1931 in literature

List of years in literature (table)
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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1931.

Events

• January 10 – A rare copy of Edgar Allan Poe's Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Other Poems together with first editions of The Scarlet Letter and Moby-Dick, are stolen from the New York Public Library by Samuel Dupree acting on behalf of crooked New York antiquarian book dealer Harry Gold.^[1]
• January 26 – Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs' play Green Grow the Lilacs opens in New York on Broadway. It will later be adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein as Oklahoma!^[2]
• April – Gerald Brenan and Gamel Woolsey make a form of marriage in Rome.
• June 1 – Near v. Minnesota decided in the Supreme Court of the United States affirms the principle that prior restraint is unconstitutional.
• July 4 – James Joyce marries his long-time partner Nora Barnacle at Kensington register office in London.
• October 4 – First appearance of the Dick Tracy comic strip, created by cartoonist Chester Gould.^[3]
• The publisher Hamish Hamilton is founded by Jamie Hamilton in London.
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is banned in Hunan, China, for anthropomorphism.^[4]
• The Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom (Les 120 journées de Sodome), written in 1785, begins its first publication in a scholarly edition as a literary text.

New books

Fiction

• Shmuel Yosef Agnon – The Bridal Canopy
• Margery Allingham – Police at the Funeral
• Roberto Arlt – Los lanzallamas ("The Flame-Throwers")
• E. F. Benson – Mapp and Lucia
• Arna Bontemps – God Sends Sunday
• Pearl S. Buck – The Good Earth
• Morley Callaghan – No Man's Meat
• Nellie Campobello – Cartucho
• John Dickson Carr
  • Castle Skull
  • The Lost Gallows
• Willa Cather – Shadows on the Rock
• Sigurd Christiansen – To levende og en død
• Agatha Christie – The Sittaford Mystery
• Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth – The Cat Who Went to Heaven
• A. J. Cronin – Hatter's Castle
• E. E. Cummings – CIOPW
• Detection Club – The Floating Admiral
• Pierre Drieu La Rochelle – Will O' the Wisp
• Lord Dunsany – The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens
• William Faulkner
  • Sanctuary
  • These 13
• Jessie Redmon Fauset – The Chinaberry Tree
• Carlo Emilio Gadda – La madonna dei filosofi
• Emma Goldman – Living My Life
• Caroline Gordon – Penhally
• Dashiell Hammett – The Glass Key
• Harold Heslop – Red Earth
• Georgette Heyer – The Conqueror
• James Hilton – Murder at School
• Knud Holmboe – Desert Encounter
• Fannie Hurst – Back Street
• Francis Iles – Malice Aforethought^[5]
• Carolyn Keene – The Secret of Shadow Ranch
• Irmgard Keun – Gilgi – eine von uns ("Gilgi – One of Us")
• Halldór Laxness – Salka Valka, pt I: Þú vínviður hreini ("O Thou Pure Vine")
• W. Somerset Maugham – Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular
• Pierre Mac Orlan – La Bandera
• Nancy Mitford – Highland Fling
• Thomas Mofolo – Chaka
• Leopold Myers – Prince Jali
• Ilf and Petrov – The Little Golden Calf
• Andrei Platonov – The Foundation Pit (Котлован, Kotlovan; completed; not published until after the author's death in 1951)
• Anthony Powell – Afternoon Men
• Ellery Queen – The Dutch Shoe Mystery
• Erich Remarque – The Road Back
• E. Arnot Robertson – Four Frightened People
• Vita Sackville-West – All Passion Spent
• Dorothy Sayers – Five Red Herrings
• George S. Schuyler – Black No More
• Nevil Shute – Lonely Road
• Georges Simenon – Pietr-le-Letton (book format)
• Upton Sinclair – Roman Holiday
• Phoebe Atwood Taylor – The Cape Cod Mystery
• 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

Children and young adults

• Jean de Brunhoff – Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant (translated as The Story of Babar)
• Edgar Rice Burroughs
  • A Fighting Man of Mars
  • Tarzan the Invincible
• Erich Kästner – The 35th of May, or Conrad's Ride to the South Seas (Der 35. Mai)
• Arthur Ransome – Swallowdale

New drama

• Chen Liting – Put Down Your Whip (放下你的鞭子, Fàngxià nǐde biānzi)
• John van Druten – London Wall
• Federico García Lorca – When Five Years Pass (Así que pasen cinco años, written)
• Jean Giraudoux – Judith
• Eugene O'Neill – Mourning Becomes Electra
• Ahmed Shawqi – Qambeez ("Cambyses")
• Dodie Smith – Autumn Crocus
• Ödön von Horváth – Tales from the Vienna Woods (Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald)
• Thornton Wilder – The Long Christmas Dinner
• Carl Zuckmayer – The Captain of Köpenick (Der Hauptmann von Köpenick)

