1901 in literature

Anton Chekhov with Olga Knipper, on their honeymoon

• January 31 – Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters (Три сeстры, Tri sestry) opens at the Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Constantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko with Stanislavski as Vershinin, Olga Knipper as Masha, Margarita Savetskaya as Olga, Maria Andreyeva as Irina, and Maria Lilina (Stanislavsky's wife) as Natasha.
• February 22 – Leo Tolstoy is excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church.[1]
• May 6 – Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, 52, marries his third wife, the Swedish-Norwegian actress Harriet Bosse, 23, after an engagement in March during rehearsals for his play Easter (Påsk).
• May 25 – Chekhov marries Olga Knipper in a quiet ceremony.[2]
• May 28 – Cherry v. Des Moines Leader is decided in the Iowa Supreme Court, upholding the right to publish critical reviews.
• June 28 – G. K. Chesterton marries Frances Blogg at St Mary Abbots, Kensington.
• July – The first modern performances of Everyman, the 15th-century morality play, are given by William Poel's Elizabethan Stage Society outdoors at the Charterhouse in London.[3][4]
• July 24 – O. Henry is released from prison in Columbus, Ohio after serving three years for embezzlement.
• October – Thomas Mann's first novel, Buddenbrooks, is published in Berlin.
• October 23 – Mark Twain receives an honorary doctorate of literature from Yale University. In the same month he moves to Riverdale, New York.
• December 2 – The Romanian literary review Sămănătorul is founded.[5]
• December 10 – The first Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded, to French poet Sully Prudhomme.[6]

Uncertain date

• The World's Classics series of publications is founded by Grant Richards in England.

• January 31 – Marie Luise Kaschnitz (Marie Luise von Holzing-Berslett), German story writer, novelist and poet (died 1974)
• February 13 – Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell), Scottish novelist (died 1974)
• February 23 – Ivar Lo-Johansson, Swedish novelist and journalist (died 1990)
• March 4 (or 1903) – Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo (Joseph-Casimir Rabearivelo), Malagasy Francophone poet (suicide 1937)
• April 10 – Anna Kavan (Helen Emily Woods, Helen Ferguson), French-born English novelist and short story writer (died 1968)
• May 1 – Antal Szerb, Hungarian writer (died 1945)
• May 15 – Xavier Herbert, Australian novelist (died 1984)
• June 1 – John Van Druten, English-born American dramatist (died 1957)
• June 23 – Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Turkish novelist and essayist (died 1962)
• July 9 – Barbara Cartland, English romantic novelist, historian and playwright (died 2000)
• July 20 – Dilys Powell, English film critic (died 1995)
• July 25 – Ruth Krauss, American children's author and poet (died 1993)
• August 10 – Sergio Frusoni, Cape Verde poet and promoter of Cape Verdean Creole language (died 1975)
• August 17 – Heðin Brú, Faroese fiction writer and translator (died 1987)
• August 20 – Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian author (died 1968)
• November 3 – André Malraux, French author (died 1976)
• December 9 – Ödön von Horváth, Austro-Hungarian dramatist and novelist (died 1938)
• December 16 – Margaret Mead, American anthropologist and author (died 1978)[10]

Uncertain date

• Ernest Elmore (John Bude), English crime writer and theater director (died 1957)

• January 14 – Víctor Balaguer, Catalan Spanish dramatist and poet (born 1824)
• February 2 – John Cordy Jeaffreson, English novelist and non-fiction writer (born 1831)
• February 15 – Maurice Thompson, American novelist (born 1844)
• March 19 – Philippe Gille, French dramatist (born 1831)
• March 24 – Charlotte Mary Yonge, English novelist (born 1823)
• April 6 – George Murray Smith, English publisher (born 1824)
• April 12 – Louis Auguste Sabatier, French theologian (born 1839)
• June 5 – Dagny Juel, Norwegian writer and artists' model (shot, born 1867)
• June 9 – Walter Besant, English novelist and historian (born 1836)
• June 10 – Robert Williams Buchanan, Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist (born 1841)
• July 7 – Johanna Spyri, Swiss children's writer (born 1827)
• July 18 – Jan ten Brink, Dutch novelist (born 1834)
• July 20 – William Cosmo Monkhouse, English poet and critic (born 1840)
• July 27 – Brooke Foss Westcott, English theologian (born 1825)
• August 9 – Vishnudas Bhave, Indian dramatist (unknown birth year)
• October 31 – Julien Leclercq, French Symbolist poet and art critic (born 1865)
• November 6 – Kate Greenaway, English children's illustrator and writer (born 1846)

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Sully Prudhomme