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 Rigg's 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 Redmond 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
• 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 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
• August 12 - William Goldman, author
• October 19 - John le Carré

Deaths

• August 27 - Frank Harris, author and editor,
• August 31 - Hall Caine, author
• October 13 - Ernst Didring, Swedish writer,

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