1975 in literature

• January 1 – English-born comic writer P. G. Wodehouse is awarded a knighthood,[1] six weeks before he dies in the United States.
• January – Colin Dexter's detective novel Last Bus to Woodstock introduces his Oxford police officer, Inspector Morse.
• April 23
  • Barbara Pym and Philip Larkin meet in person for the first time, at the Randolph Hotel, Oxford, after years of correspondence.[2]
  • Harold Pinter's play No Man's Land is premièred by the National Theatre at The Old Vic in London, directed by Peter Hall and starring Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson.
• April 28 – Harold Pinter leaves his first wife, the actress Vivien Merchant, having begun an affair with the married biographer Lady Antonia Fraser on January 8.
• May 10 – Leftist Salvadoran poet, journalist and political activist Roque Dalton (born 1935) is assassinated by former colleagues in the People's Revolutionary Army (El Salvador).
• August 12 – As the 20-year time limit stipulated by Thomas Mann at his death expires, sealed packets of 32 of the author's notebooks are opened in Zürich, Switzerland.
• Writing as Émile Ajar, the author Romain Gary becomes the only person to win the Prix Goncourt twice.
• Radical Australian poet Dorothy Hewett publishes her collection Rapunzel in Suburbia, triggering a successful libel action by her ex-husband.[3][4]
• Hearing Secret Harmonies, the twelfth and final novel in the A Dance to the Music of Time series begun in 1951 by Anthony Powell is published.
• The French critic Hélène Cixous coins the term Écriture féminine in an article, "Le Rire de la méduse".[5]
• Milan Kundera emigrates from Czechoslovakia to France.
• The Petrarca-Preis is founded by Hubert Burda.

• January 13 – Daniel Kehlmann, German novelist
• February 25 – Carrie Mac, Canadian young-adult fiction writer
• June 23 – Markus Zusak, Australian young-adult novelist
• July 19 – Martina Montelius, Swedish playwright
• August 20 – Matthew and Michael Dickman, American poets
• October 27 – Zadie Smith (Sadie Smith), English novelist

Uncertain dates

• Gavin Francis, Scottish medical writer and physician
• Cynan Jones, Welsh novelist

• January 15 – Sydney Goodsir Smith, Scottish poet, dramatist and novelist (heart attack, born 1915)
• February 14
  • Sir Julian Huxley, English biologist and author (born 1887)
  • Sir P. G. Wodehouse, English-born comic novelist (born 1881)
• February 20 – Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov, Russian author (born 1882)
• March 3 – T. H. Parry-Williams, Welsh poet (born 1887)
• March 7 – Kate Seredy, Hungarian-born American children's writer and illustrator (born 1899)
• March 13 – Ivo Andrić, Serbo-Croatian novelist and Nobel laureate (born 1892)
• April 23 – Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, German poet (killed in hit-and-run-accident in London, born 1940)
• May 21 – A. H. Dodd, Welsh historian (born 1891)
• June 8 – Murray Leinster (William Fitzgerald Jenkins), American science fiction writer (born 1896)
• July 10 – Peter Frederick Anson, English writer on religion and maritime matters (born 1889)
• September 20 – Saint-John Perse (Alexis Leger), French poet and Nobel laureate (born 1887)
• October 5 – Lady Constance Malleson, Irish actress and writer (born 1895)
• October 22 – Arnold J. Toynbee, English historian (born 1889)
• November 13 – R. C. Sherriff, English dramatist and novelist (born 1896)
• November 19 – Elizabeth Taylor, English novelist (cancer, born 1912)
• November 27 – Ross McWhirter, English sports journalist and joint compiler of Guinness Book of Records (assassinated, born 1925)[6]
• December 4 – Hannah Arendt, German-American philosopher (born 1906)
• December 7 – Thornton Wilder, American novelist and dramatist (born 1897)

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Eugenio Montale