1934 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1934.

Events

January 7 – The first Flash Gordon comic strip is created and illustrated by Alex Raymond and published in the United States.
January 25 – James Joyce's novel Ulysses, after a December acquittal 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.
January – B. Traven's novel The Death Ship 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 and Gilles by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. Also in 1934, Drieu announces his conversion to fascism, with the essay Socialisme fasciste.
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 first publishes, in the Daily Express, some facts about Charles Dickens' relations with the actress Ellen Ternan.
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.
June
*A medieval manuscript of Le Morte d'Arthur used by Caxton is identified in the Fellows' Library of Winchester College by the bibliophile Walter Fraser Oakeshott.
*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.
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.
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.
September 4 - Evelyn Waugh's novel A Handful of Dust is first published in full.
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. The weekly newspaper, edited by Mihai Stelescu and Alexandru Talex, later hosts pieces by Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu.
Unknown date – The first three volumes of Mikhail Sholokhov's novel And Quiet Flows the Don first appear in English under this title.

New books

Non-fiction

Ruth Benedict – Patterns of Culture
Maud Bodkin – Archetypal Patterns of Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination
Marjorie Bowen – The Scandal of Sophie Dawes
Martí de Riquer i Morera
*L'humanisme català
*Humanisme i decadència en les lletres catalanes
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle – Socialisme fasciste
Daphne du Maurier – Gerald: A Portrait
Julius Evola – Il Mistero del Graal e la Tradizione Ghibellina dell'Impero
Emma Goldman – Living My Life
Aldous Huxley – Beyond the Mexique Bay
Nicolae Iorga
*Byzance après Byzance
*Histoire de la vie byzantine
*Orizonturile mele. O viață de om așa cum a fost
Hugh Kingsmill – The Sentimental Journey: A Life of Charles Dickens
Cornelia Meigs – Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women
A. A. Milne – Peace with Honour
Paul Otlet – Traité de Documentation
Karl Popper – The Logic of Scientific Discovery
J. B. Priestley – English Journey
Amber Reeves – The Nationalisation of Banking
Antal Szerb – A magyar irodalom története
H. G. Wells – ''An Experiment in Autobiography''

Births

January 4 – Hellmuth Karasek, German journalist, literary critic and novelist
January 8 – Alexandra Ripley, American novelist
January 12
* Ebrahim Nafae, Egyptian journalist
* Alan Sharp, Scottish-American screenwriter and author
January 18 – Raymond Briggs, English writer and illustrator
February 10
*Fleur Adcock, New Zealand-born poet
*Gordon Lish, American writer, editor and teacher
February 18 – Audre Lorde, American poet, writer and feminist
February 27 – N. Scott Momaday, Native American novelist
March 28 – Jean Louvet, Belgian dramatist
April 11 – Mark Strand, American poet, essayist and translator
April 24 – Jayakanthan, Tamil writer, Jnanpith awardee
May 10 – Richard Peck, American novelist
May 12 – Elechi Amadi, Nigerian novelist
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
July 13 – Wole Soyinka, Nigerian writer, playwright and Nobel laureate
July 20 – Uwe Johnson, German writer
July 21 – Jonathan Miller, English satirist and non-fiction author
August 5 – Wendell Berry, American poet, novelist and activist
August 6
*Piers Anthony, English-born science fiction and fantasy writer
*Diane di Prima, American poet of the Beat Generation and artist
August 16 – Diana Wynne Jones, English children's fantasy novelist
September 11 – Leon Rooke, Canadian novelist
September 12 – Alan Isler, English-American novelist
September 17 – Binoy Majumdar, Indian Hungryalist poet
September 21 – Leonard Cohen, Canadian-born poet, singer-songwriter and novelist
September 23 – Per Olov Enquist, Swedish novelist
October 1 – Shakeb Jalali, Pakistani poet in Urdu
October 17 – Alan Garner, English children's novelist
October 24 – Adrian Mitchell, English poet, playwright and children's author
November 9 – Ronald Harwood, South African-born English dramatist and screenwriter
November 12 – John McGahern, Irish novelist
November 15 – Irén Pavlics, Slovene author in Hungary
November 19 – Joanne Kyger, American poet
November 21 – Beryl Bainbridge, English novelist
December 5 – Joan Didion, American writer
December 7 – Audrey Maas, American novelist and television writer
December 27 – Aidan Chambers, British author of children's and young adult novels
December 28 – Alasdair Gray, Scottish novelist and artist
unknown dates
*Muhammad al-Maghut, Syrian Ismaili poet
*Yaakov Shabtai, Israeli novelist, playwright and translator

Deaths

January 1 – Jakob Wassermann, German-Jewish novelist
January 6 – Dorothy Edwards, Welsh novelist
January 8 – Andrei Bely, Russian novelist, poet and critic
January 11 – Helen Zimmern, German-born English writer and translator
January 15 – Hermann Bahr, Austrian dramatist and critic
February 8 – Ferenc Móra, Hungarian novelist and journalist
February 28 – Emeline Harriet Howe, American poet, writer and social activist
March 10 – Thomas Anstey Guthrie, English comic novelist and journalist
April 9 – Safvet-beg Bašagić, Bosnian poet
April 12 – Robert Clyde Packer, Australian journalist and newspaper magnate
May 1 – Paul Zarifopol, Romanian critic
June 14 – John Gray, English poet
June 21 – Thorne Smith, American humorist and fantasy author
June 26 – Naito Torajiro, Japanese historian
June 30 – Night of the Long Knives
*Fritz Gerlich, German journalist
*Karl-Günther Heimsoth, Austrian doctor and gay publicist
*Willi Schmid, German music critic
July 4 – Hayim Nahman Bialik, Hebrew-language poet
July 21 – Julian Hawthorne, American journalist and novelist
July 23 – Karl Joel, German philosopher
July 29 – Frane Bulić, Croatian historian
August 13 – Mary Hunter Austin, American travel writer
August 30 – Rebecca Richardson Joslin, American non-fiction writer
September 9 – Roger Fry, English art critic
September 21 – Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică, Romanian literary critic
November 23 – Arthur Wing Pinero, English dramatist
December 15 – Gustave Lanson, French historian and literary critic
December 26 – Wallace Thurman, African American novelist
''unknown dates''

Awards

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 in Literature: Luigi Pirandello.
Prix Goncourt: Roger Vercel, Capitaine Conan
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''

1934 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards