See also: 1938 in literature, other events of 1939, 1940 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• December 25 - A Christmas Carol was read before a radio audience for the first time.
• The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West is published.
• Finnegans Wake by James Joyce is published.
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is published.

New books

• The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
• Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal - Aime Cesaire
• Children of God - Vardis Fisher
• The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
• Drums at Dusk - Arna Wendell Bontemps
• Files on Parade - John O'Hara
• Finnegans Wake - James Joyce
• The Gladiators - Arthur Koestler
• The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
• Let Me Breathe Thunder - William Attaway
• Listen for the Voices - Anne Colver
• Magna - Zona Gale
• The Mask of Dimitrios - Eric Ambler
• The Mysterious Mickey Finn - Elliot Paul
• Melbourne - David Cecil
• Moses, Man Of The Mountain - Zora Neale Hurston
• The Nazarene - Sholem Asch
• Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats – T. S. Eliot
• The Outsider and Others - H. P. Lovecraft
• The Patriot - Pearl S. Buck
• The Snows of Kilimanjaro - Ernest Hemingway
• Studies in Iconology - Erwin Panofsky
• Thimble Summer - Elizabeth Enright
• The Tree of Liberty - Elizabeth Page
• If I Forget Thee Jerusalem (The Wild Palms/Old Man) - William Faulkner

Births

• Michael Moorcock, English science fiction author
• august 1 - Robert James Waller, American novelist

Deaths

• January 28 - William Butler Yeats, writer

Awards

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Enright , Thimble Summer
• Nobel Prize for literature: Frans Eemil Sillanpää
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, Abe Lincoln in Illinois
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: John Gould Fletcher: Selected Poems
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - The Yearling