Deaths
- January 24 - St. John Greer Ervine, dramatist, 77
- March 5 – Allan Nevins, journalist and historian, 80
- March 7 – Stevie Smith, poet and novelist, 68
- March 21 - Kyūya Fukada, Japanese writer and mountaineer, 67
- April 10 – André Billy, French novelist, 88
- May 19 – Ogden Nash, poet and humorist, 68
- May 20 – Waldo Williams, Welsh language poet, 66
- June 1 – Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian, 78
- June 4 – György Lukács, Hungarian philosopher and critic, 86
- June 5 - Clifford Dyment, poet, 57
- June 6 – Edward Andrade, poet and physicist, 83
- July 4 – August Derleth, writer, anthologist and publisher, 62 (heart attack)
- July 7 – Claude Gauvreau, Quebecois poet and dramatist, 45 (accidental fall or suicide)
- July 27 - Jacques Lusseyran, blind French author and Resistance fighter, 46 (car crash)
- August 30 – Peter Fleming, travel writer and brother of Ian Fleming, 64
- October 25 – Philip Wylie, novelist and non-fiction writer, 69
- November 1 - Gertrud von Le Fort, German novelist, poet and essayist, 95
- November 10 – Walter Van Tilburg Clark, novelist (The Ox-Bow Incident), 62 (cancer)
- December 22 – Godfried Bomans, Dutch writer and broadcaster, 58 (heart attack)
- December 25 – S. Foster Damon, critic and poet, 78
Read more about this topic: 1971 In Literature
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes,
they waste their deaths on us.”
—C.D. Andrews (1913–1992)
“On almost the incendiary eve
Of deaths and entrances ...”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier’s sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.”
—Philip Caputo (b. 1941)