the roads these days." Fleming dies next day.
• September – The Everyman Theatre opens in Liverpool, England.
• September 28 – Brian Friel's play Philadelphia, Here I Come! is premièred at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin.
• October 22 – French author Jean Paul Sartre declines the Nobel Prize in Literature for literary and political reasons, explaining his belief that an author must not accept official awards from any institution.
• October 28 – The Wednesday Play is broadcast for the first time on BBC1 television, presenting original one-off contemporary social drama, mostly written for television.

New books

Fiction

• Chinua Achebe – Arrow of God
• José Agustín – La Tumba
• Eric Ambler – A Kind of Anger
• Poul Anderson – Time and Stars
• Louis Auchincloss – The Rector of Justin
• J. G. Ballard – The Terminal Beach
• Simone de Beauvoir – A Very Easy Death (Une Mort très douce)
• Saul Bellow – Herzog
• Thomas Berger – Little Big Man
• Elizabeth Bowen – The Little Girls
• Leigh Brackett
• People of the Talisman
• The Secret of Sinharat
• Ray Bradbury – The Machineries of Joy
• John Braine – The Jealous God
• Richard Brautigan – A Confederate General From Big Sur
• John Brunner
• To Conquer Chaos
• The Whole Man
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan and the Madman
• William S. Burroughs – Nova Express
• J. Ramsey Campbell – The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants
• Victor Canning – The Scorpio Letters
• John Dickson Carr – Most Secret
• Agatha Christie – A Caribbean Mystery
• Louis-Ferdinand Céline – '
• A. J. Cronin – A Song of Sixpence
• Cecil Day-Lewis – The Sad Variety
• Len Deighton – Funeral in Berlin
• R. F. Delderfield – Too Few For Drums
• August Derleth (editor) – Over the Edge
• Michel Droit – Le Retour
• Ralph Ellison – Shadow and Act
• Ian Fleming – You Only Live Twice
• Max Frisch – Gantenbein
• Daniel F. Galouye – Simulacron-3 (Counterfeit World)
• William Golding – The Spire
• Richard Gordon – Nuts in May
• L. P. Hartley – The Brickfield
• Hartley Howard – Department K
• Bohumil Hrabal – Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (Taneční hodiny pro starší a pokročilé)
• Carl Jacobi – Portraits in Moonlight
• B. S. Johnson – Albert Angelo
• Ken Kesey – Sometimes a Great Notion
• Richard E. Kim – The Martyred
• James Leasor – Passport to Oblivion
• Etienne Leroux – Een vir Azazel (One for Azazel, translated as One for the Devil)
• Liang Yusheng (梁羽生) – Datang Youxia Zhuan (大唐游俠傳)
• Clarice Lispector – The Passion According to G.H. (A paixão segundo G.H.)
• H. P. Lovecraft – At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels
• John D. MacDonald
• The Deep Blue Good-by
• A Purple Place For Dying
• The Quick Red Fox
• Ngaio Marsh – Dead Water
• James Mayo – Hammerhead
• Gladys Mitchell – Death of a Delft Blue
• Iris Murdoch – The Italian Girl
• Sterling North – Rascal
• Vladimir Nabokov – The Defense
• NgÅ©gÄ© wa Thiong'o (also known as James Ngigi) – Weep Not, Child
• Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎) – A Personal Matter (個人的な体験; Kojinteki na taiken)
• Anthony Powell – The Valley of Bones
• Mario Puzo – Fortunate Pilgrim
• Ellery Queen – And On the Eighth Day
• Jean Ray – Saint-Judas-de-la-nuit
• Ruth Rendell – From Doon With Death
• Karl Ristikivi – Imede saar
• Hubert Selby Jr. – Last Exit to Brooklyn
• Ryōtarō Shiba (司馬 遼太郎) – Moeyo Ken (燃えよ剣, Burn, O Sword)
• Howard Spring – Winds of the Day
• Clark Ashton Smith – Tales of Science and Sorcery
• Wilbur Smith – When the Lion Feeds
• Rex Stout
• Trio for Blunt Instruments
• A Right to Die
• Julian Symons – The End of Solomon Grundy
• Jim Thompson – Pop. 1280
• Leon Uris – '
• Jack Vance
• The Houses of Iszm
• The Killing Machine
• Star King
• Gore Vidal – Julian
• Irving Wallace – The Man
• Raymond Williams – Second Generation
• Maia Wojciechowska – Shadow of a Bull

Children and young people

• Lloyd Alexander – The Book of Three
• Rev. W. Awdry – Mountain Engines (nineteenth in The Railway Series of 42 books by him and his son Christopher Awdry)
• Nina Bawden – On the Run (also Three on the Run)
• Christianna Brand – Nurse Matilda
• Hesba Fay Brinsmead – Pastures of the Blue Crane
• Jeff Brown – Flat Stanley
• Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Louise Fitzhugh – Harriet the Spy
• Ian Fleming – '
• Rumer Godden – Home is the Sailor
• Irene Hunt – Across Five Aprils
• Ervin Lázár – A kisfiú meg az oroszlánok (The Little Boy and the Lions)
• Rhoda Levine – Harrison Loved His Umbrella
• Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Dwarfs
• J. P. Martin – Uncle (first in a series of six books)
• Jean Merrill – The Pushcart War
• Ruth Park – The Muddle-Headed Wombat on Holiday
• Bill Peet
• Ella
• Randy's Dandy Lions
• Shel Silverstein – The Giving Tree
• Miriam Young – Miss Suzy