1931 in literature

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The year 1931 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• January 26 - Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs' play Green Grow the Lilacs opens on Broadway. It would later be adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein as Oklahoma!.
• October 4 - First appearance of the Dick Tracy comic strip, created by cartoonist Chester Gould.
• The very first Inspector Maigret novel is published under the title Pietr-le-Letton. Georges Simenon would eventually write 75 novels, as well as 28 short stories, featuring the pipe-smoking detective.

New books

• Shmuel Yosef Agnon - The Bridal Canopy
• Margery Allingham - Police at the Funeral
• Pearl S. Buck - The Good Earth
• Edgar Rice Burroughs
  • A Fighting Man of Mars
  • Tarzan the Invincible
• Morley Callaghan - No Man's Meat
• John Dickson Carr
  • Castle Skull
  • The Lost Gallows
• Willa Cather - Shadows on the Rock
• Sigurd Christiansen - To levende og en død
• Agatha Christie - The Sittaford Mystery
• Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth - The Cat Who Went to Heaven
• A. J. Cronin - Hatter's Castle
• E. E. Cummings - CIOPW
• Detection Club - The Floating Admiral
• William Faulkner
  • Sanctuary
  • These 13
• Jessie Redmon Fauset - The Chinaberry Tree
• Emma Goldman - Living My Life
• Caroline Gordon - Penhally
• Dashiell Hammett - The Glass Key
• Georgette Heyer - The Conqueror
• James Hilton - Murder at School
• Knud Holmboe - Desert Encounter
• Fannie Hurst - Back Street
• Francis Iles - Malice Aforethought
• Dennis F. Imbert - The Colored Gentlemen, A Product of Modern Civilization
• Erich Kästner - The 35th of May, or Conrad's Ride to the South Seas
• Carolyn Keene - The Secret of Shadow Ranch
• Pierre Mac Orlan - La Bandera
• Nancy Mitford - Highland Fling
• Thomas Mofolo - Chaka
• Leopold Myers - Prince Jali
• Ilf and Petrov - The Little Golden Calf
• Anthony Powell - Afternoon Men
• Ellery Queen - The Dutch Shoe Mystery
• Arthur Ransome - Swallowdale
• Erich Remarque - The Road Back
• Dorothy Sayers - Five Red Herrings
• George S. Schuyler - Black No More
• Nevil Shute - The Lonely Road
• Georges Simenon - Pietr-le-Letton
• Upton Sinclair - Roman Holiday
• Phoebe Atwood Taylor - The Cape Cod Mystery
• Sigrid Undset - Wild Orchid
• Hugh Walpole - Judith Paris
• Nathanael West - The Dream Life of Balso Snell
• Virginia Woolf - The Waves
• P.G. Wodehouse
  • Big Money
  • If I Were You

New drama

• Federico García Lorca - When Five Years Pass (written)
• Eugene O'Neill - Mourning Becomes Electra
• Jean Giraudoux - Judith
• Dodie Smith - Autumn Crocus
• Thornton Wilder - The Long Christmas Dinner

Non-fiction

• Ali Akbar Dehkhoda et al. - Dehkhoda Dictionary of the Persian language
• Samuel Beckett - Proust
• W. Chapman & V.C.A. Ferraro - A New Theory of Magnetic Storms
• Julius Evola - The Hermetic Tradition
• Irma S. Rombauer - The Joy of Cooking

Births

• January 6 - E. L. Doctorow, author
• January 9 - Algis Budrys, science fiction author
• January 10 - Peter Barnes, playwright
• January 17 - Mark Brandis, journalist and science fiction author
• January 27
  • John Hopkins, screenwriter
  • Mordecai Richler, author (died 2001)
• February 10 - Thomas Bernhard, author (died 1989)
• February 11 - Larry Merchant, author/boxing commentator
• February 12 - Janwillem van de Wetering, crime writer
• February 18
  • Johnny Hart, cartoonist
  • Toni Morrison, writer, winner 1993 Nobel Prize in literature
• February 19 - Robert Sobel, business writer
• March 2 - Tom Wolfe, novelist
• April 21 - Gabriel de Broglie, historian
• April 29 - Robert Gottlieb, editor
• June 12 - Robin Cook, British novelist (died 1994)
• June 21 - Patricia Goedicke, poet
• July 4 - Sébastien Japrisot, novelist and screenwriter
• July 7 - David Eddings, American novelist (died 2009)
• July 10
  • Nick Adams, screenwriter
  • Julian May, science fiction author
• August 12 - William Goldman, author
• August 22 - Maurice Gee, novelist
• September 22 - Fay Weldon, novelist
• October 8 - Dennis Silk, friend of Siegfried Sassoon and Edmund Blunden
• October 19 - John le Carré, novelist
• November 18 - Nikoloz Janashia, historian

Deaths

• January 26 - Graça Aranha, Brazilian diplomat and writer (born 1868)
• March 27 - Arnold Bennett, novelist (born 1867)
• April 4 - André Michelin, originator of the Michelin Guide (born 1853)
• April 10 - Khalil Gibran, poet (born 1883)
• June 29 - Nérée Beauchemin, poet (born 1850)
• July 2 - Harald Høffding, Danish philosopher (born 1843)
• August 1 - Bertha McNamara, pamphleteer and bookseller (born 1853)
• August 15 - Delfín Chamorro, poet and language teacher (born 1863)
• August 27 - Frank Harris, author and editor (born 1856)
• August 31 - Hall Caine, author (born 1853)
• October 13 - Ernst Didring, Swedish writer (born 1868)
• October 21 - Arthur Schnitzler, Austrian dramatist (born 1862)
• November 3 - Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, epic poet (born 1855)
• November 5 - Ole Edvart Rolvaag, Norwegian-American writer (born 1876)
• December 10 - Enrico Corradini, novelist, essayist and journalist (born 1865)
• December 26 - Melvil Dewey, inventor of the most widely-used library classification system (born 1851)
• December 27 - Alfred Perceval Graves, author and collector of songs and ballads (born 1846)
• December 31 - Ieronim Yasinsky, writer, poet and essayist (born 1850)

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Kate O'Brien, Without My Cloak
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: J. Y. R. Greig, David Hume
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Coatsworth, The Cat Who Went to Heaven
• Nobel Prize for literature - Erik Axel Karlfeldt
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Susan Glaspell, Alison's House
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Frost: Collected Poems
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Margaret Ayer Barnes - Years of Grace