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This page gives a chronological list of years in literature (descending order), with notable publications listed with their respective years and a small selection of notable events. The time covered in individual years covers Renaissance, Baroque and Modern literature, while Medieval literature is resolved by century.

Note: List of years in poetry exists specifically for poetry.

See Table of years in literature for an overview of all "year in literature" pages.

21st century

Several attempts have been made to create a list of world literature. Among these are the great books project including the book series Great Books of the Western World, now containing 60 volumes. In 1998 Modern Library, an American publishing company, polled its editorial board to find the best 100 novels of the 20th century: Modern Library 100 Best Novels. These attempts have been criticized for their anglophone bias and disregard of other literary traditions.

2010s

• 2016 in literature –
• 2015 in literature – Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train
• 2014 in literature – Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes
• 2013 in literature – Dan Brown's Inferno; Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch
• 2012 in literature – John Grisham's The Racketeer; Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl; Zadie Smith's NW;
• 2011 in literature – E. L. James' – Fifty Shades of Grey; Alexis Jenni's L'Art français de la guerre; Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child; Hisham Matar's Anatomy of a Disappearance; Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife; Death of Patrick Leigh Fermor, Édouard Glissant, Josephine Hart, Václav Havel, Christopher Hitchens, Russell Hoban, Brian Jacques, Diana Wynne Jones, Dick King-Smith, Agota Kristof, Arnošt Lustig, Anne McCaffrey, Gonzalo Rojas, Joanna Russ, Ernesto Sabato, Moacyr Scliar, Tomás Segovia, Jorge Semprún, Christa Wolf
• 2010 in literature – Haruki Murakami's Ichi-kyū-hachi-yon (1Q84 [Book 3]); Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes; Emma Donoghue's Room; Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings; 1970 Lost Man Booker Prize awarded; Death of Louis Auchincloss, Beryl Bainbridge, Ruth Cohn, Miguel Delibes, Philippa Foot, Martin Gardner, Tony Judt, Frank Kermode, David Markson, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Harry Mulisch, J. D. Salinger, José Saramago, Erich Segal, Alan Sillitoe, Howard Zinn

2000s

• 2009 in literature – Haruki Murakami's Ichi-kyū-hachi-yon (1Q84 [Books 1 and 2]); Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn; Reki Kawahara's Sword Art Online; Lev Grossman's The Magicians; Death of J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer, Frank McCourt, Budd Schulberg, John Updike
• 2008 in literature – Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger; Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games; Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book; Death of Michael Crichton, Arthur C. Clarke, David Foster Wallace, Robert Giroux, Harold Pinter, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Studs Terkel, Margaret Truman
• 2007 in literature – J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (final book in the Harry Potter series); Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine; Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest; Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid; Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind; Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great; Death of Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut
• 2006 in literature – Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion; Roberto Saviano's Gormorra (Gomorrah); Gerbrand Bakker's Boven is het stil (The Twin); Cormac McCarthy's The Road; Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire; Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself; Death of Peter Benchley, Betty Friedan, Naguib Mahfouz, John McGahern, Muriel Spark, Mickey Spillane, Wendy Wasserstein
• 2005 in literature – Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go; John Banville's The Sea; Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief; Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted; Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Stephanie Meyer's Twilight; Carrie Vaughn's Kitty and the Midnight Hour; Death of John Fowles, Elizabeth Janeway, Arthur Miller, Claude Simon
• 2004 in literature – Philip Roth's The Plot Against America; José Saramago's Ensaio sobre a Lucidez (Seeing); Colm Tóibín's The Master; Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty; Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture; Roberto Bolaño's 2666; David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas; Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell; Death of Janet Frame, Stieg Larsson, Czesław Miłosz, Françoise Sagan, Hubert Selby, Jr., Susan Sontag
• 2003 in literature – Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code; Per Petterson's Ut og stjæle hester (Out Stealing Horses); Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner; Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas; Christopher Paolini's Eragon; Jonathan Stroud's The Amulet of Samarkand; Death of Edward Said, Howard Fast
• 2002 in literature – Orhan Pamuk's Kar (Snow); Haruki Murakami's Umibe no Kafuka (Kafka on the Shore); Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated; Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex; Neil Gaiman's Coraline; Death of Camilo José Cela, John B. Keane, Chaim Potok
• 2001 in literature – Tahar Ben Jelloun's Cette aveuglante absence de lumière (This Blinding Absence of Light); Neil Gaiman's American Gods; Yann Martel's Life of Pi; Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections; W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz; Ian McEwan's Atonement; Ann Brashare's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants; Brian Jacques' Castaways of the Flying Dutchman; Death of Douglas Adams, Ken Kesey, Robert Ludlum, Auberon Waugh (son of Evelyn Waugh)
• 2000 in literature – Zadie Smith's White Teeth; Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; Naomi Klein's No Logo; Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat; Dan Brown's Angels & Demons; Maeve Binchy's Scarlet Feather; Death of Sally Amis (daughter of Sir Kingsley and brother of Martin), Charles M. Schulz

20th century

1990s

• 1999 in literature – J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace; Joanne Harris's Chocolat; Colm Tóibín's The Blackwater Lightship; Julia Donaldson's The Gruffalo; Neil Gaiman's Stardust; Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon; Death of Iris Murdoch, Sarah Kane, Joseph Heller, Mario Puzo, John F. Kennedy Jr.
• 1998 in literature – Orhan Pamuk's Benim Adım Kırmızı (My Name Is Red); Julian Barnes's England, England; Ian McEwan's Amsterdam; Beryl Bainbridge's Master Georgie; Michel Houellebecq's Les Particules élémentaires (Atomised); Michael Connelly's Blood Work; Bret Easton Ellis's Glamorama; Louis Sachar's Holes; Diana Wynne Jones' Dark Lord of Derkholm; Death of Carlos Castaneda, Octavio Paz, Lawrence Sanders, Benjamin Spock
• 1997 in literature – J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone; Don DeLillo's Underworld; Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things; Death of William S. Burroughs, James Dickey, James A. Michener, P. H. Newby
• 1996 in literature – Inaugural International Dublin Literary Award and Orange Prize for Fiction awarded; David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest; Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary; Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes; Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club; Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins's Left Behind; Death of Erma Bombeck, Joseph Brodsky, Marguerite Duras, Timothy Leary, Carl Sagan
• 1995 in literature – James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy; José Saramago's Ensaio sobre a cegueira (Blindness); Haruki Murakami's Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle); Philip Pullman's Northern Lights; Samuel R. Delany's Hogg; Dean Koontz's Intensity; Death of Kingsley Amis, Olga Ivinskaya (mistress of Boris Pasternak)
• 1994 in literature – Herta Müller's Herztier (The Land of Green Plums); Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries; Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule; Antonio Tabucchi's Pereira Maintains; Death of Elias Canetti, James Clavell, Ralph Ellison, Eugène Ionesco
• 1993 in literature – Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting; Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong; Richard Paul Evans's The Christmas Box; Death of Kōbō Abe, Anthony Burgess, William Golding, William L. Shirer
• 1992 in literature – Harry Mulisch's De Ontdekking van de Hemel (The Discovery of Heaven); Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands; Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient; Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses; Michael Connelly's The Black Echo; Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger; Dean Koontz's Hideaway; Death of Richard Yates
• 1991 in literature – José Saramago's O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ); Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho; Josephine Hart's Damage; Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey; P. J. O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores; Henning Mankell's Mördare utan ansikte (Faceless Killers – first in the Wallander series); Koji Suzuki's Ring; Death of Graham Greene, Isaac Bashevis Singer
• 1990 in literature – John McGahern's Amongst Women; W. G. Sebald's Vertigo; Raphael Patai's The Hebrew Goddess; Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World; Maeve Binchy's Circle of Friends; Brian Friel's play Dancing at Lughnasa first performed; Death of Roald Dahl, Malcolm Forbes, Alberto Moravia, Walker Percy, Anya Seton, Patrick White

