1985 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1985.

Events

• February 25 – Sue Limb's parodic pastiche of the Lake Poets, The Wordsmiths at Gorsemere, begins broadcasting on BBC Radio 4 in the U.K.
• March 1 – The GNU Manifesto by Richard Stallman is published for the first time, and becomes a fundamental philosophical source within the free software movement.
• August 11 – A memorial to the poet Hugh MacDiarmid is unveiled near his home at Langholm, Scotland.
• unknown dates – Three notable novels in English by female authors are published during the year: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Jilly Cooper's Riders, the first of the Rutshire Chronicles, and Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.

New books

Fiction

• Isaac Asimov – Robots and Empire
• Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid's Tale
• Jean M. Auel – The Mammoth Hunters
• Iain Banks – Walking on Glass
• Clive Barker – The Damnation Game
• Greg Bear
• Blood Music
• Eon
• M. C. Beaton – Death of a Gossip
• Thomas Bernhard – Old Masters: a comedy (Alte Meister: Komödie)
• Anthony Burgess – The Kingdom of the Wicked
• Orson Scott Card – Ender's Game
• Jilly Cooper – Riders
• Bernard Cornwell – Sharpe's Honour
• Don DeLillo – White Noise
• Friedrich Dürrenmatt – The Execution of Justice (Justiz)
• Bret Easton Ellis – Less than Zero
• John Fowles – A Maggot
• Carlos Fuentes – The Old Gringo (Gringo Viejo)
• William Gaddis – Carpenter's Gothic
• Gabriel García Márquez – Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera)
• Alasdair Gray – '
• Graham Greene – The Tenth Man
• Amy Hempel – Reasons to Live
• Frank Herbert – '
• John Irving – The Cider House Rules
• Garrison Keillor – Lake Wobegon Days
• Stephen King – Skeleton Crew
• László Krasznahorkai – Satantango
• Ursula K. Le Guin – Always Coming Home
• Doris Lessing – The Good Terrorist
• Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian
• Larry McMurtry – Lonesome Dove
• John D. MacDonald – The Lonely Silver Rain
• James A. Michener – Texas
• Brian Moore – Black Robe
• Iris Murdoch – The Good Apprentice
• Ellis Peters – An Excellent Mystery
• Caryl Phillips – The Final Passage
• Carl Sagan – Contact
• Sidney Sheldon – If Tomorrow Comes
• Sue Townsend – Rebuilding Coventry
• Anne Tyler – The Accidental Tourist
• Andrew Vachss – Flood
• Kurt Vonnegut – Galápagos
• Jeanette Winterson – Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
• Roger Zelazny – Trumps of Doom

Children and young people

• Chester Aaron – Out of Sight, Out of Mind
• Pamela Allen – A Lion in the Night
• Chris Van Allsburg – The Polar Express
• Frank Asch – I Can Blink
• Robert Cormier – Beyond the Chocolate War
• Roald Dahl – The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
• Virginia Hamilton (with Leo and Diane Dillon) – '
• Patricia MacLachlan – Sarah, Plain and Tall
• Laura Numeroff – If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
• Pat O'Shea – The Hounds of the Morrigan
• Cynthia Rylant – A Blue-Eyed Daisy
• Jacqueline Wilson – How to Survive Summer Camp (novel)
• Elizabeth Winthrop – The Castle in the Attic

Drama

• Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière (adapted) – Mahabharata
• Christopher Hampton (adapted) – Les Liaisons Dangereuses
• David Hare and Howard Brenton – Pravda
• Wallace Shawn – Aunt Dan and Lemon
• Sam Shepard – A Lie of the Mind
• Neil Simon – Biloxi Blues
• August Wilson – Fences

Poetry

• Carol Ann Duffy – Standing Female Nude

Non-fiction

• Bill Bryson – The Palace under the Alps and Over 200 Other Unusual, Unspoiled and Infrequently Visited Spots in 16 European Countries
• Roger Caron – Bingo! The Horrifying Eyewitness Account of a Prison Riot
• Allen Carr – The Easy Way to Stop Smoking
• Michael Denton – '
• Elaine Dundy – Elvis and Gladys
• Julien Gracq – The Shape of a City
• G. L. Harriss (editor) – Henry V: The Practice of Kingship
• Ernest Hemingway – The Dangerous Summer
• David Lowenthal – The Past Is a Foreign Country
• Walter A. McDougall – '
• Tim O'Brien – The Nuclear Age
• Priscilla Beaulieu Presley – Elvis and Me
• David Robinson – '
• Oliver Sacks – The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
• Roger Scruton – Thinkers of the New Left
• Gary Soto – Living Up the Street

Births

• February 7 - Justina Ireland, American science-fiction and fantasy author of young-adult fiction
• April 24 – Alexander Zeldin, British playwright and director
• September 24 – Eleanor Catton, New Zealand novelist
• September 30 – Téa Obreht, Yugoslav-born American novelist writing in English
• Alisa Ganieva, Russian fiction writer and critic

