1955 in literature
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The year 1955 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• First issue of the "Guinness Book of Records" published.
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is published in Paris. However, it took until 1958 to be published in United States.
• An article in the British Journal of Education is critical of the novels of Enid Blyton.
• Jean Cocteau is elected to both the Académie française and the Royal Academy of Belgium.

New books

• Kingsley Amis - That Uncertain Feeling
• Isaac Asimov
  • The End of Eternity
  • The Martian Way and Other Stories
• Leigh Brackett - The Long Tomorrow
• Ray Bradbury - The October Country
• Thomas B. Costain - The Tontine
• Gertrude Crampton - Scuffy the Tugboat
• Patrick Dennis - Auntie Mame
• J. P. Donleavy - The Ginger Man
• Ian Fleming - Moonraker
• Franquin - La corne de rhinocéros
• William Golding - The Inheritors
• Graham Greene - The Quiet American
• Henri René Guieu
  • L'Agonie du Verre
  • Commandos de l'Espace
• Robert A. Heinlein - Tunnel in the Sky
• Frank Herbert - The Dragon in the Sea
• Georgette Heyer - Bath Tangle
• Patricia Highsmith - The Talented Mr. Ripley
• Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp - Tales of Conan
• Mac Hyman - No Time for Sergeants
• Aldous Huxley - The Genius and the Goddess
• MacKinlay Kantor - Andersonville
• Nikos Kazantzakis - Greek edition of The Last Temptation of Christ (Ο Τελευταίος Πειρασμός)
• Yasar Kemal - Memed, My Hawk
• C. S. Lewis - The Magician's Nephew
• Gabriel García Márquez - The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (Relato de un náufrago)
• Brian Moore -The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
• Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
• Flannery O'Connor
  • Good Country People
  • A Good Man Is Hard To Find
• Marco Denevi - Rosaura A Las 10
• John O'Hara - Ten North Frederick
• Anthony Powell - The Acceptance World
• Barbara Pym - Less than Angels
• Robert Ruark - Something of Value
• Juan Rulfo - Pedro Paramo
• Françoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse
• Isaac Bashevis Singer - Satan in Goray
• Thomas Sterling - The Evil of the Day
• Rex Stout - Before Midnight
• Morton Thompson - Not As a Stranger
• J. R. R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King
• Patrick White - The Tree of Man
• Leonard Wibberley - The Mouse That Roared
• Sloan Wilson - The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
• Herman Wouk - Marjorie Morningstar
• John Wyndham - The Chrysalids

New drama

• George Axelrod - Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
• Tennessee Williams - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Non-fiction

• James Baldwin - Notes of a Native Son
• Thomas E. Gaddis - Birdman of Alcatraz
• The Guinness Book of Records, 1st edition
• Walter Lippmann - Essays in the Public Philosophy
• Walter Lord - A Night to Remember
• Herbert Marcuse - Eros and Civilisation
• RAND - A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates
• Meher Baba - God Speaks

Births

• January 12 - Rockne O'Bannon, writer, producer
• January 13 - Jay McInerney, writer
• February 8 - John Grisham, novelist
• June 13 - Larry Mike Garmon, novelist, short story writer
• June 20 - Tor Nørretranders, science author
• September 6 - Raymond Benson, novelist
• November 23 - Steven Brust, fantasy author
• date not listed
  • Max Lucado, American writer on Christian religious themes

Deaths

• January 20 - Robert P. Tristram Coffin, poet, essayist, novelist
• June 17 - Constance Holme, English novelist and dramatist (b. 1880)
• June 19 - Adrienne Monnier, French poet and publisher
• August 2 - Wallace Stevens, poet (b. 1879)
• August 12 - Thomas Mann
• September 20 - Robert Riskin, dramatist and screenwriter
• October 18 - José Ortega y Gasset, philosopher

Awards

• Frost Medal: Leona Speyer
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Ivy Compton-Burnett, Mother and Son
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: R. W. Ketton-Cremer, Thomas Gray
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Meindert DeJong, The Wheel on the School
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Halldór Kiljan Laxness
• Premio Nadal: Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, El Jarama
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: William Faulkner - A Fable
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Wallace Stevens: Collected Poems
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Ruth Pitter