1980s

• 1989 in literature – Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day; John Banville's The Book of Evidence; Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club; Death of Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard
• 1988 in literature – Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses; Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media; Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time; Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda; Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming Pool Library; Grazyna Miller's Curriculum, Umberto Eco's Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum)
• 1987 in literature – Toni Morrison's Beloved; Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities; Haruki Murakami's Noruwei no mori (Norwegian Wood); Tom Clancy's Patriot Games; Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore; Stephen King's Misery; Dean Koontz's Watchers; Death of Primo Levi
• 1986 in literature – Thomas Bernhard's Extinction; Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Supremacy; Caryl Churchill's A Mouthful of Birds; Stephen King's It; Brian Lumley's Necroscope; Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart; Brian Jacques' Redwall; Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle; Death of Jorge Luis Borges, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Genet, Christopher Isherwood, Juan Rulfo, Jaroslav Seifert
• 1985 in literature – Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale; Gabriel García Márquez's El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera); Patrick Süskind's Perfume; Carlos Fuentes's The Old Gringo; Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game; Death of Italo Calvino
• 1984 in literature – Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being; José Saramago's O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis (The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis); Don DeLillo's White Noise; Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot; Milorad Pavić's Dictionary of the Khazars; Antonio Tabucchi's Indian Nocturne; Glen Cook's The Black Company; Death of Truman Capote, Michel Foucault
• 1983 in literature – J. M. Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K; Salman Rushdie's Shame; Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic (first Discworld novel); Ken Follett's On Wings of Eagles; Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings; Stephen King's Pet Sematary; Dean Koontz's Phantoms; Palanca Awardee's Luha ng Buwaya; Death of Arthur Koestler
• 1982 in literature – José Saramago's Memorial do Convento (Baltasar and Blimunda); Alice Walker's The Color Purple; Primo Levi's Se non ora, quando? (If Not Now, When?); Isabel Allende's La casa de los espíritus (The House of the Spirits); Charles Bukowski's Ham on Rye; Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet; Stephen King's The Gunslinger; The Belgariad; Death of Philip K. Dick
• 1981 in literature – Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; Thomas Harris's Red Dragon; Death of Christy Brown
• 1980 in literature – John le Carré's Smiley's People; J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians; Anthony Burgess's Earthly Powers; Umberto Eco's Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose); John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces; Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife; Brian Friel's play Translations first performed; Death of Jean-Paul Sartre

1970s

• 1979 in literature – Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Italo Calvino's Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore (If on a winter's night a traveler); V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River, Milan Kundera's Kniha smíchu a zapomnění (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting); William Styron's Sophie's Choice; Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song; Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Abel; Flora Thompson's Heatherley; Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise; Death of J. G. Farrell
• 1978 in literature – John Irving's The World According to Garp; J. G. Farrell's The Singapore Grip; Stephen King's The Stand; Harold Pinter's Betrayal
• 1977 in literature – Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea; Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon; Stephen King's The Shining; J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion; Frederick Pohl's Gateway; Diana Wynne Jones' Charmed Life; Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts; Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara; Death of Vladimir Nabokov
• 1976 in literature – Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire; Richard Yates's The Easter Parade; Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's The Final Days; Samuel R. Delany's Triton; Alex Haley's Roots: The Saga of an American Family
• 1975 in literature – James Clavell's Shōgun; Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot; Jorge Luis Borges's The Book of Sand; Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren; E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime; Carlos Fuentes' Terra Nostra; James Herbert's The Fog; Diana Wynne Jones' Cart and Cwidder; Death of P. G. Wodehouse
• 1974 in literature – Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward's All the President's Men; Stephen King's Carrie; Peter Benchley's Jaws; Erica Jong's Fear of Flying; James Herbert's The Rats
• 1973 in literature – Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow; J. G. Ballard's Crash; J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur; Gore Vidal's Burr; Peter Shaffer's play Equus first performed; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago; Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions; Nina Bawden's Carrie's War; Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama; Dean Koontz's Demon Seed; Death of W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien
• 1972 in literature – Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull; Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives; Richard Adams's Watership Down; Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic; Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves; Death of Ezra Pound, L. P. Hartley
• 1971 in literature – Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal; Carlos Castaneda's A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan; Xaviera Hollander's The Happy Hooker: My Own Story; Rosamunde Pilcher's The End of Summer
• 1970 in literature; Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat; J. G. Farrell's Troubles; Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye; James Dickey's Deliverance; Terry Southern's Blue Movie; Jim Bouton's Ball Four; Ted Hughes's Crow; Nina Bawden's The Birds on the Trees; Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen; Larry Niven's Ringworld; Death of Máirtín Ó Cadhain; Erich Maria Remarque;

1960s

• 1969 in literature – Inaugural Booker Prize awarded to P. H. Newby's Something to Answer For; Mario Puzo's The Godfather; Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint; Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five; Vladimir Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle; Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings; John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman; Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog; Amado V. Hernandez's Mga Ibong Mandragit; Death of Jack Kerouac
• 1968 in literature – Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; Arthur Hailey's Airport; Albert Cohen's Belle du Seigneur; Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge; Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea; Samuel R. Delany's Nova; Death of John Steinbeck, Edna Ferber, Upton Sinclair, Enid Blyton
• 1967 in literature – Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude); Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited; Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman; Milan Kundera's Žert (The Joke); Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore's The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects; William Manchester's The Death of a President; Robert K. Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra; Allan W. Eckert's Wild Season; Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light; Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions; Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"; S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders; Death of Siegfried Sassoon
• 1966 in literature – Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita; Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49; Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea; Truman Capote's In Cold Blood; Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers; Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show; Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead first performed; Death of Frank O'Connor, Brian O'Nolan, Evelyn Waugh; Basil Buntings' Briggflatts; The Witch's Daughter by Nina Bawden; Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
• 1965 in literature – Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Saul Bellow's Herzog; Norman Mailer's An American Dream; John Fowles's The Magus; John McGahern's The Dark; Jerzy Kosiński's The Painted Bird; Frank Herbert's Dune; Harlan Ellison's ""Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman"; Václav Havel's The Memorandum; Death of T. S. Eliot, W. Somerset Maugham
• 1964 in literature – Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Thomas Berger's Little Big Man; Leonard Cohen's Flowers for Hitler; Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Hubert Selby, Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn; Brian Friel's play Philadelphia, Here I Come! first performed; Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings; Harold Pinter's The Homecoming; Gore Vidal's Julian; Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree; Death of Brendan Behan, Ian Fleming, Seán O'Casey; Refusal of Nobel Prize by Jean-Paul Sartre
• 1963 in literature – Thomas Pynchon's V.; Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar; Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle; Pierre Boulle's La Planete des Singes (Planet of the Apes); Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are; Václav Havel's The Garden Party; Death of Aldous Huxley, Robert Frost, Clifford Odets, Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, C. S. Lewis; John Cowper Powys
• 1962 in literature – Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook; Jorge Luis Borges's Labyrinths; Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle; Carlos Fuentes's The Death of Artemio Cruz; Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Mercè Rodoreda's The Time of the Doves; Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes'; Death of Hermann Hesse, William Faulkner, E. E. Cummings
• 1961 in literature – Joseph Heller's Catch-22; V. S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas; Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road; Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land; Stanisław Lem's Solaris; J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey; Jean Genet's The Screens; Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach; Death of Ernest Hemingway, Frantz Fanon
• 1960 in literature – William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird; Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls; John Updike's Rabbit, Run; Death of Albert Camus, Boris Pasternak, Nevil Shute, Richard Wright; Lady Chatterley trial

