1968 in literature

• January 1 – Cecil Day-Lewis is announced as the new Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.[1]
• March 28 – Glidrose Publications releases the James Bond novel, Colonel Sun by "Robert Markham" (a pseudonym for Kingsley Amis). Initially intended to relaunch the Bond book series after the death in 1964 of the character's creator, Ian Fleming, Colonel Sun ends up as the final book in the series, discounting a "biography" of Bond and a pair of film-script adaptations, until John Gardner revives it in 1981.
• April – The American edition of Andrew Garve's thriller The Long Short Cut becomes the first book printed completely by electronic composition.[2][3]
• May – The Action Theater in Munich is disbanded after its building is wrecked by one of its founders, jealous of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's growing power in the group.[4]
• June 17 – Tom Stoppard's parodic comedy The Real Inspector Hound opens at the Criterion Theatre in London's West End, starring Richard Briers and Ronnie Barker.
• July 28 – Last Exit to Brooklyn is cleared of obscenity in the English appeal court. John Mortimer appears for the defence.[5] This is the last prosecution of a book under the U.K. Obscene Publications Acts.
• August – Tom Wolfe's books The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Pump House Gang are published on the same day. Both will become bestsellers and cement Wolfe's status as a leading social critic, chronicler of the counterculture of the 1960s, and practitioner of New Journalism.
• September 26 – Theatres Act 1968 (royal assent July 26) ends censorship of the theater in the United Kingdom.[6][7]
• October – Colin Spencer's comedy Spitting Image, one of the first plays with openly gay male leads, premières in London
• October 31 – Alan Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, opens at the Apollo Theatre in London's West End under the direction of Patrick Garland, starring Sir John Gielgud, Paul Eddington and the playwright.
• November – The English novelist Antony Burgess and his new wife Liana settle in Lija on Malta.[8]

Uncertain dates

• The first translations and book-length discussion of the Sumerian Enheduanna's work is published.[9] She is a priestess and poet of the 23rd century BC and the earliest named author known.
• Dean R. Koontz's first novel, Star Quest, is published by Ace Books in the United States.
• N. Scott Momaday's novel House Made of Dawn is published, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969 and initiating the Native American Renaissance.
• The Arvon Foundation is established by young poets John Fairfax and John Moat in the UK to promote creative writing.

• January 30 – Rhoda Shipman, American comic book writer
• March 23 – Mitch Cullin, American novelist
• May 27 – Ekow Eshun, British Ghanaian writer, journalist and broadcaster
• June 11 – Bryan Perro, Canadian author
• July 6 – Tiit Aleksejev, Estonian novelist and playwright
• September 14 – Shuichi Yoshida (吉田修), Japanese novelist
• December 6 – Karl Ove Knausgård, Norwegian autobiographical novelist
• December 31 – Junot Díaz, Dominican American novelist

Uncertain date

• K. V. Johansen, Canadian children's author

• January 1 – Donagh MacDonagh, Irish poet, playwright and judge (born 1912)
• January 14 – Dorothea Mackellar, Australian poet (born 1885)
• February 23 – Fannie Hurst, American novelist (born 1889)
• March 22 - Margaret Duley, Newfoundland novelist (born 1894)
• April 9 - Zofia Kossak, Polish writer (born 1889)
• April 16 – Edna Ferber, American novelist, short story writer and playwright (born 1885)
• April 25 – Donald Davidson, American poet (born 1893)
• May 1 – Sir Harold Nicolson, British biographer (born 1886)
• May 30
  • Constantin S. Nicolăescu-Plopșor, Romanian anthropologist, ethnographer and children's writer (born 1900)
  • Martin Noth, German Hebraist (born 1902)
• June 1 – Helen Keller, deaf-blind American author, activist and lecturer (born 1880)
• June 2 – A. A. Thomson, English cricket and travel writer (born 1894)
• August 21 - Germaine Guèvremont, Canadian writer (born 1893)
• September 29 – Sixto Pondal Ríos, Argentine screenwriter, poet and dramatist (born 1907)
• October 30 – Conrad Richter, American novelist (born 1890)
• November 17 – Mervyn Peake, English novelist (dementia, born 1911)[12]
• November 25 – Upton Sinclair, American novelist and politician (born 1878)
• December 5 – Anna Kavan, British novelist, short story writer and painter (born 1901)
• December 10 – Tian Han, Chinese dramatist (born 1898)
• December 20 – John Steinbeck, American novelist (congestive heart failure, born 1902)[13]
• December 24 – D. Gwenallt Jones, Welsh poet (born 1899)

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Yasunari Kawabata