1931 in literature

See also: 1930 in literature, other events of 1931, 1932 in literature, list of years in literature.

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