1950s

• 1959 in literature – William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch; Günter Grass's The Tin Drum; Heinrich Böll's Billiards at Half-past Nine; Eugène Ionesco's Rhinocéros (Rhinoceros); André Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just; Terry Southern's The Magic Christian; Alain Robbe-Grillet's In the Labyrinth; Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz; Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth; John Arden's Serjeant Musgrave's Dance; Death of Raymond Chandler
• 1958 in literature – Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart; Daniil Andreyev's Roza Mira; Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy; Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo (The Leopard); Leon Uris's Exodus; Terry Southern's Candy; Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums; Claude Simon's The Grass; R. K. Narayan's The Guide; Harold Pinter's play The Birthday Party first performed; Jean Genet's The Blacks (play); Josef Skvorecky's The Cowards
• 1957 in literature – Jack Kerouac's On the Road; Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged; Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin; Patrick White's Voss; Ted Hughes's The Hawk in the Rain, Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat and How The Grinch Stole Christmas; Max Frisch's Homo Faber; Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending; Jean Genet's The Balcony; Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party; Harold Pinter's The Room; Robert A. Heinlein's The Door into Summer; Death of Oliver St. John Gogarty, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
• 1956 in literature – Grace Metalious's Peyton Place; Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Visit; Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night; Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems; Fred Gipson's Old Yeller
• 1955 in literature – Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo; Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita; Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; J. R. R. Tolkien's The Return of the King; Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find; A View from the Bridge – Arthur Miller; Death of Thomas Mann HMS Ulysses-Alistair MacLean
• 1954 in literature – William Golding's Lord of the Flies; J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring; J. R. R. Tolkien's The Two Towers; Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception; Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim; Christy Brown's My Left Foot; William Soutar's Diaries of a Dying Man; Françoise Sagan's Bonjour tristesse; Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears A Who!; Winston Churchill's The Second World War – completed
• 1953 in literature – Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot & The Unnamable; Ian Fleming's Casino Royale (First James Bond novel); Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March; Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451; L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between; Leon Uris's Battle Cry; Arthur Miller's play The Crucible first performed; J. D. Salinger's Nine Stories
• 1952 in literature – Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea; E. B. White's Charlotte's Web; Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood; Death of Knut Hamsun
• 1951 in literature – J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye; Graham Greene's The End of the Affair; Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian; John Cowper Powys's Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages; Samuel Beckett's Molloy & Malone Dies; Isaac Asimov's Foundation
• 1950 in literature – Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles; Eugène Ionesco's The Bald Soprano; C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Isaac Asimov's I, Robot; Death of George Orwell, George Bernard Shaw

1940s

• 1949 in literature – George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four; Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman; Jean Genet's The Thief's Journal; Vilhelm Moberg's The Emigrants
• 1948 in literature – Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter; Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead
• 1947 in literature – Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl; Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus; Albert Camus's La Peste; Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire; Boris Vian's Froth on the Daydream; Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano; Jean Genet's Querelle of Brest and The Maids; Arthur Miller's All My Sons
• 1946 in literature – Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh; Nikos Kazantzakis's Zorba the Greek; George Orwell's Critical Essays; E.E. Smith's The Skylark of Space; Death of H. G. Wells
• 1945 in literature – George Orwell's Animal Farm; Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day; E.B. White's Stuart Little; Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited; Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford; John Steinbeck's Cannery Row; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn sentenced to eight years in a labour camp for criticism of Stalin
• 1944 in literature – Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit; Ivan Bunin's Dark Avenues; Jean Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers; John Hersey's A Bell for Adano; Tennessee Williams's "The Glass Menagerie"
• 1943 in literature – Jean-Paul Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew and Being and Nothingness; Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead; T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets published together for the first time; Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game); Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince; Jean Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers
• 1942 in literature – Albert Camus's Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus) and L'Étranger (The Stranger); Edith Hamilton's Mythology; Enid Blyton's Five on a Treasure Island (first in The Famous Five series); Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities; Death of Stefan Zweig
• 1941 in literature – Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts; Death of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf
• 1940 in literature – Anna Akhmatova's Requiem; Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon; Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory; Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls; Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter; Richard Wright's Native Son; Olaf Stapledon's Sirius; John Cowper Powys's Owen Glendower; Death of F. Scott Fitzgerald

1930s

• 1939 in literature – James Joyce's Finnegans Wake; Konstantine Gamsakhurdia's The Right Hand of the Grand Master; John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath; Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep; Flora Thompson's Lark Rise; Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust; Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley; Death of Sigmund Freud, W. B. Yeats
• 1938 in literature – Jean-Paul Sartre's La Nausée; Graham Greene's Brighton Rock; Evelyn Waugh's Scoop; Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn; T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone; Vladimir Bartol's Alamut
• 1937 in literature – John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men; J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, or There and Back Again; Georges Bernanos's Journal d'un Curé de Campagne (Diary of a Country Priest); Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker
• 1936 in literature – William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!; Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind; Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn; First issue of Life magazine; John Dos Passos's U.S.A trilogy; Karel Capek's War with the Newts; Killing of Federico García Lorca
• 1935 in literature – Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie; First paperback published by Penguin Books; Death of Fernando Pessoa
• 1934 in literature – F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night; Robert Graves's I, Claudius; Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer; Irving Stone's Lust for Life; Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man; James Hilton's Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Nikolai Ostrovsky's How the Steel Was Tempered; James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice; H. P. Lovecraft completes Supernatural Horror in Literature (1925–34); E.E. Smith's Triplanetary; Death of Andrei Bely
• 1933 in literature – André Malraux's La Condition Humaine (Man's Fate); Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; James Hilton's Lost Horizon; Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth; John Cowper Powys A Glastonbury Romance; Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!; Death of George Moore
• 1932 in literature – Aldous Huxley's Brave New World; Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Voyage au Bout de la Nuit (Journey to the End of the Night); Hermann Hesse's Journey to the East; William Faulkner's Light in August; Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song
• 1931 in literature – Ilf and Petrov's The Little Golden Calf; Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth; Georges Simenon's first Maigret novel
• 1930 in literature – William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying; Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon; Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit; Vladimir Nabokov's The Defence; Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men; Luigi Pirandello's The Man With the Flower in His Mouth becomes the first broadcast television drama; Sigmund Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents; Death of D. H. Lawrence

1920s

• 1929 in literature – William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury; Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms; Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz; Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front; Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That; Establishment of Faber and Faber; John Cowper Powys's Wolf Solent; Rómulo Gallegos' Doña Bárbara
• 1928 in literature – D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover; Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man; Bertholt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera; Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs; Federico Garcia Lorca's Gypsy Ballads; Death of Thomas Hardy
• 1927 in literature – Final instalment of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time; Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf; Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse; Arthur Conan Doyle's The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes; Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry; Yuri Olesha's Envy; Sigrid Undset's The Snake Pit; Martin Heidegger's Being and Time; Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey
• 1926 in literature – A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh; Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises; Sean O'Casey's play The Plough and the Stars; Franz Kafka's Das Schloß (The Castle)
• 1925 in literature – F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby; W. Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil; Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway; Franz Kafka's Der Prozeß (The Trial); Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog; André Gide's The Counterfeiters; John Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer; Death of Sergey Esenin;
• 1924 in literature – Yevgeny Zamyatin's We; Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain); E. M. Forster's A Passage to India; Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Foretopman; Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter; José Eustasio Rivera's The Vortex; Death of Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad
• 1923 in literature – Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet; Lord Peter Wimsey makes his first appearance in print; Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk
• 1922 in literature – James Joyce's Ulysses; T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land; Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha; E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros Death of Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time completed); Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies & Sonnets to Orpheus; Karel Capek's The Makropulos Affair; John Galsworthy begins writing The Forsyte Saga
• 1921 in literature – Luigi Pirandello's play, Six Characters in Search of an Author
• 1920 in literature – F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise; D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love; Sinclair Lewis's Main Street; Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence; Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (novel); Sigmund Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle; Karel Capek's R.U.R.

