1948 in literature
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1948.
Events
January 6 – Poet Pablo Neruda speaks out in the Senate of Chile against political repression and is forced into hiding.
January 28 – A debate between Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston on the existence of God is broadcast by the BBC.
February 5 – A private assembly of 50 major literary and artistic figures listens to a recording of Antonin Artaud's play Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de dieu whose broadcast on French radio three days earlier has been prohibited.
May 4 – Release of Sir Laurence Olivier's film of Shakespeare's Hamlet, which will be the first British film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
c. June 1 – The first volume of Winston Churchill's The Second World War (1948–1953) is published.
September 8 – Première of Terence Rattigan's one-act plays The Browning Version and Harlequinade at the Phoenix Theatre (London).
September 17 – The remains of Irish poet W. B. Yeats (who died at Menton, France in 1939) are re-buried at Drumcliffe, County Sligo, "Under bare Ben Bulben's head", having been moved from the original burial place, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, on Irish Naval Service corvette LÉ Macha. His grave at Drumcliffe, with an epitaph from "Under Ben Bulben", one of his final poems ("Cast a cold Eye / On Life, on Death. / Horseman, pass by"), becomes a place of literary pilgrimage.
