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The year 1960 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Lawrence Durrell publishes Clea, the final volume of the four-book collection titled The Alexandria Quartet that began in 1957.
• August Derleth launches the poetry magazine, Hawk and Whippoorwill.
• Astounding magazine is renamed Analog.
• Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, receives full credit for his work on the films Exodus and Spartacus.
• Hans Freudenthal invents the artificial language, Lincos, intended for communication with alien life forms.
• Michael Foot relinquishes the editorship of Tribune to return to Parliament.
• Waldo Williams is imprisoned for six weeks for non-payment of income tax (a protest against defence spending).

New books

• Chinua Achebe - No Longer at Ease
• Kingsley Amis - Take a Girl Like You
• Poul Anderson - The High Crusade
• Lynne Reid Banks - The L-Shaped Room
• Hamilton Basso - The Light Infantry Ball
• Augusto Roa Bastos - Hijo de hombre
• Robert Bloch - Pleasant Dreams: Nightmares
• Algis Budrys - Rogue Moon
• Morley Callaghan - The Many Colored Coat
• John Dickson Carr - In Spite of Thunder
• Carlo Cassola - La ragazza di Bube
• Agatha Christie - The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
• L. Sprague de Camp
  • The Bronze God of Rhodes
  • The Glory That Was
• L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt - Wall of Serpents
• Jean-Paul Desbiens - The Insolences of Brother Anonymous
• Lawrence Durrell - Clea
• Henry Farrell - What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
• Ian Fleming - For Your Eyes Only
• Alan Garner - The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
• Vintilă Horia - Dieu est né en exil
• Jabra Ibrahim Jabra - Hunters in a Narrow Street
• Greye La Spina - Invaders from the Dark
• Hubert Lampo - De komst van Joachim Stiller ("The Coming of Joachim Stiller")
• Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
• John Masters - The Venus of Konpara
• Walter M. Miller – A Canticle for Leibowitz
• Nancy Mitford - Don't Tell Alfred
• Alberto Moravia - La noia (The Empty Canvas)
• Edna O'Brien - The Country Girls
• Flannery O'Connor - The Violent Bear It Away
• Scott O'Dell - Island of the Blue Dolphins
• Wilder Penfield - The Torch
• Frederik Pohl - Drunkard's Walk
• Anthony Powell - Casanova's Chinese Restaurant
• James H. Schmitz - Agent of Vega
• Dr. Seuss - Green Eggs and Ham
• Nevil Shute - Trustee from the Toolroom (published posthumously)
• Clark Ashton Smith - The Abominations of Yondo
• Muriel Spark - The Ballad of Peckham Rye
• Rex Stout
  • Three at Wolfe's Door
  • Too Many Clients
• John Updike - Rabbit, Run
• Irving Wallace - The Chapman Report
• Keith Waterhouse - Billy Liar
• Raymond Williams - Border Country

New drama

• Edward Albee - The Death of Bessie Smith and The Sandbox (both first performed)
• Samuel Beckett - The Old Tune (first broadcast)
• Robert Bolt - A Man for All Seasons and The Tiger and the Horse
• Eugène Ionesco - Rhinoceros
• Harold Pinter - The Caretaker (first performed), The Room (first professional performance) and A Night Out (first broadcast)
• Terence Rattigan - Ross
• Wole Soyinka - A Dance of the Forests
• Tennessee Williams - Period of Adjustment

Poetry

• Douglas Livingstone - The Skull in the Mud
• Jan Twardowski - Znaki ufności

Non-fiction

• Joy Adamson – Born Free
• Kingsley Amis – New Maps of Hell
• Peg Bracken – The I Hate to Cook Book
• Albert Camus - Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
• Jean-Paul Desbiens - Les insolences du Frère Untel
• Hans-Georg Gadamer – Truth and Method
• John Howard Griffin – Black Like Me
• Helen Keller – Light in my Darkness
• Arthur Koestler – The Lotus and the Robot
• Louis Pauwels & Jacques Bergier - Le Matin des Magiciens
• Jean-Paul Sartre – Critique de la raison dialectique (Critique of Dialectical Reason)
• William L. Shirer – The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
• Elie Wiesel – Night – (Previously published in French in 1958 as La Nuit)

Births

• January 1 - Helen Fielding, author
• April 28 - Ian Rankin, crime novelist
• May 21 - John O'Brien, novelist (d. 1994)
• July 13 - Ian Hislop, satirist
• November 10 - Neil Gaiman, author
• date unknown - Malcolm Pryce, novelist

Deaths

• January 4 - Albert Camus, novelist (car accident)
• January 12 - Nevil Shute, writer
• January 14 - Ralph Chubb, poet
• January 28 - Zora Neale Hurston
• May 30 - Boris Pasternak, novelist and poet
• November 28 - Richard Wright, author

Awards

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Criticism: E.B. White
• Eric Gregory Award: Christopher Levenson
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Rex Warner, Imperial Caesar
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Canon Adam Fox, The Life of Dean Inge
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Joseph Krumgold, Onion John
• Nobel Prize for literature: Saint-John Perse
• Premio Nadal: Ramiro Pinilla, Ciegas hormigas
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Jerome Weidman, George Abbott for book' Jerry Bock for music, and Sheldon Harnick for lyrics, Fiorello!
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Allen Drury - Advise and Consent
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: W. D. Snodgrass: Heart's Needle
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: John Betjeman