1910s

• 1919 in literature – W. Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence
• 1918 in literature – Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons; Alexander Blok's The Twelve; Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians; Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding; Jack London's The Red One; Death of Wilfred Owen
• 1917 in literature – T. S. Eliot's The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock; Aleister Crowley's Moonchild; Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars
• 1916 in literature – Albert Einstein's Relativity; James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Death of Henry James
• 1915 in literature – Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis; Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland; Death of Rupert Brooke
• 1914 in literature – Stephen Leacock's Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich; James Joyce's Dubliners; Disappearance of Ambrose Bierce in Mexico
• 1913 in literature – Andrei Bely's Petersburg; D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers; George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion; Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Return of Tarzan; Guillaume Apollinaire's Alcools
• 1912 in literature – Thomas Mann's Death in Venice; Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes; Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World; George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion
• 1911 in literature – Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes; Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera; Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary; Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome; Hugo Gernsback's Ralph 124C 41+; 11th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica published
• 1910 in literature – E. M. Forster's Howards End; Hanns Heinz Ewers's The Sorcerer's Apprentice; Rabindranath Tagore's Raja; Death of Leo Tolstoy

1900s

• 1909 in literature – L. Frank Baum's The Road to Oz; Hermann Sudermann's The Song of Songs
• 1908 in literature – Leonid Andreyev's The Seven Who Were Hanged; E. M. Forster's A Room with a View; Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables; Anatole France's L'île des Pingouins (Penguin Island); Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows
• 1907 in literature – Arnold Bennett's The City of Pleasure; Selma Lagerlöf's The Wonderful Adventures of Nils; Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World; August Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata; Pedro Alcantara Monteclaro's Maragtas
• 1906 in literature – Maxim Gorky's The Mother; Upton Sinclair's The Jungle; Lope K. Santos' Banaag at Sikat; Death of Henrik Ibsen
• 1905 in literature – Jack London's White Fang; Arthur Conan Doyle's The Return of Sherlock Holmes; Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain's Sultana's Dream
• 1904 in literature – Joseph Conrad's Nostromo; E. M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread; Henry James's The Golden Bowl; M. R. James's Ghost Stories of an Antiquary; Jack London's The Sea-Wolf; William Henry Hudson's Green Mansions; Wyładysław Reymont's The Peasants; Anton Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard first performed; Death of Anton Chekhov
• 1903 in literature – Henry James's The Ambassadors; Jack London's The Call of the Wild; W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk; Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars
• 1902 in literature – André Gide's The Immoralist; Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths; Henry James's The Wings of the Dove; Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles; Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit; J.M. Barrie's The Little White Bird; Leo Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness; Death of Émile Zola
• 1901 in literature – Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks; M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud; Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters; Rudyard Kipling's Kim; August Strindberg's A Dream Play; Stanisław Wyspiański's The Wedding
• 1900 in literature – L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim; Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie; Death of Oscar Wilde

19th century

1890s

• 1899 in literature – The School and Society – John Dewey; The Lady with the Dog – Anton Chekhov; The Awakening – Kate Chopin; Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad; The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman; The Interpretation of Dreams – Sigmund Freud; When We Dead Awaken – Henrik Ibsen; First printed edition of Alpamysh
• 1898 in literature – Paris – Émile Zola; The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells; The Turn of the Screw – Henry James; To Damascus – August Strindberg
• 1897 in literature – Captains Courageous – Rudyard Kipling; Uncle Vanya – Anton Chekhov; Dracula – Bram Stoker; Divagations – Stéphane Mallarmé; The Beetle – Richard Marsh; The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells
• 1896 in literature – The Island of Doctor Moreau – H. G. Wells; The Well at the World's End – William Morris; Shapes in the Fire – M.P. Shiel; The Seagull – Anton Chekhov; Inferno (Strindberg) – August Strindberg
• 1895 in literature – The Time Machine – H. G. Wells; Almayer's Folly – Joseph Conrad; Pharaoh – Bolesław Prus; Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy; The Three Impostors – Arthur Machen; Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz; The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde
• 1894 in literature – The Jungle Books – Rudyard Kipling; The Prisoner of Zenda – Anthony Hope; Pan – Knut Hamsun; The Great God Pan – Arthur Machen; Studies of Death: Romantic Tales – Stanislaus Eric Stenbock; Land of the Changing Sun – Will Harben
• 1893 in literature – The New Woman – Bolesław Prus
• 1892 in literature – The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Children of the Ghetto – Israel Zangwill; Gunga Din – Rudyard Kipling; Chitra – Rabindranath Tagore
• 1891 in literature – Tales of Soldiers and Civilians – Ambrose Bierce; Diary of a Pilgrimage – Jerome K. Jerome; Tess of the d'Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy; "The Picture of Dorian Gray"- Oscar Wilde
• 1890 in literature – Hedda Gabler – Henrik Ibsen; Hunger – Knut Hamsun; An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge – Ambrose Bierce;

1880s

• 1889 in literature – Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Friedrich Nietzsche; The Doll – Bolesław Prus; The Child of Pleasure – Gabriele d'Annunzio; Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court – Mark Twain
• 1888 in literature – The Man Who Would Be King – Rudyard Kipling; Looking Backward – Edward Bellamy; Miss Julie – August Strindberg
• 1887 in literature – She – Henry Rider Haggard; Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle; Thelma – Marie Corelli; The Father – August Strindberg; Noli me tangere – José Rizal
• 1886 in literature – L'Œuvre (The Masterpiece) – Émile Zola; Little Lord Fauntleroy – Frances Hodgson Burnett; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson; The Outpost – Bolesław Prus; The Bostonians – Henry James; The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy; Rosmersholm – Henrik Ibsen
• 1885 in literature – King Solomon's Mines – Henry Rider Haggard; Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater; Alfred, Lord Tennyson completes Idylls of the King; Germinal – Émile Zola; George A. Moore – The Mummer's Wife; The Mikado – Gilbert and Sullivan; Bel Ami – Guy de Maupassant;
• 1884 in literature – Miss Bretherton – Mary Augusta Ward; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain; With Fire and Sword – Henryk Sienkiewicz; The Wild Duck – Henrik Ibsen; Flatland – Edwin Abbott Abbott
• 1883 in literature – Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson; The Adventures of Pinocchio – Carlo Collodi; The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood – Howard Pyle
• 1882 in literature – The Prince and the Pauper – Mark Twain; The Naval War of 1812 – Theodore Roosevelt
• 1881 in literature – The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James; The Black Robe – Wilkie Collins; Ghosts (play) – Henrik Ibsen
• 1880 in literature – Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace; Workers in the Dawn – George Gissing; Nana – Émile Zola; The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky; Birth of Andrei Bely

