1933 in literature

The year 1933 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

 * February 17 - The magazine Newsweek is published for the first time.
 * James Joyce's Ulysses is allowed into the United States.

New books

 * Hervey Allen - Anthony Adverse
 * Jorge Amado - Cacau (Cacao)
 * Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie - When Worlds Collide
 * Marjorie Bowen - The Last Bouquet: Some Twilight Tales
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the City of Gold
 * Erskine Caldwell - God's Little Acre
 * John Dickson Carr - The Mad Hatter Mystery
 * Leslie Charteris - Once More the Saint (a.k.a. The Saint and Mr. Teal)
 * Agatha Christie
 * The Hound of Death
 * Lord Edgware Dies
 * A.J. Cronin - Grand Canary
 * Guy Endore - The Werewolf of Paris
 * Zona Gale - Papa La Fleur
 * Erle Stanley Gardner - The Case of the Sulky Girl
 * Walter Greenwood - Love on the Dole
 * Dashiell Hammett
 * The Thin Man
 * Woman In The Dark
 * James Hilton - Lost Horizon
 * Volter Kilpi - Alastalon salissa
 * Elizabeth Foreman Lewis - Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze
 * Arthur Machen - The Green Round
 * Claude McKay - Banana Bottom
 * André Malraux - Man's Fate
 * Ellery Queen
 * The American Gun Mystery
 * The Siamese Twin Mystery
 * Arthur Ransome - Winter Holiday
 * Raymond Queneau - Le Chiendent
 * Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - South Moon Under
 * Dorothy L. Sayers
 * Hangman's Holiday
 * Murder Must Advertise
 * Gertrude Stein - The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor - The Mystery of the Cape Cod Players
 * S.S. Van Dine - The Kennel Murder Case
 * Helen Waddell - Peter Abelard
 * Hugh Walpole - Vanessa
 * H.G. Wells - The Shape of Things to Come
 * Franz Werfel - The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
 * Antonia White - Frost in May
 * Virginia Woolf - Flush: A Biography

New drama

 * Jean Anouilh - Mandarine
 * Ferdinand Bruckner - Die Rassen
 * Federico García Lorca - Blood Wedding
 * Eugene O'Neill - Ah, Wilderness!

Poetry

 * Edwin James Brady - Wardens of the Seas
 * Filip Shiroka - Zâni i zêmrës
 * William Butler Yeats - The Winding Stair and Other Poems

Non-fiction

 * Vera Brittain - Testament of Youth
 * George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London
 * Jun'ichirō Tanizaki - In Praise of Shadows

Births

 * January 1 - Joe Orton, playwright (d. 1967)
 * January 9 - Wilbur Smith, novelist
 * January 16 - Susan Sontag, novelist (d. 2004)
 * February 12 - Costa-Gavras, director, writer
 * March 17 - Penelope Lively, novelist
 * March 19 - Philip Roth, novelist
 * April 14 - Boris Strugatsky, Russian sci-fi writer
 * May 5 - Barbara Taylor Bradford, blockbuster author
 * May 29 - Edward Whittemore, novelist (d. 1995)
 * June 20 - Claire Tomalin, journalist and biographer
 * July 4 - David Littman, historian
 * July 10 - Kevin Gilbert, Australian writer and artist (d. 1993)
 * July 21 - John Gardner, American writer (d. 1982)
 * August 13 - Madhur Jaffrey, actress and food writer
 * September 19 - Gilles Archambault, Québécois novelist
 * October 11 - David Daniels, poet (d. 2008)
 * November 13 - Peter Härtling, German writer
 * December 2 - Kent Andersson, dramatist (d. 2005)
 * December 31 - Edward Bunker, crime novelist (d. 2005)
 * date unknown
 * Halim Barakat, Arabic novelist
 * Jim Barnes, Native American poet and translator

Deaths

 * January 21 - George Moore, poet, novelist (b. 1852)
 * January 29 – Sara Teasdale, poet
 * January 31 - John Galsworthy, novelist and dramatist (b. 1867)
 * April 5 - Earl Derr Biggers, writer
 * April 19 - E. W. Hobson, pioneering writer on mathematics (b. 1856)
 * April 29 - Constantine Cavafy, Greek Alexandrine poet (b. 1863)
 * April 30 - Anna de Noailles, French writer (b. 1876)
 * May 26 - Horatio Bottomley, journalist and fraudster (b. 1860)
 * June 7 - Dragutin Domjanić, Croatian poet (b. 1875)
 * July 8 - Anthony Hope, adventure novelist (b. 1863)
 * September 20 - Annie Besant, Theosophist writer (b. 1847)
 * September 23 - György Almásy, travel writer (b. 1867)
 * September 25
 * Ring Lardner, writer (b. 1885)
 * Pascal Poirier, historian (b. 1852)
 * November 12 - F. Holland Day, publisher
 * November 20 - Augustine Birrell, politician and author
 * November 28 - Minnie Earl Sears, librarian (b. 1873)
 * December 4 - Stefan George, poet and translator
 * date unknown - Hugo Zöller, explorer and journalist (b. 1852)

Awards

 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: A. G. Macdonell, England, Their England
 * James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Violet Clifton, The Book of Talbot
 * Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth Foreman Lewis, Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze
 * Nobel Prize for literature: Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
 * Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Maxwell Anderson, Both Your Houses
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Archibald MacLeish: Conquistador
 * Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: T. S. Stribling - The Store