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The year 1966 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• February 14 - Dissident writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky are sentenced to hard labour for "anti-Soviet activity".
• In a landmark obscenity case, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the banned novel John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland did not meet the Roth standard for obscenity.
• Author Jacqueline Susann has her first novel, Valley of the Dolls published. From a friend, she obtained a list of the bookstores upon which the New York Times relied for sales figures to determine its bestseller list. Ms. Susann then used her own money to buy large quantities of her own book at these selected stores resulting in her novel going to #1 on the "Times" bestseller list. Valley of the Dolls is the second best selling novel of all time.
• Publication of Octopussy and the Living Daylights, the final collection of James Bond short stories by the character's creator, Ian Fleming, who had died in 1964.

New books

• Chinua Achebe - A Man of the People
• Elechi Amadi - The Concubine
• Robert H. Adleman - The Devil's Brigade
• Lloyd Alexander - The Castle of Llyr
• Kingsley Amis - The Anti-Death League
• Isaac Asimov - Fantastic Voyage
• Margaret Atwood
  • The Circle Game
  • Expeditions
  • Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein
• Louis Auchincloss - The Embezzler
• J. G. Ballard
  • The Crystal World
  • The Impossible Man
• Paul Bowles - Up Above the World
• Ray Bradbury - S is for Space
• Mihail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita
• Truman Capote - In Cold Blood
• John Dickson Carr - Panic in Box C
• Agatha Christie - Third Girl
• James Clavell - Tai-Pan
• Robert Crichton - The Secret of Santa Vittoria
• William Crossing - The Dartmoor Worker (anthology)
• Roald Dahl - The Magic Finger
• August Derleth and Mark Schorer - Colonel Markesan and Less Pleasant People
• Philip K. Dick - Now Wait for Last Year
• Philip K. Dick - The Crack in Space
• Philip K. Dick - The Unteleported Man
• Allen Drury - Capable of Honor
• Friedrich Dürrenmatt - Der Meteor
• Ian Fleming - Octopussy and The Living Daylights
• John Fowles - The Magus
• Robert A. Heinlein - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
• Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp - Conan the Adventurer
• Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
• José Lezama Lima - Paradiso
• H. P. Lovecraft and Divers Hands - The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces
• John D. MacDonald - One Fearful Yellow Eye
• Alistair Maclean - When Eight Bells Toll
• Helen McInnes - The Double Image
• Larry McMurtry - Last Picture Show
• Bernard Malamud - The Fixer
• Marcel Pagnol
  • Jean de Florette
  • Manon des Sources
• Anthony Powell - The Soldier's Art
• Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49
• Seabury Quinn - Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder
• Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea
• Harold Robbins - The Adventurers
• Leonardo Sciascia - A ciascuno il suo
• Adela Rogers St. Johns - Tell No Man
• Rex Stout - Death of a Doxy
• William Styron - The Confessions of Nat Turner
• Jacqueline Susann - Valley of the Dolls
• Leslie Thomas - The Virgin Soldiers
• Roderick Thorp - The Detective
• Jack Vance - The Eyes of the Overworld
• Patrick White - The Solid Mandala
• Roger Zelazny
  • The Dream Master
  • This Immortal

New drama

• Barbara Garson - MacBird
• Tom Stoppard - Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
• Zdeněk Svěrák, Jiří Šebánek, Ladislav Smoljak - Akt (English The Nude), where the famous Czech fictional character Jára Cimrman was first introduced

Poetry

• Seamus Heaney - Death of a Naturalist

Non-fiction

• Dictionary of Canadian Biography, volume 1.
• L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp - Spirits, Stars, and Spells.
• Michel Foucault -The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines.).
• P. J. Kavanagh - The Perfect Stranger.
• Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics.
• Nancy Mitford - The Sun King.
• Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. - A Thousand Days.

Births

• April 12 - Jim Duffy, political writer
• September 24 - Rhys Hughes, short story writer
• date unknown - Sarah Waters, novelist

Deaths

• January 18 - Kathleen Norris, writer
• March 10 - Frank O'Connor, short-story writer
• April 1 - Flann O'Brien, satirist
• April 2 - C. S. Forester, Hornblower author
• April 10 - Evelyn Waugh
• April 13 - Georges Duhamel, novelist
• June 7 - Jean Arp, sculptor, painter, and poet
• June 10 - Henry Treece, historical novelist
• June 30 - Margery Allingham, crime novelist
• July 25 - Frank O'Hara, poet
• August 6 - Cordwainer Smith, science fiction author
• September 25 - Mina Loy, poet and artist
• September 28 - André Breton, surrealist author
• November 26 - Siegfried Kracauer, journalist and critic

Awards

• Cholmondeley Award: Ted Walker, Stevie Smith
• Eric Gregory Award: Robin Fulton, Seamus Heaney, Hugo Williams
• See 1966 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
• Hugo Award: Frank Herbert, Dune and Roger Zelazny, ... And Call Me Conrad
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Christine Brooke-Rose, Such, and Aidan Higgins, Langrishe, Go Down
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Geoffrey Keynes, The Life of William Harvey
• Nebula Award: Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17 and Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Borten de Trevino, I, Juan de Pareja
• Nobel Prize for literature: Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Nelly Sachs
• Premio Nadal: Vicente Soto, La zancada
• Prix Goncourt: Edmonde Charles-Roux, Oublier Palerme
• Prix Médicis: Marie-Claire Blais, Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Katherine Anne Porter, Collected Stories
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Richard Eberhart, Selected Poems
• Viareggio Prize: Alfonso Gatto, La storia delle vittime