1870s

• 1879 in literature – The Red Room – August Strindberg; A Doll's House – Henrik Ibsen
• 1878 in literature – H.M.S. Pinafore – Gilbert and Sullivan
• 1877 in literature – Under the Lilacs – Louisa May Alcott; Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy; L'Assommoir – Émile Zola; Black Beauty – Anna Sewell; Povídky malostranské ("Tales of the Little Quarter") – Jan Neruda;
• 1876 in literature – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain; The Shadow of the Sword – Robert Buchanan; The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs – William Morris; An Ancient Tale – Józef Ignacy Kraszewski
• 1875 in literature – The Way We Live Now – Anthony Trollope; Beauchamp's Career – George Meredith
• 1874 in literature – Les Diaboliques – Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly; Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
• 1873 in literature – Around the World in 80 Days – Jules Verne; The Poison Tree – Bankim Chatterjee; Red Cotton Night-Cap Country – Robert Browning
• 1872 in literature – The Birth of Tragedy – Friedrich Nietzsche; In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu; The Princess and the Goblin – George MacDonald; Erewhon – Samuel Butler
• 1871 in literature – Middlemarch – George Eliot; Through the Looking-Glass – Lewis Carroll; Le bateau ivre – Arthur Rimbaud; The Coming Race – Edward Bulwer-Lytton
• 1870 in literature – Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne; Venus in Furs – Leopold von Sacher-Masoch; Lothair – Benjamin Disraeli

1860s

• 1869 in literature – War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy; L'Education Sentimentale – Gustave Flaubert; Les Chants de Maldoror – Comte de Lautréamont; Lorna Doone – R. D. Blackmore; The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky; The Brick Moon – Edward Everett Hale
• 1868 in literature – Little Women – Louisa May Alcott; The Luck of Roaring Camp – Bret Harte; The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins; Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man – Aleksandr Ostrovsky
• 1867 in literature – The Gambler – Fyodor Dostoevsky; Peer Gynt – Henrik Ibsen; Das Kapital – Karl Marx
• 1866 in literature – Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky; Poems and Ballads – Algernon Charles Swinburne
• 1865 in literature – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll; Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens; From the Earth to the Moon – Jules Verne
• 1864 in literature – Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu; Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne; Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoyevsky; María – Jorge Isaacs
• 1863 in literature – Capitan Fracassa – Théophile Gautier
• 1862 in literature – Les Misérables – Victor Hugo; Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev; Salammbô – Gustave Flaubert
• 1861 in literature – Silas Marner – George Eliot; Framley Parsonage – Anthony Trollope; Great Expectations – Charles Dickens; East Lynne – Mrs Henry Wood; The Forest of Anykščiai – Antanas Baranauskas
• 1860 in literature – Max Havelaar – Multatuli; The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot; The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

1850s

• 1859 in literature – A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens; The Ordeal of Richard Feverel – George Meredith; Oblomov – Ivan Goncharov; On the Origin of Species – Charles Darwin; La Légende des siècles – Victor Hugo; The Storm (play) – Aleksandr Ostrovsky; A Bitter Fate – Aleksey Pisemsky
• 1858 in literature – A House of Gentlefolk – Ivan Turgenev; Phantastes – George MacDonald
• 1857 in literature – Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert; Little Dorritt – Charles Dickens; Les Fleurs du mal – Charles Baudelaire; The Virginians – William Makepeace Thackeray; Tom Brown's Schooldays – Thomas Hughes; The Hasheesh Eater – Fitz Hugh Ludlow
• 1856 in literature – The Daisy Chain – Charlotte Mary Yonge; Aurora Leigh – Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Lilies In December – Agustus Montrose
• 1855 in literature – North and South (Gaskell novel) – Elizabeth Gaskell; The Grandmother – Božena Němcová; Westward Ho! – Charles Kingsley;The Song of Hiawatha – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman; A Month in the Country – Ivan Turgenev
• 1854 in literature – Walden – Henry David Thoreau; The Newcomes – William Makepeace Thackeray
• 1853 in literature – Ruth (novel) – Elizabeth Gaskell; Bleak House by Charles Dickens is the first English novel to feature a detective; The Heir of Redclyffe – Charlotte Mary Yonge; The Scholar Gipsy – Matthew Arnold; Bartleby, the Scrivener – Herman Melville
• 1852 in literature – Uncle Tom's Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe; A Sportsman's Sketches – Ivan Turgenev
• 1851 in literature – Moby-Dick – Herman Melville; Cranford (novel) – Elizabeth Gaskell; Lavengro – George Borrow; The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne; A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys – Nathaniel Hawthorne
• 1850 in literature – The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne; David Copperfield – Charles Dickens, Household Words edited by Charles Dickens begins publication; Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day – Robert Browning

1840s

• 1849 in literature – David Copperfield – Charles Dickens, published as a serial in installments; The Oregon Trail – Francis Parkman; Annabel Lee – Edgar Allan Poe
• 1848 in literature – The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë; Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray; The Lady of the Camellias – Alexandre Dumas, fils; Yeast – Charles Kingsley
• 1847 in literature – The Vicomte de Bragelonne – Alexandre Dumas, père; Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë; The Children of the New Forest – Frederick Marryat; Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë; Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë; Evangeline – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Tancred – Benjamin Disraeli
• 1846 in literature – Cousin Bette – Honoré de Balzac
• 1845 in literature – The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas, père; Twenty Years After – Alexandre Dumas, père; La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas, père; Stages on Life's Way – Søren Kierkegaard; The Raven – Edgar Allan Poe; Facundo – Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
• 1844 in literature – The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas, père
• 1843 in literature – A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens; Windsor Castle – William Harrison Ainsworth; Either/Or – Søren Kierkegaard; Repetition (Kierkegaard) – Søren Kierkegaard; The Ugly Duckling – Hans Christian Andersen; Critical and Historical Essays – Thomas Babington Macaulay
• 1842 in literature – Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol
• 1841 in literature – The Deerslayer – James Fenimore Cooper; Demon – Mikhail Lermontov; The Murders in the Rue Morgue – Edgar Allan Poe; The King of the Golden River – John Ruskin
• 1840 in literature – A Hero of Our Time – Mikhail Lermontov; Two Years Before the Mast – Richard Henry Dana, Jr.; Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque – Edgar Allan Poe; Kobzar – Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko; The Arabian Nights – Edward William Lane publishes an English version

1830s

• 1839 in literature – The Voyage of the Beagle – Charles Darwin; Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens; The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
• 1838 in literature – Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens; The Birds of America – John James Audubon; The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket – Edgar Allan Poe; De Leeuw van Vlaanderen – Hendrik Conscience
• 1837 in literature – The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club – Charles Dickens; Death of the Poet – Mikhail Lermontov
• 1836 in literature – Máj – Karel Hynek Mácha; The Captain's Daughter – Alexander Pushkin; The Government Inspector and The Nose – Nikolai Gogol
• 1835 in literature – Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac; Taras Bulba – Nikolai Gogol; De la démocratie en Amérique – Alexis de Tocqueville; The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall – Edgar Allan Poe
• 1834 in literature – Sartor Resartus – Thomas Carlyle; Helen (novel) – Maria Edgeworth; The Queen of Spades (story), The Bronze Horseman – Alexander Pushkin; Pan Tadeusz – Adam Mickiewicz
• 1833 in literature – Gamiani – Alfred de Musset; Eugene Onegin – Aleksandr Pushkin; Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
• 1832 in literature – Eugene Onegin – Alexander Pushkin; Faust Part Two – Goethe; Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka – Nikolai Gogol; The Siege of Malta – Walter Scott; Bizarro – Walter Scott; Vom Kriege – Carl von Clausewitz; Wacousta – John Richardson
• 1831 in literature – Notre-Dame de Paris – Victor Hugo
• 1830 in literature – The Red and the Black – Stendhal; The Book of Mormon – Joseph Smith

