1934 in literature

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The year 1934 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• The first Flash Gordon comic strip is published.
• Boris Pasternak and Korney Chukovsky are among those present at the first Congress of the Soviet Union of Writers.
• The first Nero Wolfe book is published by Rex Stout.
• The first Sir Henry Merrivale mystery novel is published by John Dickson Carr writing as "Carter Dickson".

New prose fiction

• M. Ageyev - Cocain Romance (Roman s kokainom)
• Edwin Balmer & Philip Wylie - After Worlds Collide
• Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay - Pother kanta
• Samuel Beckett - More Pricks Than Kicks
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the Lion Man
• James Branch Cabell - Smirt
• James M. Cain - The Postman Always Rings Twice
• Morley Callaghan - Such Is My Beloved
• John Dickson Carr
  • The Blind Barber
  • The Eight of Swords
  • The Bowstring Murders (as by Carr Dickson/Carter Dickson)
  • The Plague Court Murders (as by Carter Dickson)
  • The White Priory Murders (as by Carter Dickson)
  • Devil Kinsmere (as by Roger Fairbairn)
• Gabriel Chevallier - Clochemerle
• Agatha Christie
  • Murder on the Orient Express
  • Why Didn't They Ask Evans?
  • The Listerdale Mystery
  • Parker Pyne Investigates
  • Unfinished Portrait (as by Mary Westmacott)
• Colette - Duo
• Freeman Wills Crofts - The 12.30 from Croydon
• Isak Dinesen - Seven Gothic Tales
• Max Ernst - Une Semaine de Bonté
• F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender Is the Night
• Elena Fortún - Celia en el mundo
• Robert Graves - I, Claudius
• Herge - Cigars of the Pharaoh
• James Hilton - Goodbye, Mr. Chips
• Zora Neale Hurston - Jonah's Gourd Vine: A Novel
• Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
• Leopold Myers - Rajah Amar
• Vladimir Nabokov - Despair
• John O'Hara - Appointment in Samarra
• George Orwell - Burmese Days
• Ellery Queen - The Chinese Orange Mystery
• Arthur Ransome - Coot Club
• Henry Roth - Call It Sleep
• Dorothy L. Sayers - The Nine Tailors
• Mikhail Sholokhov - And Quiet Flows the Don
• Irving Stone - Lust for Life
• Rex Stout - Fer-de-Lance
• Phoebe Atwood Taylor
  • The Mystery of the Cape Cod Tavern
  • Sandbar Sinister
• B. Traven - The Death Ship (first publication in English)
• P. L. Travers - Mary Poppins
• Geoffrey Trease - Bows Against the Barons
• S. S. Van Dine
  • The Dragon Murder Case
  • The Casino Murder Case
• Evelyn Waugh - A Handful of Dust
• Nathaniel West - A Cool Million
• Dennis Wheatley - The Devil Rides Out
• P. G. Wodehouse - Thank You, Jeeves
• V. M. Yeates - Winged Victory
• Marguerite Yourcenar - A Coin in Nine Hands

New drama

• Jean Cocteau - The Infernal Machine
• Federico García Lorca - Yerma
• Lillian Hellman - The Children's Hour
• Lawrence Riley - Personal Appearance

Non-fiction

• Ruth Benedict - Patterns of Culture
• Julius Evola - Il Mistero del Graal e la Tradizione Ghibellina dell'Impero (The Mystery of the Grail)
• Emma Goldman - Living My Life
• Aldous Huxley - Beyond the Mexique Bay
• Cornelia Meigs - Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women
• A. A. Milne - Peace with Honour
• H. G. Wells - An Experiment in Autobiography

Births

• February 10 - Fleur Adcock, poet
• February 10 - Gordon Lish, American writer, editor and teacher
• March 28 - Jean Louvet, dramatist
• May 12 - Elechi Amadi, Nigerian novelist
• May 27 - Harlan Ellison, US science-fiction writer.
• July 13 - Wole Soyinka, Nigerian writer, poet and playwright; awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature
• July 21 - Jonathan Miller, satirist and non-fiction author
• August 6 - Piers Anthony, English writer of science fiction and fantasy
• September 11 - Leon Rooke, Canadian novelist
• October 17 - Alan Garner, novelist
• November 9 - Ronald Harwood, dramatist
• November 21 - Beryl Bainbridge, novelist (died 2010)
• December 28 - Alasdair Gray, Scottish writer
• date unknown - Jayakanthan, Tamil writer, Jnanpith awardee

Deaths

• January 8 - Andrei Bely, novelist, poet and critic
• January 15 - Hermann Bahr, dramatist and critic
• January 30 - Frank Nelson Doubleday, publisher
• February 8 - Ferenc Móra, novelist and journalist
• March 10 - F. Anstey, Vice Versa author
• April 9 - Safvet-beg Bašagić, poet
• April 11 - Gerald du Maurier, actor-manager, son of George du Maurier and father of Daphne du Maurier
• April 12 - Robert Clyde Packer, newspaper magnate
• June 21 - Thorne Smith, humorist and fantasy author
• June 26 - Naito Torajiro, historian
• June 30 - Fritz Gerlich, anti-Hitler journalist
• July 23 - Karl Joel, philosopher
• July 29 - Frane Bulić, historian
• August 13 - Mary Hunter Austin, travel writer
• September 9 - Roger Fry, art critic
• October 1 - Shakeb Jalali, Famous URDU poet
• November 23 - Arthur Wing Pinero, dramatist
• December 15 - Gustave Lanson, historian and literary critic
• date unknown - Julian Hawthorne, journalist and novelist

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Robert Graves, I, Claudius and Claudius the God
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: J. E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth
• King's Gold Medal for Poetry instituted this year with first winner, Laurence Whistler
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Cornelia Meigs, Invincible Louisa
• Nobel Prize for literature: Luigi Pirandello.
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Sidney Kingsley, Men in White
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Hillyer: Collected Verse
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Caroline Miller - Lamb in His Bosom