Non-fiction

• Samuel Beckett – Proust
• Adrian Bell – Silver Ley
• Arthur Bryant – King Charles the Second
• Herbert Butterfield – The Whig Interpretation of History
• W. Chapman & V.C.A. Ferraro – A New Theory of Magnetic Storms
• Ali Akbar Dehkhoda et al. – Dehkhoda Dictionary of the Persian language
• Julius Evola – The Hermetic Tradition
• Dion Fortune – Spiritualism in the Light of Occult Science
• John Middleton Murry – Son of Woman: The Story of D. H. Lawrence
• Irma S. Rombauer – The Joy of Cooking
• Helen Thomas – World Without End

Births

• January 6
  • E. L. Doctorow, American author (died 2015)
  • P. J. Kavanagh, English poet, novelist, lecturer, actor, broadcaster and columnist (died 2015)
• January 9 – Algis Budrys, Lithuanian-born science fiction author (died 2008)
• January 10 – Peter Barnes, English playwright (died 2004)
• January 17 – Mark Brandis (Nikolai von Michalewsky), German journalist and science fiction author (died 2000)
• January 27
  • John Hopkins, English screenwriter (died 1998)
  • Mordecai Richler, Canadian author (died 2001)
• January 27
  • Allan W. Eckert, American historian and novelist (died 2011)
  • Shirley Hazzard, Australian author
• February 9 – Thomas Bernhard, Dutch-born Austrian author (died 1989)
• February 11 – Larry Merchant, American author and boxing commentator
• February 12 – Janwillem van de Wetering, Dutch-born crime writer (died 2008)
• February 18
  • Johnny Hart, American cartoonist (died 2007)
  • Toni Morrison, American writer and Nobel Prize winner
• February 19 – Robert Sobel, American business writer (died 1999)
• March 2 – Tom Wolfe, American novelist
• March 16 – Augusto Boal, Brazilian theater director and writer (died 2009)
• March 22 – Leslie Thomas, Welsh novelist (died 2014)
• April 1 – Rolf Hochhuth, German dramatist
• April 15 – Tomas Tranströmer, Swedish poet and translator (died 2015)
• April 21 – Gabriel de Broglie, French historian
• April 29 – Robert Gottlieb, American editor
• June 12 – Robin Cook (Derek Raymond), English crime novelist (died 1994)
• June 21 – Patricia Goedicke, American poet (died 2006)
• July 4 – Sébastien Japrisot, French novelist and screenwriter (died 2003)
• July 7 – David Eddings, American novelist (died 2009)
• July 10
  • Nick Adams, American screenwriter
  • Julian May, American science fiction author
  • Alice Munro, Canadian short story writer
• August 2 – Karl Miller, British writer and literary editor (died 2014)
• August 12 – William Goldman, American author
• August 22 – Maurice Gee, New Zealand novelist
• September 22 – Fay Weldon, English novelist
• October 8 – Dennis Silk, American-born English writer on literature and cricket, and first-class cricketer
• October 19 – John le Carré (David John Moore Cornwell), English spy novelist
• November 18 – Nikoloz Janashia, Georgian historian (died 1982)

Deaths

• January 26 – Graça Aranha, Brazilian diplomat and writer (born 1868)
• March 27 – Arnold Bennett, English novelist (born 1867)
• April 4 – André Michelin, French originator of Michelin Guides (born 1853)
• April 10 – Khalil Gibran, Lebanese-born American poet (born 1883)
• June 29 – Nérée Beauchemin, French-Canadian poet (born 1850)
• July 2 – Harald Høffding, Danish philosopher (born 1843)
• August 1 – Bertha McNamara, German-born Australian pamphleteer and bookseller (born 1853)
• August 15 – Delfín Chamorro, Spanish poet and language teacher (born 1863)
• August 27 – Frank Harris, Irish-born American author and editor (born 1856)
• August 31 – Hall Caine, Manx novelist and dramatist (born 1853)
• October 13 – Ernst Didring, Swedish novelist (born 1868)
• October 21 – Arthur Schnitzler, Austrian dramatist (born 1862)
• November 3 – Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, Uruguayan epic poet (born 1855)
• November 5 – Ole Edvart Rolvaag, Norwegian American writer (born 1876)
• November 19 – Xu Zhimo (徐志摩), Chinese poet (air accident, born 1897)
• December 10 – Enrico Corradini, Italian novelist, essayist and journalist (born 1865)
• December 26 – Melvil Dewey, American inventor of library classification system (born 1851)
• December 27 – Alfred Perceval Graves, Irish author and collector of songs and ballads (born 1846)
• December 31 – Ieronim Yasinsky, Russian writer, poet and essayist (born 1850

Awards

• Chancellor's Gold Medal: Robert Gittings
• 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

References

1. McDade, Travis (2013). Thieves of Book Row: New York's Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199922666.
2. Lynn Riggs: An Oklahoma Treasure, Friends of Libraries in Oklahoma.
3. Doherty, Jim (2009). "I Like 'Em Tough". ME.
4. "Topics of the Times". The New York Times. 1931-05-05. p. 26.
5. Keating, H. R. F. (1982). Whodunit? – a guide to crime, suspense and spy fiction. London: Windward. ISBN 0-7112-0249-4.