1820s

• 1829 in literature – The Misfortunes of Elphin – Thomas Love Peacock
• 1828 in literature – The Birds of America – John James Audubon; The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
• 1827 in literature – Book of Songs (poetry) – Heinrich Heine – The Mummy! – Jane C. Loudon
• 1826 in literature – The Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper; Cinq-Mars – Alfred de Vigny; The Last Man – Mary Shelley; Roger Dodsworth – Mary Shelley
• 1825 in literature – Boris Godunov – Alexander Pushkin; The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
• 1824 in literature – Our Village – Mary Russell Mitford
• 1823 in literature – The Pioneers – James Fenimore Cooper; Woe from Wit – Alexander Griboyedov; The Fountain of Bakhchisaray – Alexander Pushkin
• 1822 in literature – The Vision of Judgment – Lord Byron
• 1821 in literature – Confessions of an English Opium Eater – Thomas De Quincey; Music, When Soft Voices Die – Percy Bysshe Shelley; Adonaïs – Percy Bysshe Shelley
• 1820 in literature – Ruslan and Ludmila – Alexander Pushkin; To a Skylark – Percy Bysshe Shelley; The Cloud – Percy Bysshe Shelley; Prometheus Unbound – Percy Bysshe Shelley

1810s

• 1819 in literature – Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott; The Sketch Book – Washington Irving; Ode to a Nightingale – John Keats; Ode to the West Wind – Percy Bysshe Shelley; The Masque of Anarchy – Percy Bysshe Shelley; The Cenci – Percy Bysshe Shelley
• 1818 in literature – Frankenstein – Mary Shelley; Julian and Maddalo – Percy Bysshe Shelley; Ozymandias – Percy Bysshe Shelley; The Revolt of Islam – Percy Bysshe Shelley
• 1817 in literature – Persuasion (novel) – Jane Austen; Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen; Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott; Ormond and Harrington – Maria Edgeworth
• 1816 in literature – Adolphe – Benjamin Constant; The Sandman – E.T.A. Hoffman; Alastor – Percy Bysshe Shelley
• 1815 in literature – Emma (novel) – Jane Austen; The Pastor's Fireside – Jane Porter; The White Doe of Rylstone – William Wordsworth
• 1814 in literature – Mansfield Park – Jane Austen; Waverley – Sir Walter Scott; The Dog of Montargis play by René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt
• 1813 in literature – Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen; Queen Mab – Percy Bysshe Shelley
• 1812 in literature – The Milesian Chief – Charles Robert Maturin; The Swiss Family Robinson – Johann David Wyss; Children's and Household Tales – The Brothers Grimm
• 1811 in literature – Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen; Childe Harold's Pilgrimage – Lord Byron – completed
• 1810 in literature – The Houses of Osma and Almeria – Regina Maria Roche

1800s

• 1809 in literature – The Martyrs – François-René de Chateaubriand; Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Death of Thomas Paine
• 1808 in literature – Faust (Part One) – Goethe
• 1807 in literature – Tales from Shakespeare – Charles Lamb & Mary Lamb
• 1806 in literature – The Earthquake in Chile – Heinrich von Kleist
• 1805 in literature – The Wonder of the Village – Mary Meeke; Manuscript Found in Saragossa – Count Jan Nepomucen Potocki; La Dernier Homme – Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville
• 1804 in literature – Jerusalem (poetry) – William Blake; William Tell – Friedrich Schiller
• 1803 in literature – St. Clair of the Isles – Elisabeth Helme
• 1802 in literature – Delphine – Anne Louise Germaine de Stael; René – François-René de Chateaubriand
• 1801 in literature – The Wizard and the Sword – Henry Summersett
• 1800 in literature – Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth; Hymns to the Night – Novalis; Mary Stuart – Friedrich Schiller; Glenfinlas – Walter Scott

18th century

1790s

• 1799 in literature – Arthur Mervyn – Charles Brockden Brown; Wallenstein trilogy completed – Friedrich Schiller
• 1798 in literature – Lyrical Ballads – Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• 1797 in literature – l'Histoire de Juliette – Marquis de Sade; Kubla Khan – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• 1796 in literature – Camilla – Fanny Burney; Memoirs of My Life and Writings – Edward Gibbon
• 1795 in literature – Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (to 1796) – Goethe; The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
• 1794 in literature – The Age of Reason – Thomas Paine
• 1793 in literature – Songs of Experience – William Blake
• 1792 in literature – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman – Mary Wollstonecraft
• 1791 in literature – Justine – Marquis de Sade; The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. – James Boswell; Dream of the Red Chamber – Cao Xueqin
• 1790 in literature – Reflections on the Revolution in France – Edmund Burke; Tam O'Shanter – Robert Burns

1780s

• 1789 in literature – Songs of Innocence – William Blake; The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – Edward Gibbon – completed
• 1788 in literature – Memoirs – Saint-Simon
• 1787 in literature – Don Carlos – Friedrich Schiller; Paul et Virginie – Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
• 1786 in literature – Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect – Robert Burns
• 1785 in literature – 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade; Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals – Immanuel Kant, Anton Reiser (to 1790) – Karl Philipp Moritz; The Task – William Cowper
• 1784 in literature – Barham Downs – Robert Bage; Death of – Samuel Johnson and Denis Diderot
• 1783 in literature – Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics – Immanuel Kant
• 1782 in literature – The Robbers – Friedrich Schiller Les Liaisons Dangereuses – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
• 1781 in literature – A Critique of Pure Reason – Immanuel Kant
• 1780 in literature – Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever – Joseph Priestley

1770s

• 1779 in literature – Nathan the Wise – Gotthold Lessing; Fables and Parables – Ignacy Krasicki
• 1778 in literature – Evelina – Fanny Burney; death of Voltaire (b. 1694)
• 1777 in literature – The School for Scandal – Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• 1776 in literature – Common Sense – Thomas Paine; The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith
• 1775 in literature – The Rivals – Richard Sheridan
• 1774 in literature – The Sorrows of Young Werther – Goethe
• 1773 in literature – Der Messias (from 1748) – Klopstock; Jacques the Fatalist and His Master – Denis Diderot
• 1772 in literature – Emilia Galotti by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing; the Marquis de Sade embarks on an orgy, as a result of which he is convicted in absentia of sodomy and poisoning and receives a death sentence; he escapes.
• 1771 in literature – Jacques the Fatalist (to 1773) – Diderot
• 1770 in literature – Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs – Voltaire

1760s

• 1769 in literature – The History of Emily Montague – Frances Brooke
• 1768 in literature – Poems – Thomas Gray
• 1767 in literature – Minna von Barnhelm – Gotthold Lessing
• 1766 in literature – The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
• 1765 in literature – Beginning of the Sturm und Drang movement
• 1764 in literature – The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
• 1763 in literature – James Boswell is introduced to Samuel Johnson
• 1762 in literature – Emile: or, On Education, The Social Contract – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• 1761 in literature – Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• 1760 in literature – Tristram Shandy (to 1770) – Laurence Sterne

