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1987 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1987.

Events

  • January 2 – Golliwogs in Enid Blyton children's books are replaced by the British publisher with gnomes after complaints of a racial offence implication.
  • April – K. W. Jeter coins the term "Steampunk" in a letter published in Locus: the magazine of the science fiction & fantasy field.
  • June – Virago Press of London publishes Down the Road, Worlds Away, a collection of short stories ostensibly by Rahila Khan, a young Muslim woman living in England. Three weeks later, Toby Forward, an Anglican clergyman, admits to writing them and the publisher withdraws the book. "He, unlike the editors at Virago, had grown up in precisely the kind of area and social conditions that the book described.... Although the book never claimed to be other than a work of fiction, the publishers destroyed the stock still in the warehouse and recalled all unsold copies from the bookshops, thus turning it into an expensive bibliographical rarity."
  • July 31 – The United Kingdom Attorney General takes legal proceedings on security grounds against the London paper The Daily Telegraph to prevent it publishing details of the book Spycatcher. On September 23, an Australian court lifts its ban on the book's publication.
  • August – A new building for the National Library of New Zealand in Wellington opens.
  • unknown dates
  • Tom Wolfe is paid US$5 million for the film rights to his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities (published in book format in October), a record fee to an author at this time.
  • Ian Rankin's Knots and Crosses, first of the Inspector Rebus detective novels set around Edinburgh, is published in London.

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards

Australia

Canada

France

United Kingdom

United States

Fiction: Joan Chase, Pam Durban, Deborah Eisenberg, Alice McDermott, David Foster Wallace
Poetry: Mark Cox, Michael Ryan
Nonfiction: Mindy Aloff, Gretel Ehrlich
Plays: Reinaldo Povod

Elsewhere

Notes

References