1934 in literature

Events

January 7 – The first Flash Gordon comic strip is published in the United States.

January 25 – Following its acquittal the previous month in United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, James Joyce's novel Ulysses is first published in an authorized edition in the Anglophone world by Random House of New York. It has 12,000 advance sales.

January – B. Traven's novel The Death Ship (1926) is first published in English.

February – Stefan Zweig flees Austria and settles in London.

February 6 – The February 6 riots in France, which would become the focus of a cult in the works 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.

March 16 & October 5 – P. G. Wodehouse's Thank You, Jeeves and Right Ho, Jeeves, the first Jeeves stories written as full-length novels, are published.

April – F. Scott Fitzgerald's fourth and final completed novel, Tender Is the Night, is published in book form in New York on conclusion of its serialization in the monthly Scribner's Magazine (since January).

April 3 – English literary biographer Thomas Wright (of Olney) first publishes some facts concerning Charles Dickens' relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan (writing in the Daily Express).

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).

June

A medieval manuscript of Le Morte d'Arthur used by Caxton is identified in the Fellows' Library of Winchester College (England) by schoolmaster and bibliophile Walter Fraser Oakeshott.

English poet Laurie Lee walks out one midsummer morning from his Gloucestershire home bound for Spain.

July 17 – Circular Manchester Central Library, England, opened.

August – Boris Pasternak and Korney Chukovsky are among those present at the first Congress of the Soviet Union of Writers.

September – Henry Miller's novel Tropic of Cancer is published in Paris by the Obelisk Press; the United States Customs Service prohibits its import into the U.S.

October 24 – The first of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe detective novels, Fer-de-Lance, is published in New York (and also abridged in The American Magazine for November under the title "Point of Death.")

November 20 – Lillian Hellman's first successful play, The Children's Hour, with a theme of accusations of lesbianism, is premiered at the Maxine Elliott Theatre on Broadway in New York where it will run for 2 years.

December 25 – Romanian novelist Panait Istrati, formerly a 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.

Two notable gentleman detective series characters of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction set in England are introduced:

The first book featuring Inspector Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, A Man Lay Dead, is published by Ngaio Marsh (at this time resident in her native New Zealand) in London.

The first Sir Henry Merrivale locked room mystery, The Plague Court Murders, is published by John Dickson Carr (at this time resident in England) writing as "Carter Dickson" in New York around early June, followed in December by The White Priory Murders.

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

Fiction

M. Ageyev – Cocain Romance (Roman s kokainom)

Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie – After Worlds Collide

Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay – Pother Kanta

Samuel Beckett – More Pricks Than Kicks

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 Carr Dickson/Carter Dickson)

The Plague Court Murders (as Carter Dickson)

The White Priory Murders (as Carter Dickson)

Devil Kinsmere (as 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 Mary Westmacott)

Colette – Duo

Freeman Wills Crofts – The 12.30 from Croydon

Isak Dinesen – Seven Gothic Tales

Pierre Drieu La Rochelle – The Comedy of Charleroi (La Comédie de Charleroi, linked short stories)

Max Ernst – Une semaine de bonté (A Week of Kindness, graphic novel)

F. Scott Fitzgerald – Tender Is the Night

Carlo Emilio Gadda – Il castello di Udine

Jeanne Galzy – Jeunes Filles en serre chaude (Young girls in a greenhouse)

Jean Giono – The Song of the World

Robert Graves – I, Claudius

Graham Greene – It's a Battlefield

Hergé – Cigars of the Pharaoh (Les Cigares du pharaon)

Harold Heslop

The Crime of Peter Ropner

Goaf (English version)

James Hilton – Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Zora Neale Hurston – Jonah's Gourd Vine: A Novel

F. Tennyson Jesse – A Pin to See the Peepshow

D. Gwenallt Jones – Plasau'r Brenin

John Knittel – Via Mala

Halldór Laxness – Independent People (Sjálfstætt fólk) — Part I, Icelandic Pioneers (Landnámsmaður Íslands)

Henry Miller – Tropic of Cancer

Leopold Myers – Rajah Amar

Vladimir Nabokov – Despair

Carolina Nabuco – A Sucessora

John O'Hara – Appointment in Samarra

George Orwell – Burmese Days

John Cowper Powys

Autobiography

Weymouth Sands

Ellery Queen – The Chinese Orange Mystery

Henry Roth – Call It Sleep

Rafael Sabatini – Venetian Masque

Dorothy L. Sayers – The Nine Tailors

Bruno Schulz – The Street of Crocodiles (short stories, Sklepy cynamonowe – Cinnamon Shops – in December 1933, dated 1934)