1750s

• 1759 in literature – Candide – Voltaire
• 1758 in literature – Voltaire buys his estate at Ferney
• 1757 in literature – Pierre-Augustin Caron changes his surname to Beaumarchais
• 1756 in literature – Gilbert White becomes curate of Selborne, Hampshire
• 1755 in literature – Letter to Chesterfield – Samuel Johnson; Miss Sara Sampson play by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
• 1754 in literature – The History of Great Britain (to 1762) – David Hume
• 1753 in literature – The History of Sir Charles Grandison – Samuel Richardson; The Mistress of the Inn by Carlo Goldoni first performed
• 1752 in literature – Micromégas – Voltaire; Birth of Fanny Burney
• 1751 in literature – Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard – Thomas Gray; Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers – first published
• 1750 in literature – Rambler essays (to 1752) – Samuel Johnson

1740s

• 1749 in literature – The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling – Henry Fielding
• 1748 in literature – Fanny Hill – John Cleland; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding – David Hume
• 1747 in literature – Clarissa (to 1748) – Samuel Richardson
• 1746 in literature – Voltaire is elected to the French Academy
• 1745 in literature – Death of Jonathan Swift
• 1744 in literature – The Female Spectator is launched by Eliza Haywood
• 1743 in literature – The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great – Henry Fielding; Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni first performed
• 1742 in literature – Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
• 1741 in literature – Shamela – Henry Fielding; Niels Klim's Underground Travels – Ludvig Holberg
• 1740 in literature – Institutions de physique – Émilie du Châtelet

1730s

• 1739 in literature – A Treatise of Human Nature (to 1740) – David Hume
• 1738 in literature – Leonidas – Richard Glover
• 1737 in literature – Birth of Thomas Paine, free thinker and revolutionary (died 1809)
• 1736 in literature – Method of Fluxions – Isaac Newton
• 1735 in literature – At the end of the trial of John Peter Zenger for seditious libel in the New York Weekly Journal, he is found not guilty by the jury determining that truth was a defense against charges of libel..
• 1734 in literature – Copies of Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais are burned, and a warrant is issued for the author's arrest.
• 1733 in literature – Letters Concerning the English Nation – Voltaire; Memoirs of the Twentieth Century – Samuel Madden
• 1732 in literature – Essay on Man (to 1744) – Alexander Pope
• 1731 in literature – Insel Felsenburg (to 1743) – Johann Gottfried Schnabel
• 1730 in literature – Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard – Pierre de Marivaux

1720s

• 1729 in literature – Death of William Congreve
• 1728 in literature – Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
• 1727 in literature – Eliza Haywood, Philidore and Placentia
• 1726 in literature – Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
• 1725 in literature – Birth of Giacomo Casanova
• 1724 in literature – Voltaire, La Henriade
• 1723 in literature – Births of Richard Price and Adam Smith; deaths of Susannah Centlivre and Marianna Alcoforado
• 1722 in literature – Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
• 1721 in literature – Montesquieu, Persian Letters
• 1720 in literature – Daniel Defoe, Memoirs of a Cavalier

1710s

• 1719 in literature – Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
• 1718 in literature – Oedipe – Voltaire's first play
• 1717 in literature – A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty – Anthony Collins
• 1716 in literature – The Fifth Ode of the Fourth Book of Horace Imitated – Jane Brereton
• 1715 in literature – Nicholas Rowe becomes Poet Laureate of Great Britain
• 1714 in literature – Bernard de Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees
• 1713 in literature – Birth of Laurence Sterne
• 1712 in literature – Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
• 1711 in literature – The Spectator is founded by Addison and Steele
• 1710 in literature – Colley Cibber becomes manager of Drury Lane

1700s

• 1709 in literature – Ode à Sainte-Geneviève – Voltaire's first published work
• 1708 in literature – An Argument against Abolishing Christianity – Jonathan Swift
• 1707 in literature – Arithmetica Universalis – Isaac Newton
• 1706 in literature – An Essay at Removing National Prejudices Against a Union with Scotland – Daniel Defoe
• 1705 in literature – Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain ("New Essays on Human Understanding") – Gottfried Leibniz
• 1704 in literature – A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
• 1703 in literature – The Storm (Daniel Defoe) – Daniel Defoe (released 1704)
• 1702 in literature – The Narrow Road to the Interior – Matsuo Bashō
• 1701 in literature – A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions Between the Nobles and the Commons in Athens and Rome – Jonathan Swift
• 1700 in literature – The Way of the World – William Congreve

17th century

1690s

• 1699 in literature – Death of Jean Racine
• 1698 in literature – Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage – Jeremy Collier
• 1697 in literature – Histoires ou contes du temps passé – Charles Perrault
• 1696 in literature
• 1695 in literature
• 1694 in literature – Feb 20th, birth of Voltaire
• 1693 in literature
• 1692 in literature
• 1691 in literature – Athalie – Jean Racine
• 1690 in literature

1680s

• 1689 in literature – John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
• 1688 in literature – Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
• 1687 in literature – Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica; John Dryden The Hind and the Panther
• 1686 in literature
• 1685 in literature
• 1684 in literature
• 1683 in literature
• 1682 in literature
• 1681 in literature
• 1680 in literature

1670s

• 1679 in literature
• 1678 in literature – The Pilgrim's Progress – John Bunyan
• 1677 in literature – Phèdre – Jean Racine
• 1676 in literature
• 1675 in literature
• 1674 in literature Nouveaux contes – Jean de la Fontaine
• 1673 in literature – Death of Molière (b. 1622), D'Artagnan, soldier, inspiration for Dumas' character
• 1672 in literature – Les Femmes Savantes – Molière
• 1671 in literature – Samson Agonistes – John Milton
• 1670 in literature – Le Bourgeois gentilhomme – Molière

1660s

• 1669 in literature – Jean Racine's Britannicus
• 1668 in literature – Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen's Simplicius Simplicissimus; birth of Alain-René Lesage
• 1667 in literature – John Milton's Paradise Lost
• 1666 in literature – Gottfried Leibniz's De Arte Combinatoria ('On the Art of Combination'); Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World
• 1665 in literature – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society begins publication
• 1664 in literature – Molière's Tartuffe
• 1663 in literature
• 1662 in literature – Molière's L'école des femmes
• 1661 in literature
• 1660 in literature – Samuel Pepys opens his diary

1650s

• 1659 in literature
• 1658 in literature
• 1657 in literature – Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon – Cyrano de Bergerac
• 1656 in literature
• 1655 in literature
• 1654 in literature
• 1653 in literature
• 1652 in literature
• 1651 in literature – Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan
• 1650 in literature Death of René Descartes, philosopher (born 1596)

1640s

• 1649 in literature
• 1648 in literature
• 1647 in literature
• 1646 in literature
• 1645 in literature
• 1644 in literature
• 1643 in literature
• 1642 in literature
• 1641 in literature
• 1640 in literature – René Descartes completes Meditations on First Philosophy: "I think therefore I am"

1630s

• 1639 in literature – Birth of Jean Racine
• 1638 in literature – The Man in the Moone – Francis Godwin
• 1637 in literature
• 1636 in literature – the Annals of the Four Masters are completed
• 1635 in literature
• 1634 in literature – Somnium by Johannes Kepler is published
• 1633 in literature
• 1632 in literature
• 1631 in literature
• 1630 in literature