Deaths

• January 1 – Sigerson Clifford, Irish poet, playwright, and civil servant (born 1913)
• January 5 – Alexis Rannit, Estonian-born American poet and critic (born 1914)
• February 6 – James Hadley Chase, English thriller novelist (born 1906)
• February 19 – Carl Joachim Hambro, Norwegian novelist, essayist and philologist (born 1914)
• March 15 – Radha Krishna Choudhary, Indian historian and philosopher (born 1921)
• April 4 – Kate Roberts, Welsh writer (born 1891)
• April 7 – Carl Schmitt, German political theorist (born 1888)
• April 17
• Basil Bunting, English poet (born 1900)
• D. I. Suchianu, Romanian essayist, translator, social scientist and film theorist (born 1895)
• April 25 – Uku Masing, Estonian religious philosopher, linguist and writer (born 1909)
• May 1 – Denise Robins, English romantic novelist (born 1897)
• May 12 – Josephine Miles, American poet and literary critic (born 1911)
• May 18 – Hedley Bull, Australian economist (cancer, born 1932)
• May 25 – Robert Nathan, American novelist and poet (born 1894)
• June 8 – Hu Feng (胡风), Chinese novelist (born 1902)
• June 16 – Ernst Orvil, Norwegian novelist, poet and playwright (born 1898)
• July 16 – Heinrich Böll, German novelist, Nobel laureate (born 1917)
• July 8 – Leslie Paul, Anglo-Irish novelist (born 1905)
• July 29 – Judah Waten, Australian novelist (born 1911)
• August 14 – Alfred Hayes, English-born American novelist, poet and screenwriter (born 1911)
• August 30 – (Janet) Taylor Caldwell, English-born American novelist (born 1900)
• September 1 – Saunders Lewis, Welsh writer and broadcaster (Plaid Cymru) (born 1893)
• September 17 – Fran Ross, African American satirist (born 1935)
• September 22 – D. J. Opperman, South African Afrikaans poet (born 1914)
• September 27 – Leonard Gribble, English novelist (born 1908)
• October 1 – E. B. White, American children's writer and writer on style (born 1899)
• October 11 – Alex La Guma, South African novelist and political activist (born 1925)
• October 24 – László Bíró, Hungarian journalist and inventor (born 1899)
• October 31 – Nikos Engonopoulos, Greek poet (born 1903)
• November 3 – J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, English historian (born 1916)
• November 4 – Hilda Vaughan, Welsh novelist and short story writer (born 1892)
• November 6 – Sara Woods, British crime fiction writer (born 1922)
• November 11 – James Hanley, English-born novelist and dramatist of Irish extraction (born 1897)
• November 25
• Geoffrey Grigson, English poet and critic (born 1905)
• Elsa Morante, Italian novelist (born 1912)
• November 27 – Fernand Braudel, French historian (born 1902)
• December 2 – Philip Larkin, English poet (born 1922)
• December 5 – Mihail Celarianu, Romanian poet and novelist (born 1893)
• December 7 – Robert Graves, English novelist, poet and critic (born 1895)

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Claude Simon

Australia

• The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: no award given out this year
• C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Kevin Hart, Your Shadow; Rosemary Dobson, The Three Fates
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, Kevin Hart, Your Shadow
• Mary Gilmore Prize: Doris Brett, The Truth about Unicorns
• Miles Franklin Award: Christopher Koch, The Doubleman

Canada

• See 1985 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

• Prix Goncourt: Yann Queffélec, Les Noces barbares
• Prix Médicis French: Michel Braudeau, Naissance d'une passion
• Prix Médicis International: Joseph Heller, God Knows

Spain

• Miguel de Cervantes Prize: Gonzalo Torrente Ballester

United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Keri Hulme, The Bone People
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Kevin Crossley-Holland, Storm
• Cholmondeley Award: Dannie Abse, Peter Redgrove, Brian Taylor
• Eric Gregory Award: Graham Mort, Adam Thorpe, Pippa Little, James Harpur, Simon North, Julian May
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Robert Edric, Winter Garden
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: David Nokes, Jonathan Swift: A Hypocrite Reversed
• Newdigate Prize: Robert Twigger
• Whitbread Best Book Award: Douglas Dunn, Elegies

United States

• Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Liz Rosenberg, The Fire Music
• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry, Robert Penn Warren
• Frost Medal: Robert Penn Warren
• Nebula Award: Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Robin McKinley, The Hero and the Crown
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: James Lapine for book; Stephen Sondheim for music and lyrics, Sunday in the Park With George
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Alison Lurie – Foreign Affairs
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Carolyn Kizer: Yin
• Whiting Awards (inaugural year):

Fiction: Raymond Abbott, Stuart Dybek, Wright Morris (fiction/nonfiction), Howard Norman, James Robison, Austin Wright (fiction/nonfiction)

Poetry: Douglas Crase, Jorie Graham, Linda Gregg, James Schuyler

Elsewhere

• Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels: Teddy Kollek
• Premio Nadal: Pau Faner Coll – Flor de sal

References