Mihail Sebastian – De două mii de ani (For Two Thousand Years)

J. Slauerhoff – Het leven op aarde (Life on Earth)

Irving Stone – Lust for Life

Ruth Suckow - The Folks

Rex Stout – Fer-de-Lance

Phoebe Atwood Taylor

The Mystery of the Cape Cod Tavern

Sandbar Sinister

Thomas F. Tweed – Blind Mouths

S. S. Van Dine

The Dragon Murder Case

The Casino Murder Case

Simon Vestdijk – Terug tot Ina Damman (Return to Ina Damman, first published of the Anton Wachter cycle)

Evelyn Waugh – A Handful of Dust

Nathanael West – A Cool Million

Dennis Wheatley – The Devil Rides Out

Dorothy Whipple – They Knew Mr. Knight

P. G. Wodehouse

Thank You, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves

S. Fowler Wright

David

Prelude in Prague: The War of 1938

Who Else But She? (as Sydney Fowler)

V. M. Yeates – Winged Victory

Marguerite Yourcenar – A Coin in Nine Hands (Denier du rêve)

Children and young people

Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan and the Lion Man

Elena Fortún – Celia en el mundo (Celia in the World)

Capt. W. E. Johns – Biggles of the Camel Squadron

Lorna Lewis – The Little French Poodle

Constantin S. Nicolăescu-Plopșor – Paramiseà romanè (anthology)

Arthur Ransome – Coot Club

Hilda van Stockum – A Day on Skates

William Woodthorpe Tarn – The Treasure of the Isle of Mist

P. L. Travers – Mary Poppins (first in Mary Poppins series of eight books)

Geoffrey Trease – Bows Against the Barons

Drama

Tawfiq al-Hakim – Shahrazad (Scheherazade)

Jean Cocteau – The Infernal Machine

Federico García Lorca – Yerma

Lillian Hellman – The Children's Hour

Frederick J. Jackson – The Bishop Misbehaves

Pär Lagerkvist – Bödeln (The Hangman; dramatization)

Eberhard Wolfgang Möller – Rothschild siegt bei Waterloo

Ayn Rand – Night of January 16th (first performed as Woman on Trial)

Lawrence Riley – Personal Appearance

Paul Vulpius – Youth at the Helm

Poetry

Constantin S. Nicolăescu-Plopșor – Ghileà romanè (anthology)

Dylan Thomas – 18 Poems

Non-fiction

Ruth Benedict – Patterns of Culture

Maud Bodkin – Archetypal Patterns of Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination

Martí de Riquer i Morera

L'humanisme català (1388–1494)

Humanisme i decadència en les lletres catalanes

Pierre Drieu La Rochelle – Socialisme fasciste (Fascist Socialism)

Daphne du Maurier – Gerald: A Portrait

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

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

Karl Popper – The Logic of Scientific Discovery

J. B. Priestley – English Journey

Amber Reeves – The Nationalisation of Banking

Antal Szerb – A magyar irodalom története (History of Hungarian literature)

H. G. Wells – An Experiment in Autobiography

Births

January 12 – Alan Sharp, Scottish-American screenwriter and author (died 2013)

February 10

Fleur Adcock, New Zealand-born poet

Gordon Lish, American writer, editor and teacher

February 27 – N. Scott Momaday, Native American novelist

March 28 – Jean Louvet, Belgian dramatist

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 (died 2005)

July 13 – Wole Soyinka, Nigerian writer, playwright and Nobel laureate

July 21 – Jonathan Miller, English satirist and non-fiction author

August 5 – Wendell Berry, American poet, novelist, and activist

August 6

Piers Anthony, English 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 (died 2011)

September 11 – Leon Rooke, Canadian novelist

September 21 – Leonard Cohen, Canadian-born poet, singer-songwriter and novelist (died 2016)

October 1 – Shakeb Jalali, Pakistani poet in Urdu (suicide 1966)

October 17 – Alan Garner, English children's novelist

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

November 12 – John McGahern, Irish novelist (died 2006)

November 19 – Joanne Kyger, American poet

November 21 – Beryl Bainbridge, English novelist (died 2010)

December 28 – Alasdair Gray, Scottish novelist and artist

Unknown dates

Muhammad al-Maghut, Syrian Ismaili poet (died 2006)

Yaakov Shabtai, Israeli novelist, playwright, and translator (died 1981)

Deaths

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 – F. Anstey (Thomas Anstey Guthrie), English 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)

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)

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