1620s

• 1629 in literature
• 1628 in literature
• 1627 in literature – New Atlantis – Sir Francis Bacon
• 1626 in literature
• 1625 in literature – De jure belli ac pacis – Hugo Grotius
• 1624 in literature
• 1623 in literature
• 1622 in literature – Birth of Molière (d. 1673)
• 1621 in literature
• 1620 in literature – Novum Organum – Francis Bacon

1610s

• 1619 in literature – Fuenteovejuna by Lope de Vega first performed
• 1618 in literature – The Dog in the Manger (play) by Lope de Vega first performed
• 1617 in literature
• 1616 in literature – Death of William Shakespeare, dramatist and poet (b. 1564), Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish writer (b.1547)
• 1615 in literature – Don Quixote de la Mancha (Part 2) – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
• 1614 in literature
• 1613 in literature – Henry VIII – William Shakespeare
• 1612 in literature – The Malay Annals
• 1611 in literature – The Tempest – William Shakespeare
• 1610 in literature

1600s

• 1609 in literature – Astronomia nova – Johannes Kepler
• 1608 in literature – Somnium – Johannes Kepler
• 1607 in literature
• 1606 in literature
• 1605 in literature – King Lear – William Shakespeare; Don Quixote de la Mancha (Part 1) Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
• 1604 in literature – William Shakespeare – Hamlet
• 1603 in literature – Measure for Measure, Othello, Macbeth – William Shakespeare
• 1602 in literature
• 1601 in literature – William Shakespeare – Twelfth Night
• 1600 in literature – William Shakespeare – Henry IV, Part 2, The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Much Ado About Nothing published

16th century

1590s

• 1599 in literature – William Shakespeare – Henry V, Julius Caesar
• 1598 in literature – William Shakespeare – Henry IV, Part 1 and Love's Labor's Lost published
• 1597 in literature – Francis Bacon – Essays
• 1596 in literature – Edmund Spenser – The Faerie Queene, Books 4-6
• 1595 in literature – William Shakespeare – Richard II, Romeo and Juliet
• 1594 in literature – Thomas Nashe – The Unfortunate Traveller
• 1593 in literature – Death of Christopher Marlowe, dramatist and poet (born 1564)
• 1592 in literature – Wu Cheng'en – Journey to the West
• 1591 in literature
• 1590 in literature – Christopher Marlowe – Tamburlaine (both parts published); Edmund Spenser – The Faerie Queene, Books 1-3; Sir Philip Sidney – Arcadia

1580s

• 1589 in literature – The Passionate Shepherd to His Love – Christopher Marlowe
• 1588 in literature – The Battle of Alcazar (date first performed) – George Peele
• 1587 in literature – A discourse of the subtill practises of deuilles by witches and sorcerers – George Gifford
• 1586 in literature – Historie of the Reformatioun of Religioun within the Realms of Scotland – John Knox
• 1585 in literature – La Galatea – Miguel de Cervantes
• 1584 in literature – Campaspe, Sapho and Phao – John Lyly
• 1583 in literature – The Anatomy of Abuses – Philip Stubbes
• 1582 in literature – Divers Voyages – Richard Hakluyt
• 1581 in literature – Second Book of Discipline
• 1580 in literature – Os Lusíadas – Luís Vaz de Camões

1570s

• 1579 in literature
• 1578 in literature
• 1577 in literature
• 1576 in literature
• 1575 in literature
• 1574 in literature
• 1573 in literature
• 1572 in literature
• 1571 in literature
• 1570 in literature Abraham Ortelius – Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (the first modern atlas)

1560s

• 1569 in literature – La Araucana, part 1 – Alonso de Ercilla
• 1568 in literature – Giorgio Vasari – Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects; Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki – De optimo senatore
• 1567 in literature – William Salesbury – New Testament (first Welsh language version); Magdeburg Centuries
• 1566 in literature – William Painter – The Palace of Pleasure
• 1565 in literature – Bernardino Telesio – De natura juxta propria principia
• 1564 in literature – Birth of William Shakespeare dramatist and poet (d.1616); Christopher Marlowe, dramatist and poet (d. 1593)
• 1563 in literature – Foxe's Book of Martyrs – John Foxe
• 1562 in literature – Arthur Brooke – The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet
• 1561 in literature – John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion
• 1560 in literature – Geneva Bible (first full edition)

1550s

• 1559 in literature – Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, which remains in use until the mid-17th century and is the first English Prayer Book in America
• 1558 in literature
• 1557 in literature
• 1556 in literature
• 1554 in literature
• 1553 in literature
• 1552 in literature
• 1551 in literature
• 1550 in literature – Xu Zhonglin – Fengshen Yanyi

1540s

• 1549 in literature – Nicolaus Copernicus – De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
• 1548 in literature
• 1547 in literature – Birth of Miguel de Cervantes
• 1546 in literature
• 1545 in literature
• 1544 in literature
• 1543 in literature
• 1542 in literature
• 1541 in literature
• 1540 in literature

1530s

• 1539 in literature
• 1538 in literature
• 1537 in literature
• 1536 in literature
• 1535 in literature
• 1534 in literature – Luther Bible translation by Martin Luther
• 1533 in literature
• 1532 in literature – Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; François Rabelais – Pantagruel
• 1531 in literature
• 1530 in literature

1520s

• 1529 in literature
• 1528 in literature – Baltissare Castiglione – The Book of the Courtier
• 1527 in literature
• 1526 in literature
• 1525 in literature
• 1524 in literature – Birth of Luís de Camões and Pierre de Ronsard
• 1523 in literature
• 1522 in literature – Luther Bible New Testament translation by Martin Luther
• 1521 in literature
• 1520 in literature

1510s

• 1519 in literature
• 1518 in literature
• 1517 in literature
• 1516 in literature – Ariosto – Orlando Furioso; Thomas More – Utopia
• 1515 in literature
• 1514 in literature
• 1513 in literature
• 1512 in literature
• 1511 in literature – Erasmus – The Praise of Folly
• 1510 in literature

1500s

• 1509 in literature
• 1508 in literature
• 1507 in literature
• 1506 in literature
• 1505 in literature
• 1504 in literature
• 1503 in literature
• 1502 in literature
• 1501 in literature – Marko Marulić – Judita
• 1500 in literature – The Second Shepherds' Play by The Wakefield Master

Middle Ages

• 15th century in literature – Johann Gutenberg prints the Vulgate Bible; – Sir Thomas Malory – Le Morte d'Arthur;
• 14th century in literature – The Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri; The Decameron – Giovanni Boccaccio; Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer; The Tale of the Heike (1371); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – The Pearl Poet
• 13th century in literature – Theologus Autodidactus; Gesta Romanorum – Ibn al-Nafis; The Travels of Marco Polo – Marco Polo; Golden Legend; Poetic Edda; The Secret History of the Mongols
• 12th century in literature – Hayy ibn Yaqdhan – Ibn Tufail; Tristan and Iseult; Táin Bó Cúailnge
• 11th century in literature – The Song of Roland; The Tale of Genji – Murasaki Shikibu
• 10th century in literature – One Thousand and One Nights; The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
• 6th to 9th centuries in literature – Book of Kells; Nihon Shoki; Beowulf; The Pillow Book – Sei Shōnagon

Ancient times

• Ancient literature