1931 in literature
See also: 1930 in literature, other events of 1931, 1932 in literature, list of years in literature.
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Events
- Samuel Beckett publishes "Proust," a collection of essays
- Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs' play Green Grow the Lilacs premiers. It would later be adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein as Oklahoma!.
New books
- Afternoon Men - Anthony Powell
- Black No More - George S. Schuyler
- The Cat Who Went to Heaven - Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth
- The Chinaberry Tree - Jessie Redmon Fauset
- The Colored Gentlemen, A Product of Modern Civilization - Dennis F. Imbert
- The Conqueror – Georgette Heyer
- The Dutch Shoe Mystery - Ellery Queen
- The Glass Key - Dashiell Hammett
- The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
- Hatter's Castle - A.J. Cronin
- Highland Fling - Nancy Mitford
- Judith Paris - Hugh Walpole
- The Lonely Road - Nevil Shute
- Malice Aforethought - Francis Iles
- A New Theory of Magnetic Storms - Chapman and Ferraro
- No Man's Meat - Morley Callaghan
- Prince Jali - Leopold Myers
- The Secret of Shadow Ranch - Carolyn Keene
- Wild Orchid (novel) - Sigrid Undset
Births
- January 6 - E. L. Doctorow, author
- January 9 - Algis Budrys, science fiction author
- January 10 - Peter Barnes, playwright
- January 27 - Mordecai Richler, author (d. 2001)
- February 10 - Thomas Bernhard, author (d. 1989)
- February 11 - Larry Merchant, author/boxing commentator
- February 18 - Johnny Hart, cartoonist
- February 18 - Toni Morrison, writer, winner 1993 Nobel Prize in literature
- March 2 - Tom Wolfe
- July 7 - David Eddings, American novelist
- July 10 - Nick Adams, screenwriter
- August 12 - William Goldman, author
- October 19 - John le Carré, novelist
Deaths
- March 27 - Arnold Bennett, novelist
- April 4 - André Michelin, originator of the Michelin Guide
- April 10 - Khalil Gibran, poet
- August 27 - Frank Harris, author and editor,
- August 31 - Hall Caine, author
- October 13 - Ernst Didring, Swedish writer
- December 26 - Melvil Dewey, inventor of the most widely-used library classification system
- December 27 - Alfred Perceval Graves, author and collector of songs and ballads
Awards
- 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