1934 in literature

• January 7 – The first Flash Gordon comic strip is created and illustrated by Alex Raymond and published in the United States.[1]
• January 25 – James Joyce's novel Ulysses, after a December acquittal (upheld on appeal in February) in United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, is first published in an authorized edition in the Anglophone world by Random House of New York City. It has 12,000 advance sales.[2]
• January – B. Traven's novel The Death Ship (1926) first appears in English.
• February – Stefan Zweig flees Austria and settles in London.
• February 6 – The February 6 riots in France, partly provoked by a performance of Shakespeare's Coriolanus by the Comédie-Française, will become the focus of a cult in the works of far-right authors, notably Death on Credit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1936) and Gilles by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (1939). Also in 1934, Drieu announces his conversion to fascism, with the essay Socialisme fasciste.[3]
• March 16 and October 5 – P. G. Wodehouse's Thank You, Jeeves and Right Ho, Jeeves, the first full-length novels to feature Jeeves, are published.
• April – F. Scott Fitzgerald's fourth and final completed novel, Tender Is the Night, appears in book form in New York, after serialization since January in the monthly Scribner's Magazine.
• April 3 – The English literary biographer Thomas Wright (of Olney) first publishes, in the Daily Express, some facts about Charles Dickens' relations with the actress Ellen Ternan.[4]
• April 6 – Rudyard Kipling and W. B. Yeats are awarded the Gothenburg Prize for Poetry.
• May 1 – The first officially designated Thingplatz for the performance of Thingspiele is dedicated in the Brandberge in Halle (Nazi Germany).[5]
• June
  • A medieval manuscript of Le Morte d'Arthur used by Caxton is identified in the Fellows' Library of Winchester College (England) by the bibliophile Walter Fraser Oakeshott.[6]
  • The English poet Laurie Lee walks out one midsummer morning from his Gloucestershire home, bound for Spain.
  • Two notable gentleman detectives of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, set in England, appear for the first time in print, later to have whole series written about them. The first to feature Inspector Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard is A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh, at this time resident in her native New Zealand, published in London. The first Sir Henry Merrivale locked room mystery, The Plague Court Murders, appears from John Dickson Carr, at this time resident in the UK and writing as "Carter Dickson", in New York around early June. It is followed in December by The White Priory Murders.[7]
• July 17 – The circular Manchester Central Library, England, opens.
• August – Boris Pasternak and Korney Chukovsky are among those at the first Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers.[8]
• September – Henry Miller's novel Tropic of Cancer is published in Paris by the Obelisk Press. The United States Customs Service prohibits imports of it.[9]
• October 22 – A new Cambridge University Library, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, opens in England.
• October 24 – The first of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe detective novels, Fer-de-Lance, is published in New York, and abridged in the November The American Magazine as "Point of Death."
• November 20 – Lillian Hellman's first successful play, The Children's Hour, dealing with a theme of accusations of lesbianism, opens at the Maxine Elliott Theatre on Broadway in New York, where it will run for two years.
• December 25 – The Romanian novelist Panait Istrati, a former communist, begins his collaboration with the quasi-fascist Cruciada Românismului with a polemic against antisemitism.[10] The weekly newspaper, edited by Mihai Stelescu and Alexandru Talex, later hosts pieces by Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu.[11]

Unknown date

• The first three volumes of Mikhail Sholokhov's novel And Quiet Flows the Don first appear in English under this title.

