The year 1943 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• George Orwell resigns from the BBC to become literary editor of Tribune.
• Isaac Bashevis Singer becomes a naturalized citizen of the United States.
• Jack Kerouac joins the US Navy.
• C. S. Lewis makes a series of radio broadcasts that will be adapted as Mere Christianity.
• Tristan Bernard is released from the Drancy deportation camp.
• The FBI places Richard Wright under surveillance.
• Philip Larkin graduates from Oxford and obtains his first post as a librarian.

New books

• Sholem Asch - The Apostle
• Henry Bellamann - Victoria Grandolet
• Enid Blyton - The Magic Faraway Tree
• John Dickson Carr writing as "Carter Dickson" - She Died A Lady
• Raymond Chandler - The Lady in the Lake
• Agatha Christie - Towards Zero
• Colette - Le Képi
• Roald Dahl - Gremlins
• Howard Fast - Citizen Tom Paine
• C. S. Forester - The Ship
• Robert Graves - Claudius the God
• Elizabeth Janet Gray - Adam of the Road
• Graham Greene - Ministry of Fear
• H. P. Lovecraft - Beyond the Wall of Sleep
• Naguib Mahfouz - Rhadopis of Nubia
• C. L. Moore - Earth's Last Citadel
• Kate O'Brien - The Last of Summer
• Carl Offord - The White Face
• E. Phillips Oppenheim - Mr. Mirakel
• Roger Peyrefitte - Les amitiés particulières
• Ellery Queen - There Was an Old Woman
• Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead
• Antoine de Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince
• Betty Smith - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
• Kylie Tennant - Ride on Stranger
• H. G. Wells - Crux Ansata
• Chancellor Williams - The Raven
• Virginia Woolf - A Haunted House and Other Short Stories (published anonymously)

New drama

• Bertolt Brecht - Life of Galileo and The Good Person of Szechwan
• Thornton Wilder - The Skin of Our Teeth

Poetry

• A Choice of Kipling's Verse edited by T. S. Eliot

Non-fiction

• Julius Evola - The Doctrine of Awakening
• C. S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man
• Reinhold Niebuhr - The Nature and Destiny of Man
• Jean-Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness
• Stephan Zweig - World of Yesterday.

Births

• January 4 - Doris Kearns Goodwin, writer
• January 11 - Jim Hightower, radio host, author
• February 15 - Elke Heidenreich, journalist and writer
• February 18 - Graeme Garden, writer, comedian, actor
• February 22 - Terry Eagleton, critic
• March 26 - Bob Woodward, journalist
• April 30 - Paul Jennings, children's author
• May 5 - Michael Palin, comedy writer and television personality
• May 7 - Peter Carey, Booker Prize-winning novelist
• May 8 - Pat Barker, Booker Prize-winning novelist
• June 15 - Xaviera Hollander, Happy Hooker author
• July 16 - Reinaldo Arenas, Cuban writer (d. 1990)
• November 5 - Sam Shepard, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, writer, actor
• November 12 - Wallace Shawn, actor and dramatist
• December 9 - Joanna Trollope, novelist
• date unknown - L. E. Modesitt, Jr., fantasy and science fiction writer
• date unknown - Gwynne Dyer, journalist
• date unknown - Max Clifford, publicist
• date unknown - Simon Jenkins, journalist
• date unknown - Charles Murray, Bell Curve author
• date unknown - Sheila Rowbotham, feminist author
• date unknown - Christopher Priest, science fiction author

Deaths

• January 9 - R. G. Collingwood, philosopher and historian
• March 10 - Lawrence Binyon, poet and scholar
• April 30 - Beatrice Webb
• May - Arthur Mee, editor of the Children's Encyclopaedia
• August 24 - Simone Weil, philosopher
• October 7 - Radclyffe Hall, controversial author
• December 22 - Beatrix Potter, Children's author
• date unknown - Guido Mazzoni, poet
• date unknown - F. M. Cornford, poet

Awards

• Frost Medal: Edna St. Vincent Millay
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Mary Lavin, Tales from Bective Bridge
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: G. G. Coulton, Fourscore Years
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Janet Gray, Adam of the Road
• Nobel Prize for literature: not awarded
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Frost: A Witness Tree
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Upton Sinclair - Dragon's Teeth