The year 1936 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Life magazine is first published.

New books

• Eric Ambler - The Dark Frontier
• Henry Bellamann - The Gray Man Walks
• Gottfried Benn - The Trainee Man
• Arna Wendell Bontemps - Black Thunder
• Elizabeth Bowen - The House in Paris
• Carol Ryrie Brink - Caddie Woodlawn
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan's Quest
• James M. Cain - Double Indemnity
• Morley Callaghan - Now that April's Here and Other Stories
• Karel ?apek - War with the Newts
• John Dickson Carr writing as "Carter Dickson" - The Punch and Judy Murders
• Willa Cather - Not Under Forty
• Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Death on the Installment Plan
• Robert P. Tristram Coffin - John Dawn
• John Dos Passos - The Big Money
• William Pène du Bois - Otto at Sea
• Daphne du Maurier - Jamaica Inn
• Walter D. Edmonds - Drums Along the Mohawk
• William Faulkner - Absalom, Absalom!
• Aldous Huxley - Eyeless in Gaza
• Winifred Holtby - South Riding
• Arthur Joseph - Dark Metropolis
• Jonathan Latimer - The Lady in the Morgue
• Andrew Lytle - The Long Night
• Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind
• John A. Moroso - Nobody's Buddy
• Ellery Queen - Halfway House
• Ayn Rand - We the Living
• Israel Joshua Singer - The Brothers Ashkenazi
• John Steinbeck - In Dubious Battle
• Rex Stout - The Rubber Band
• S. S. Van Dine - The Kidnap Murder Case
• Ethel Lina White - The Wheel Spins (later The Lady Vanishes)

New drama

• Noel Coward
  • Tonight at 8:30
  • Present Laughter
• Federico García Lorca - Doña Rosita la soltera
• Clare Boothe Luce - The Women
• Terence Rattigan - French Without Tears

Poetry

See 1936 in poetry

Non-fiction

• C. S. Lewis - The Allegory of Love
• Edwin Muir - Scott and Scotland
• Olavi Paavolainen - Kolmannen valtakunnan vieraana

Births

• January 10 - Stephen Ambrose, controversial historian (d. 2002)
• January 22 - Joseph Wambaugh, author
• February 18 - Jean M. Auel, Earth's Children author
• May 23 - Ian Kennedy Martin, scriptwriter
• June 23 - Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull author
• June 24 - J. H. Prynne, poet
• July 22 - Tom Robbins, novelist
• August 24 - A. S. Byatt, novelist
• September 20 - Andrew Davies, TV and film writer
• October 5 - Václav Havel, dramatist and first president of the Czech Republic
• November 17 - John Wells, satirical writer and actor (d. 1998)
• November 20 - Don DeLillo, United States novelist
• date unknown - Duff Hart-Davis, biographer and journalist

Deaths

• January 18 - Rudyard Kipling, British writer - Nobel prize for literature (1907)
• March 16 - Marguerite Durand, journalist
• April 30 - A. E. Housman, poet
• June 11 - Robert E. Howard, American fantasy writer (suicide)
• June 12 - M. R. James, writer of ghost stories
• June 14 - G. K. Chesterton, author
• June 14 - Maxim Gorky, dramatist
• August 19 - Federico García Lorca, dramatist and poet
• November 12 - Stefan Grabinski, "the Polish Poe"
• December 10 - Luigi Pirandello, dramatist and novelist
• December 28 - John Cornford, Communist poet
• Grazia Deledda, Sardinian (Italy) writer - Nobel prize for literature (1926)

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Winifred Holtby, South Riding
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Edward Sackville West, A Flame in Sunlight: The Life and Work of Thomas de Quincey
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Carol Ryrie Brink, Caddie Woodlawn
• Nobel Prize for literature: Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert E. Sherwood, Idiot's Delight
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert P. Tristram Coffin: Strange Holiness
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Harold L. Davis - Honey in the Horn

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