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The year 1949 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Arthur C. Clarke becomes Assistant Editor of Science Abstracts.
• Bertrand Russell receives the Order of Merit.
• Jean-Paul Sartre completes his Les Chemins de la Liberté ("The Roads to Freedom") trilogy.

New books

• Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm
• Martha E. Von Almedingen - The Golden Sequence
• Miguel Ángel Asturias - Men of Maize
• Jorge Luis Borges - The Aleph
• Elizabeth Bowen - The Heat of the Day
• Paul Bowles - The Sheltering Sky
• Fredric Brown - The Screaming Mimi
• Pearl S. Buck - The Angry Wife
• Dorothy Bussy - Olivia (published anonymously)
• Taylor Caldwell - Let Love Come Last
• John Dickson Carr writing as "Carter Dickson" - A Graveyard To Let
• Agatha Christie - Crooked House
• Foster Fitzsimmons - Bright Leaf
• A. B. Guthrie, Jr. - The Way West
• John Hawkes - Cannibal
• Marguerite Henry - King of the Wind
• Hermann L. Hunter - The Miracles of the Red Altar Cloth
• Shirley Jackson - The Lottery and Other Stories
• Alaric Jacob - Scenes from a Bourgeois Life
• Alfred Q. Jarrette - Beneath the Sky
• Marghanika Laski - Little Boy Lost
• H. P. Lovecraft - Something About Cats and Other Pieces
• Nancy Mitford - Love in a Cold Climate
• C. L. Moore - Beyond Earth's Gates
• John O'Hara - A Rage To Live
• George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four
• Ruth Park - Poor Man's Orange
• Karel Poláček - There Were Five of Us (Czech Bylo nás pět)
• Ellery Queen - Cat of Many Tails
• Harold Robbins - The Dream Merchants
• Willard W. Savoy - Alien Land
• Jack Schaefer - Shane
• Anna Seghers - Die Toten Bleiben Jung
• Nevil Shute - A Town Like Alice
• Jack Story - Trouble with Harry
• Rex Stout - Trouble in Triplicate
• Rex Stout - The Second Confession
• Edward Streeter - Father of the Bride
• Gwyn Thomas - All Things Betray Thee
• Mika Waltari - The Egyptian
• S. Fowler Wright - The Throne of Saturn
• Frank Yerby - Pride's Castle

New drama

• T. S. Eliot - The Cocktail Party
• Christopher Fry - The Lady's Not for Burning
• Jean Genet - Haute surveillance
• Arthur Miller - Death of a Salesman

Poetry

• Carlos de Oliveira - Descida aos Infernos

Non-fiction

• Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex
• Marc Bloch - Strange Defeat; a Statement of Evidence Written in 1940
• Thomas B. Costain - The Conquering Family, also known as The Conquerors (First book in the Plantagenet Series, also known as The Pageant of England)
• John Gunther – Death Be Not Proud
• Margaret Mead - Male and Female
• Audie Murphy - To Hell and Back
• Finn Ronne - Antarctic Conquest
• Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue - The Royal Road To Card Magic

Births

• January 26 - Jonathan Carroll, American author of fantasy fiction
• March 26 - Patrick Süskind, German novelist
• April 11 - Dorothy Allison, novelist and campaigner
• June 5 - Ken Follett, novelist
• July 15 - Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist
• August 3 - Peter Gutmann, journalist
• November 2 - Lois McMaster Bujold, American author of science fiction and fantasy
• October 5 - Peter Ackroyd, English author
• December 24 - Alberto Pérez-Gómez, architectural historian
• date unknown
  • Mark D. Devlin, memoirist
  • David Gilmour, novelist
  • Juan Gonzalez, investigative journalist
  • Bonnie Greer, dramatist
  • John Guy, historian and biographer
  • John Harris, political author
  • Jimmy McGovern, screenwriter

Deaths

• January 11 - Nelson Doubleday, U.S. book publisher
• February 11 - Axel Munthe, Swedish author
• May 6 - Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian poet, playwright and Nobel Laureate
• June 10 - Sigrid Undset, Nobel Prize winning author
• June 14 - Russell Doubleday, U.S. author and publisher
• August 16 - Margaret Mitchell, "Gone with the Wind" author
• September 19 - Will Cuppy, U.S. humorist
• December 7 - Rex Beach - U.S. author
• December 28 - Hervey Allen - U.S. author

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Emma Smith, The Far Cry
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: John Connell, W. E. Henley
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Marguerite Henry, King of the Wind
• Nobel Prize for literature - William Faulkner
• Premio Nadal: Jose Suárez Carreño, Las últimas horas
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: James Gould Cozzens, Guard of Honor
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Peter Viereck, Terror and Decorum