1931 in literature

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

Events

*Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs' play "Green Grow the Lilacs" premiers. It would later be adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein as "Oklahoma!".
* 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.
* October 4 - Debut appearance of the Dick Tracy comic strip, created by cartoonist Chester Gould.

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"
*Willa Cather - "Shadows on the Rock"
*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"
*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 - "Strong Poison"
*George S. Schuyler - "Black No More"
*Nevil Shute - "The Lonely Road"
*Georges Simenon - "Pietr-le-Letton"
*Upton Sinclair - "Roman Holiday"
*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 Garcia Lorca - "Así que pasen cinco años ('When Five Years Pass')" (not performed until 1945)
*Eugene O'Neill - "Mourning Becomes Electra"
*Dodie Smith - "Autumn Crocus"
*Thornton Wilder - "The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays in One Act"

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 (d. 2001)
*February 10 - Thomas Bernhard, author (d. 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
*June 21 - Patricia Goedicke, poet
*July 4 - Sébastien Japrisot, novelist and screenwriter
*July 7 - David Eddings, American novelist
*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

* 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 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"