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!.
• October 4 - Debut appearance of the Dick Tracy comic strip, created by cartoonist Chester Gould.

New books

• Afternoon Men - Anthony Powell
• Big Money - P.G. Wodehouse
• Black No More - George S. Schuyler
• The Cat Who Went to Heaven - Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth
• Chaka - Thomas Mofolo
• The Chinaberry Tree - Jessie Redmon Fauset
• CIOPW - E.E. Cummings
• The Colored Gentlemen, A Product of Modern Civilization - Dennis F. Imbert
• The Conqueror – Georgette Heyer
• Dehkhoda Dictionary of the Persian language - Ali Akbar Dehkhoda et al.
• Desert Encounter - Knud Holmboe
• The Dream Life of Balso Snell - Nathanael West
• The Dutch Shoe Mystery - Ellery Queen
• A Fighting Man of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Floating Admiral - Detection Club
• The Glass Key - Dashiell Hammett
• The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
• Hatter's Castle - A.J. Cronin
• The Hermetic Tradition - Julius Evola
• Highland Fling (novel) - Nancy Mitford
• If I Were You - P.G. Wodehouse
• The Joy of Cooking - Irma S. Rombauer
• Judith Paris - Hugh Walpole
• The Little Golden Calf - Ilf and Petrov
• Living My Life - Emma Goldman
• The Lonely Road - Nevil Shute
• Malice Aforethought - Francis Iles
• A New Theory of Magnetic Storms - W. Chapman & V.C.A. Ferraro
• No Man's Meat - Morley Callaghan
• Police at the Funeral - Margery Allingham
• Prince Jali - Leopold Myers
• The Road Back - Erich Remarque
• Roman Holiday - Upton Sinclair
• Sanctuary - William Faulkner
• The Secret of Shadow Ranch - Carolyn Keene
• Strong Poison - Dorothy Sayers
• Swallowdale - Arthur Ransome
• These 13 - William Faulkner
• The 35th of May, or Conrad's Ride to the South Seas - Erich Kästner
• The Waves - Virginia Woolf
• Wild Orchid (novel) - Sigrid Undset

New drama

• Eugene O'Neill - Mourning Becomes Electra
• Dodie Smith - Autumn Crocus
• Thornton Wilder - The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays in One Act

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

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize: Kate O'Brien, Without My Cloak
• 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

1931 books

1931 en littérature | 1931 - literatura | Litteraturåret 1931