• January 4 – Hellmuth Karasek, German journalist, literary critic, and novelist (died 2015)[14]
• January 8 – Alexandra Ripley, American novelist (died 2004)
• January 12 – Alan Sharp, Scottish-American screenwriter and author (died 2013)[15]
• February 10
  • Fleur Adcock, New Zealand-born poet
  • Gordon Lish, American writer, editor and teacher
• February 18 – Audre Lorde, American poet, writer and feminist (died 1992)
• February 27 – N. Scott Momaday, Native American novelist
• March 28 – Jean Louvet, Belgian dramatist
• April 24 – Jayakanthan, Tamil writer, Jnanpith awardee (died 2015)
• May 10 – Richard Peck, American novelist (died 2015)
• May 12 – Elechi Amadi, Nigerian novelist (died 2016)
• May 27 – Harlan Ellison, American science fiction writer
• June 11 – Lady Annabel Goldsmith, English memoirist and socialite
• July 11 – Helen Cresswell, English children's writer and scriptwriter (died 2005)
• July 13 – Wole Soyinka, Nigerian writer, playwright and Nobel laureate
• July 20 – Uwe Johnson, German writer (died 1984)
• July 21 – Jonathan Miller, English satirist and non-fiction author (died 2019)
• August 5 – Wendell Berry, American poet, novelist and activist (died 2019)
• August 6
  • Piers Anthony, English-born science fiction and fantasy writer
  • Diane di Prima, American poet of the Beat Generation and artist (died 2020)
• August 16 – Diana Wynne Jones, English children's fantasy novelist (died 2011)
• September 11 – Leon Rooke, Canadian novelist
• September 17 – Binoy Majumdar, Indian Hungryalist poet (died 2006)
• September 21 – Leonard Cohen, Canadian-born poet, singer-songwriter and novelist (died 2016)
• September 23 – Per Olov Enquist, Swedish novelist (died 2020)
• October 1 – Shakeb Jalali, Pakistani poet in Urdu (suicide 1966)
• October 17 – Alan Garner, English children's novelist[16]
• October 24 – Adrian Mitchell, English poet, playwright and children's author (died 2008)
• November 9 – Ronald Harwood (Ronald Horwitz), South African-born English dramatist and screenwriter (died 2020)
• November 12 – John McGahern, Irish novelist (died 2006)
• November 15 – Irén Pavlics, Slovene author in Hungary
• November 19 – Joanne Kyger, American poet
• November 21 – Beryl Bainbridge, English novelist (died 2010)[17]
• December 28 – Alasdair Gray, Scottish novelist and artist (died 2019)[18]
• unknown dates
  • Muhammad al-Maghut, Syrian Ismaili poet (died 2006)
  • Yaakov Shabtai, Israeli novelist, playwright and translator (died 1981)[19]

• January 1 – Jakob Wassermann, German-Jewish novelist (born 1873)
• January 6 – Dorothy Edwards, Welsh novelist (suicide, born 1903)
• January 8 – Andrei Bely (Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev), Russian novelist, poet and critic (born 1880)
• January 11 – Helen Zimmern, German-born English writer and translator (born 1846)
• January 15 – Hermann Bahr, Austrian dramatist and critic (born 1863)
• February 8 – Ferenc Móra, Hungarian novelist and journalist (born 1879)
• March 10 – Thomas Anstey Guthrie (F. Anstey), English comic novelist and journalist (born 1856)
• April 9 – Safvet-beg Bašagić, Bosnian poet (born 1870)
• April 12 – Robert Clyde Packer, Australian journalist and newspaper magnate (heart failure, born 1879)
• May 1 – Paul Zarifopol, Romanian critic (born 1874)
• June 14 – John Gray, English poet (born 1866)
• June 21 – Thorne Smith, American humorist and fantasy author (heart attack, born 1892)
• June 26 – Naito Torajiro (内藤 虎次郎), Japanese historian (born 1866)
• June 30 – Night of the Long Knives
  • Fritz Gerlich, German journalist (murdered, born 1883)
  • Karl-Günther Heimsoth, Austrian doctor and gay publicist (shot, born 1899)
  • Willi Schmid, German music critic (murdered, born 1893)[20]
• July 4 – Hayim Nahman Bialik, Hebrew-language poet (born 1873)
• July 21 – Julian Hawthorne, American journalist and novelist (born 1846)
• July 23 – Karl Joel, German philosopher (born 1864)
• July 29 – Frane Bulić, Croatian historian (born 1846)
• August 13 – Mary Hunter Austin, American travel writer (born 1868)
• September 9 – Roger Fry, English art critic (born 1866)
• September 21 – Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică, Romanian literary critic (born 1866)
• November 23 – Arthur Wing Pinero, English dramatist (born 1855)
• December 15 – Gustave Lanson, French historian and literary critic (born 1857)
• December 26 – Wallace Thurman, African American novelist (TB, born 1902)

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Robert Graves, I, Claudius and Claudius the God
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: J. E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth
• King's Gold Medal for Poetry instituted this year with first winner, Laurence Whistler
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Cornelia Meigs, Invincible Louisa
• Nobel Prize for literature: Luigi Pirandello.
• Prix Goncourt: Roger Vercel, Capitaine Conan[21]
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Sidney Kingsley, Men in White
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Hillyer, Collected Verse
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Caroline Miller, Lamb in His Bosom