The year '''1961 in literature''' involved some significant events and new books.

==Events==
*First English production of Bertolt Brecht's ''The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui''
*Michael Halliday publishes his seminal paper on the systemic functional grammar model.
*Sylvia Plath suffers a miscarriage.
*William Golding spends a year as writer in residence at Hollins College, Virginia, USA.
*In May, Grove Press publishes 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 tested American laws on pornography in the 1960s.

==New books==
*Brian Aldiss - ''The Primal Urge'' 
*Poul Anderson - ''Three Hearts and Three Lions'' 
*J. G. Ballard - ''The Wind From Nowhere'' 
*Pat Boone - '''Twixt Twelve and Twenty'' 
*Morley Callaghan - ''A Passion in Rome'' 
*A. J. Cronin - ''The Judas Tree''
*Roald Dahl - ''James and the Giant Peach'' 
*L. Sprague de Camp - ''The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate'' 
*August Derleth - ''The Reminiscences of Solar Pons'' 
*Thunderball''  
*Ernest K. Gann - ''Fate Is the Hunter''
*Winston Graham - ''Marnie''
*Harry Harrison - ''The Stainless Steel Rat'' 
*Robert A. Heinlein - ''Stranger in a Strange Land'' 
*Joseph Heller - ''Catch-22''
*John Hersey - ''The Wall'' 
*Patricia Highsmith - ''This Sweet Sickness''
*Richard Hughes -''The Fox in the Attic''
*Norton Juster - ''The Phantom Tollbooth''
*Margaret Laurence - ''The Stone Angel'' 
*John le Carré - ''Call for the Dead''
*H. P. Lovecraft - ''The Shunned House''
*Gabriel García Márquez - ''No One Writes to the Colonel (El coronel no tiene quien le escriba)''
*Iris Murdoch - ''A Severed Head''  
*V. S. Naipaul - ''A House for Mr. Biswas'' 
*R. K. Narayan - ''The Man-Eater of Malgudi''
*Juan Carlos Onetti - ''El astillero'' (The Shipyard) 
*Walker Percy - ''The Moviegoer'' 
*Harold Robbins - ''The Carpetbaggers'' 
*J. D. Salinger - ''Franny and Zooey''
*Leonardo Sciascia - ''Il giorno della civetta''
*Muriel Spark - ''The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'' 
*John Steinbeck - ''The Winter of Our Discontent'' 
*The Agony and the Ecstasy'' 
*Rex Stout - ''The Final Deduction''
*Theodore Sturgeon - ''Some of Your Blood''
*Leon Uris - ''Mila 18''  
*Rose Valland - ''Le front de l'art'' 
*H. Russell Wakefield - ''Strayers from Sheol'' 
*Edward Lewis Wallant - ''The Pawnbroker'' 
*Morris West - ''Daughter of Silence''
*Richard Yates -''Revolutionary Road'' 
*Yevgeny Yevtushenko - ''Zima Junction''

==New drama==
*Samuel Beckett - ''Rough for Radio I'', ''Rough for Radio II''
*A Far Country''
*Andorra''
*Heiner Müller - ''Die Umsiedlerin'' (''The Resettler Woman'')
*Luther''
*Neil Simon - ''Come Blow Your Horn''
*Tennessee Williams - ''The Night of the Iguana''

==Poetry==

*August Derleth editor - ''Fire and Sleet and Candlelight''

''Zobacz też:'' inne wydarzenia 1961 roku, 1962 w literaturze, literatura - przegląd chronologiczny, literatura polska - przegląd chronologiczny.

==Wydarzenia==
* polskie
**ukazał się pierwszy numer Odra''
* zagraniczne
**w Dortmundzie rozpoczęła działalność Grupa 61, grupa niemieckich pisarzy i publicystów

==Nowe książki==
* polskie
**  
**Elżbieta Jackiewiczowa
***''Listy o trudnym dojrzewaniu''
***''Tancerze''
**Solaris'' 
**Alfred Szklarski – ''Tomek na tropach Yeti''
**Lucjan Wolanowski – ''Zwierciadło bogini. Reporter w kraju tranzystorów i gejsz''
* zagraniczne
**Agatha Christie
***''Double Sin and Other Stories'' – Agatha Christie
***''Tajemnica bladego konia'' (''The Pale Horse'')
**Joseph Heller – ''Paragraf 22'' (''Catch-22'')  
**Yasunari Kawabata – ''Śpiące piękności'' (''眠れる美女'')
**Gabriel García Márquez – ''Nie ma kto pisać do pułkownika'' (''El coronel no tiene quien le escriba'')
**John Steinbeck – ''Zima naszej goryczy'' (''The Winter of Our Discontent'')  
**Irving Stone – ''Udręka i ekstatza'' (''The Agony and the Ecstasy'')
**Junichirō Tanizaki – ''Dziennik szalonego starca'' (''瘋癲老人日記'')
**Patrick White – ''Wóz ognisty'' (''Riders in the Chariot'')

==Nowe dramaty==
* zagraniczne
**Tennessee Williams – ''Noc iguany'' (''The Night of the Iguana'')

==Nowe poezje==
* polskie
**Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński (pośmiertnie) – ''Utwory zebrane''