1934 in literature

The year 1934 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

 * The first Flash Gordon comic strip is published.
 * Boris Pasternak and Korney Chukovsky are among those present at the first Congress of the Soviet Union of Writers.
 * The first Nero Wolfe book is published by Rex Stout.
 * The first Sir Henry Merrivale mystery novel is published by John Dickson Carr writing as "Carter Dickson".

New books

 * M. Ageyev - Cocain Romance (Roman s kokainom)
 * Edwin Balmer & Philip Wylie - After Worlds Collide
 * Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay - Pother kanta
 * Samuel Beckett - More Pricks Than Kicks
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the Lion Man
 * James Branch Cabell - Smirt
 * James M. Cain - The Postman Always Rings Twice
 * Morley Callaghan - Such Is My Beloved
 * John Dickson Carr
 * The Blind Barber
 * The Eight of Swords
 * The Bowstring Murders (as by Carr Dickson/Carter Dickson)
 * The Plague Court Murders (as by Carter Dickson)
 * The White Priory Murders (as by Carter Dickson)
 * Devil Kinsmere (as by Roger Fairbairn)
 * Gabriel Chevallier - Clochemerle
 * Agatha Christie
 * Murder on the Orient Express
 * ''Why Didn't They Ask Evans?
 * The Listerdale Mystery
 * Parker Pyne Investigates
 * ''Unfinished Portrait (as by Mary Westmacott)
 * Colette - Duo
 * Freeman Wills Crofts - The 12.30 from Croydon
 * Isak Dinesen - Seven Gothic Tales
 * Max Ernst - Une Semaine de Bonté
 * F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender Is the Night
 * Elena Fortún - Celia en el mundo
 * Robert Graves - I, Claudius
 * Herge - Cigars of the Pharaoh
 * James Hilton - Goodbye, Mr. Chips
 * Zora Neale Hurston - Jonah's Gourd Vine: A Novel
 * Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
 * Leopold Myers - Rajah Amar
 * Vladimir Nabokov - Despair
 * John O'Hara - Appointment in Samarra
 * George Orwell - Burmese Days
 * Ellery Queen - The Chinese Orange Mystery
 * Arthur Ransome - Coot Club
 * Henry Roth - Call It Sleep
 * Dorothy L. Sayers - The Nine Tailors
 * Mikhail Sholokhov - And Quiet Flows the Don
 * Irving Stone - Lust for Life
 * Rex Stout - Fer-de-Lance
 * Phoebe Atwood Taylor
 * The Mystery of the Cape Cod Tavern
 * Sandbar Sinister
 * B. Traven - ''The Death Ship (first publication in English)
 * P. L. Travers - Mary Poppins
 * Geoffrey Trease - Bows Against the Barons
 * S. S. Van Dine
 * The Dragon Murder Case
 * The Casino Murder Case
 * Evelyn Waugh - A Handful of Dust
 * Nathaniel West - A Cool Million
 * Dennis Wheatley - The Devil Rides Out
 * P. G. Wodehouse - Thank You, Jeeves
 * V. M. Yeates - Winged Victory

New drama

 * Jean Cocteau - The Infernal Machine
 * Federico García Lorca - Yerma
 * Lillian Hellman - The Children's Hour
 * Lawrence Riley - Personal Appearance

Non-fiction

 * Ruth Benedict - Patterns of Culture
 * Julius Evola - Il Mistero del Graal e la Tradizione Ghibellina dell'Impero (The Mystery of the Grail)
 * Emma Goldman - Living My Life
 * Aldous Huxley - Beyond the Mexique Bay
 * Cornelia Meigs - Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women
 * A. A. Milne - Peace with Honour
 * H. G. Wells - An Experiment in Autobiography

Births

 * February 10 - Fleur Adcock, poet
 * February 10 - Gordon Lish, American writer, editor and teacher
 * March 28 - Jean Louvet, dramatist
 * May 12 - Elechi Amadi, Nigerian novelist
 * May 27 - Harlan Ellison, US science-fiction writer.
 * July 13 - Wole Soyinka, Nigerian writer, poet and playwright; awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature
 * July 21 - Jonathan Miller, satirist and non-fiction author
 * August 6 - Piers Anthony, English writer of science fiction and fantasy
 * September 11 - Leon Rooke, Canadian novelist
 * October 17 - Alan Garner, novelist
 * November 9 - Ronald Harwood, dramatist
 * November 21 - Beryl Bainbridge, novelist (d. 2010)
 * date unknown - Jayakanthan, Tamil writer, Jnanpith awardee

Deaths

 * January 8 - Andrei Bely, novelist, poet and critic
 * January 15 - Hermann Bahr, dramatist and critic
 * January 30 - Frank Nelson Doubleday, publisher
 * February 8 - Ferenc Móra, novelist and journalist
 * March 10 - F. Anstey, Vice Versa author
 * April 9 - Safvet-beg Bašagić, poet
 * April 11 - Gerald du Maurier, actor-manager, son of George du Maurier and father of Daphne du Maurier
 * April 12 - Robert Clyde Packer, newspaper magnate
 * June 21 - Thorne Smith, humorist and fantasy author
 * June 26 - Naito Torajiro, historian
 * June 30 - Fritz Gerlich, anti-Hitler journalist
 * July 23 - Karl Joel, philosopher
 * July 29 - Frane Bulić, historian
 * August 13 - Mary Hunter Austin, travel writer
 * September 9 - Roger Fry, art critic
 * October 1 - Shakeb Jalali, Famous URDU poet
 * November 23 - Arthur Wing Pinero, dramatist
 * December 15 - Gustave Lanson, historian and literary critic
 * date unknown - Julian Hawthorne, journalist and novelist

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 for literature: Luigi Pirandello.
 * 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