The year 1942 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• André Gide leaves France to live in Tunis.
• Robertson Davies becomes editor of the Peterborough Examiner.
• Thomas Mann emigrates to California.
• James Hilton wins an Oscar for the screenplay of Mrs. Miniver.
• The New York Times launches influential New York Times Best Seller list.

New fiction books

• John Steinbeck - The Moon is Down
• Samuel Hopkins Adams - The Harvey Girls
• Henry Bellamann - Floods of Spring
• Earl Birney - David
• Jean Bruller - Le Silence de la mer
• Taylor Caldwell - The Strong City
• Albert Camus - The Stranger (L'Étranger)
• John Dickson Carr writing as "Carter Dickson" - The Gilded Man
• Joyce Cary - To Be a Pilgrim
• Raymond Chandler - The High Window
• Agatha Christie - Five Little Pigs
• Lloyd C. Douglas - The Robe
• Daphne du Maurier - Frenchman's Creek
• Rachel Field - And Now Tomorrow
• Robert A. Heinlein - Beyond This Horizon
• Kalki Krishnamurthy - Parthiban Kanavu
• C. S. Lewis - The Screwtape Letters
• Janette Sebring Lowrey - The Poky Little Puppy
• Beryl Markham - West with the Night
• Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities
• Annie Greene Nelson - After The Storm
• Ellery Queen - Calamity Town
• Raymond Queneau - Pierrot mon ami
• Clayton Rawson - No Coffin for the Corpse
• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - Cross Creek
• Nevil Shute - Pied Piper
• Curt Siodmak - Donovan's Brain
• Clark Ashton Smith - Out of Space and Time
• Rex Stout - Black Orchids
• Evelyn Waugh - Put Out More Flags
• Rebecca West - Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
• Cornell Woolrich - Black Alibi

New drama

• Jean Anouilh - Antigone
• Kaj Munk - Niels Ebbesen
• Eugene O'Neill - A Touch of the Poet - (not performed until 1958)

Poetry

• T. S. Eliot - Little Gidding

Non-fiction

• Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe)
• Edith Hamilton - Mythology
• Aldous Huxley - The Art of Seeing
• C. S. Lewis - A Preface to Paradise Lost
• Elliot Paul - The Last Time I Saw Paris
• Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. - Picketing Hell
• Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Flight to Arras

Births

• January 31 - Derek Jarman, director, writer (d. 1994)
• February 1 - Terry Jones, comedian and writer
• March 2 - John Irving, novelist
• April 1 - Samuel R. Delany, novelist and critic
• April 4 - Kitty Kelley, journalist and biographer
• April 6 - Barry Levinson, screenwriter, director and producer
• August 2 - Isabel Allende, novelist
• August 7 - Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days author
• October 23 - Michael Crichton, author (d. 2008)
• October 23 - Douglas Dunn, poet
• December 6 - Peter Handke, Austrian novelist
• date unknown - Gladys Cardiff, poet
• date unknown - Craig Thomas, novelist

Deaths

• April 24 - Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables novelist
• May 26 - Libero Bovio, Neapolitan dialect poet
• June 30 - Léon Daudet, journalist
• July 20 - Moses Annenberg, publisher
• September 19 - Condé Nast, magazine publisher
• September 26 - Oskar Kraus, philosopher
• October 14 - Cosmo Hamilton, dramatist and novelist
• October 20 - Friedrich Münzer, classical scholar
• 23 December - Konstantin Bal'mont, poet
• date unknown - Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson, Greyfriars Bobby author

Awards

• Carnegie Medal: Denys Watkins-Pitchford
• Frost Medal: Edgar Lee Masters
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Arthur Waley, Translation of Monkey by Wu Cheng'en
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, Henry Ponsonby: Queen Victoria's Private Secretary
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Walter D. Edmonds, The Matchlock Gun
• Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: not awarded
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: William Rose Benet, The Dust Which Is God
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Ellen Glasgow, In This Our Life

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