US novelist Mary McCarthy describes the religious pressures she grew up with in Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

The Hawk in the Rain is English author Ted Hughes' first volume of poems

Jack Kerouac publishes a largely autobiographical novel, On the Road, describing his experiences travelling through the US and Mexico

In Voss Australian author Patrick White creates an epic novel about a disastrous attempt to cross the continent

The publication of the novel Justine launches Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet

In Syntactic Structures Noam Chomsky proposes the revolutionary theory that humans inherit an innate universal grammar

English author John Braine publishes his first novel, Room at the Top

English author Stevie Smith publishes her collection of poems Not Waving but Drowning

Laurence Olivier brings the music-hall artist Archie Rice vibrantly to life in John Osborne's The Entertainer

Boris Pasternak's only novel, Doctor Zhivago, is first published in an Italian translation

Irish dramatist Brendan Behan's play The Hostage is produced in Dublin

In The Affluent Society US economist John Kenneth Galbraith criticizes wasteful modern consumerism

Chicken Soup with Barley begins a trilogy by English playwright Arnold Wesker

The Fire Raisers, by Swiss dramatist Max Frisch, is performed in Zürich

Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita is published in Paris

Truman Capote publishes a short novel, Breakfast at Tiffany's, with a bewitching central character, Holly Golightly

Nigerian dramatist Wole Soyinka's play The Swamp Dwellers is produced in London

English author Alan Sillitoe publishes his first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Harold Pinter's first play in London's West End, The Birthday Party, closes in less than a week

German novelist Günter Grass has an immediate success with his first novel, The Tin Drum

Saul Bellow publishes Henderson the Rain King, in which an American millionaire acquires a strange role in an African tribe

Keith Waterhouse has a wide success with his second novel, Billy Liar

US author William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, an account of the horrors of a junkie's life, is published in Paris

Harold Pinter's second play in London's West End, The Caretaker, immediately brings him an international reputation

Philip Roth publishes his first book, Goodbye, Columbus, a novella and five short stories