May – Grove Press publishes Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer in the United States 27 years after its original publication in France. The book leads to one of many obscenity trials (Grove Press, Inc., v. Gerstein) that test American laws on pornography in the 1960s.
May 27 – The British bookseller WHSmith closes the last of its in-store circulating library branches.[5]
August 18 – The British magazine Tribune publishes a letter from playwright John Osborne beginning "Damn You, England..."[6]
September 8 – Publication of the science fiction novel series Perry Rhodan, der Erbe des Universums, originally written by K. H. Scheer and Walter Ernsting, is begun by Arthur Moewig Verlag in Germany in Romanhefte (partwork) format. It is then published every week, attaining more than 2880 issues and around two billion total copies sold worldwide by the end of 2016.[7]
November 10 – Joseph Heller's satirical novel Catch-22 is first put on sale by Simon & Schuster in the United States, after favorable advance reviews in October. Heller has been working on the book since 1953, based on his experiences as a bombardier during World War II. Its title, which becomes a phrase referring to a no-win situation, had previously been Catch-18.[9][10]
^Michael R. Collings (1 January 1986). Brian Aldiss. Wildside Press LLC. p. 15. ISBN978-0-916732-74-5.
^Norris J. Lacy; Geoffrey Ashe; Sandra Ness Ihle (5 September 2013). The New Arthurian Encyclopedia: New edition. Routledge. p. 8. ISBN978-1-136-60633-5.
^John Dickson Carr (1961). The Witch of the Low-tide: An Edwardian Melodrama. Harper.
^Benjamin Mangrum (November 2018). Land of Tomorrow: Postwar Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism. Oxford University Press. p. 87. ISBN978-0-19-090937-6.
^Randall Stevenson (1993). A Reader's Guide to the Twentieth-century Novel in Britain. University Press of Kentucky. p. 91. ISBN0-8131-0823-3.
^James Kennaway (1 July 2010). Household Ghosts: A James Kennaway Omnibus: A James Kennaway Omnibus. Canongate Books. p. 1. ISBN978-1-84767-494-4.
^Sharon Rose Wilson (1993). Margaret Atwood's fairy-tale sexual politics. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. 354. ISBN978-1-61703-424-4.
^The Bookmark. New York State Library. 1961. p. 131.
^Russell Kirk (1980). Modern Age. Foundation for Foreign Affairs. p. 74.
^Anthony Boxill (1983). V.S. Naipaul's Fiction: In Quest of The Enemy. York Press. p. 7. ISBN978-0-919966-34-5.
^Dr. Paul Jordan (2006). The Author in the Office: Narrative Writing in Twentieth-century Argentina and Uruguay. Tamesis Books. p. 24. ISBN978-1-85566-126-4.
^Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (London, England) (2001). The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion. The Society. p. 214.
^Michael B. Snyder (2003). Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 240. ISBN978-0-313-31346-2.
^H. Paul Varley (1984). Japanese Culture. University of Hawaii Press. p. 248. ISBN978-0-8248-0927-0.
^John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1969). Reports of the President and of the Treasurer. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. p. 184.
^Popova, Maria (17 April 2013). "The Artists' & Writers' Cookbook: A Rare 1961 Treasure Trove of Unusual Recipes and Creative Wit". The Marginalian.
^Christian Haase (2007). Pragmatic Peacemakers: Institutes of International Affairs and the Liberalization of West Germany 1945-73. Wissner-Verlag. p. 198. ISBN978-3-89639-603-7.
^Edmund Byrne (11 March 1992). Work, Inc.: A Philosophical Inquiry. Temple University Press. p. 297. ISBN978-0-87722-957-5.
^"Arnaldur Indriðason". Reykjavik UNESCO City of Literature. Archived from the original on 5 August 2020. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
^Richard Burt (2007). Shakespeares After Shakespeare: An Encyclopedia of the Bard in Mass Media and Popular Culture. Greenwood Press. p. 745. ISBN978-0-313-33118-3.
^Benjamin F. Shearer, ed. (September 2006). Home Front Heroes [Three Volumes]. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 187. ISBN978-0-313-04705-3.
^Douglas Coupland (May 1993). Shampoo Planet. Simon and Schuster. p. 309. ISBN978-0-671-75506-5.
^Hellman, Lilian, Introduction to posthumous Hammett, Dashiell, The Big Knockover: Selected Stories and Short Novels (Houghton Mifflin: 1962).
^Collector's Quest. 1968. p. 38.
^John Arthur Garraty; Mark Christopher Carnes (1999). American National Biography. Oxford University Press. p. 544. ISBN978-0-19-512800-0.
^Carolyn Wedin Sylvander (1981). Jessie Redmon Fauset, Black American Writer. Whitston Publishing Company. p. 23. ISBN978-0-87875-196-9.
^"George S. Kaufman Dies at 71". The New York Times. June 3, 1961. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
^"Peyami Safa (1899)- (15.06.1961)" (in Turkish). Biyografi. Retrieved January 14, 2013.
^Vitoux, Frédéric (1991). Céline: A Biography. New York: Paragon House. ISBN1-55778-255-5 Pages=551-7
^Reynolds, Michael (2000). "Ernest Hemingway, 1899–1961: A Brief Biography". in Wagner-Martin, Linda (ed). A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN978-0-19-512152-0, page 16
^Crowe-Grande, Trish (9 August 2020). "Exploring the early years of Newmarket literary icon Mazo de la Roche". NewmarketToday.ca. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
^Elaine Showalter; Lea Baechler; A. Walton Litz (27 September 1993). Modern American Women Writers. Simon and Schuster. p. 81. ISBN978-0-02-082025-3.
^Dan Campion (1995). Peter De Vries and Surrealism. Bucknell University Press. p. 55. ISBN978-0-8387-5311-8.
^Library of Congress. Latin American, Portuguese, and Spanish Division (1974). The Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape: a descriptive guide. Library of Congress. p. 92. ISBN978-0-8444-0115-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Daniel Hahn; Michael Morpurgo (2015). The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. Oxford University Press. p. 249. ISBN978-0-19-969514-0.
^Southern Observer: Southern Books and Authors, Publishing Notes, Best Sellers, Special Features. 1962. p. 90.
^Nicholas Maes (23 March 2009). Robertson Davies: Magician of Words. Dundurn. p. 225. ISBN978-1-77070-505-0.
^French News. Published and distributed by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. 1963. p. 3.