1933 in literature

• February – Having joined the Japanese Communist Party, the Chinese novelist Hu Feng is arrested and "badly beaten" in Tokyo for his protests against imperialism. Returning to the Republic of China as a popular hero, he is nevertheless prevented from joining the Communist Party of China by the rejection of him by a rival, Zhou Yang.[1]
• February 17 – The magazine News-Week is published for the first time in New York.
• March 8 – Première of Federico García Lorca's play Blood Wedding (Bodas de Sangre) is held at the Teatro Beatriz in Madrid.
• April 23 – Millosh Gjergj Nikolla is appointed schoolteacher among the Serbs of Vraka, Kingdom of Albania. The next two years bring his creative period as a short story writer, describing his sense of despair at being isolated in a backward region.[2]

Book burning in the Opernplatz, Berlin, May 11, 1933

• May – Nazi book burnings take place in Germany by the German Student Union, principally of works by Jewish intellectuals, leading to an Exilliteratur. Although his novels are spared (unlike those of his brother Heinrich Mann), Thomas Mann settles in Switzerland. Lion Feuchtwanger, on a lecture tour of the United States in January, has decided not to return to Germany; Bertolt Brecht has moved to Prague in February; and Alfred Döblin to Switzerland in March.
• May 16–17 – In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin orders the NKVD to "preserve but isolate" Osip Mandelstam, after having been informed of the "Stalin Epigram"; Mandelstam is then arrested. A protest by literary figures, including Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak, prompts Stalin to declare that he might "review the case" (he never will). His admiration for Pasternak as a poetic genius is strengthened when the latter asks for a private meeting to discuss "life and death" — although he never grants it, he instructs the NKVD to "leave that cloud-dweller [Pasternak] alone".[3]
• June – W. H. Auden has his "Vision of Agape".[4]
• July – Poedjangga Baroe, the Indonesian avant-garde literary magazine, is first published, by Armijn Pane, Amir Hamzah and Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana.
• October 8 – The General Union of Roma in Romania is set up by writer Gheorghe A. Lăzăreanu-Lăzurică, with Grigoraș Dinicu as honorary president; by 1934, it publishes the Romani-language newspaper O Ròm, and books of Romani mythology, edited by Constantin S. Nicolăescu-Plopșor.[5]
• December
  • Codex Sinaiticus sold by the Soviet Union to the British Museum Library through the agency of Maggs Bros Ltd at a price of £100,000, the highest ever paid for a book at this time.
  • Raymond Chandler's first short story, the detective fiction "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", is published in the magazine Black Mask in the United States.
• December 6 – In United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey rules that James Joyce's novel Ulysses is not as a whole pornographic and so cannot not be obscene.[6]

Uncertain dates

• The name Inklings is taken by an informal literary discussion group at Oxford.
• Robert Walser, under treatment for schizophrenia since 1929, is placed in a sanitarium in Herisau. This ends his work as a writer, though he will live until 1956.[7]

• January 1 – Joe Orton, English playwright (murdered 1967)
• January 2 – Seiichi Morimura (森村誠一), Japanese author
• January 4 – Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, American children's and adult novelist
• January 9 – Wilbur Smith, South African historical novelist
• January 13 – Shahnon Ahmad, Malaysian writer and politician (died 2017)
• January 16 – Susan Sontag (Susan Rosenblatt), American novelist (died 2004)
• January 25 – Alden Nowlan, Canadian poet and novelist (died 1983)
• February 1 – Reynolds Price, American novelist and literary scholar (died 2011)
• February 5 – B. S. Johnson, English novelist (died 1973)
• February 12 – Costa-Gavras (Konstantinos Gavras), Greek-French film director and writer
• February 20 – Zamenga Batukezanga, Congolese francophone writer and philanthropist (died 2000)
• February 22 – Christopher Ondaatje, Ceylonese-born English travel writer, biographer and philanthropist
• February 27 – Edward Lucie-Smith, Jamaican-born English writer, critic and broadcaster
• March 17 – Penelope Lively (Penelope Low), Egyptian-born English novelist
• March 18 – Sergio Pitol, Mexican fiction writer, translator and diplomat (died 2018)
• March 19 – Philip Roth, American novelist (died 2018)
• April 2 – György Konrád, Hungarian novelist, essayist, political dissident and President of PEN International (died 2019)
• April 7 – Cong Weixi, Chinese author (died 2019)
• April 14 – Boris Strugatsky, Russian sci-fi writer (died 2012)
• April 24 – Patricia Bosworth, American writer/biographer
• May 9 – Jessica Steele, English romance novelist
• May 10 – Barbara Taylor Bradford (Barbara Taylor), English-born American novelist
• May 12 – Stephen Vizinczey, Hungarian-born writer
• May 29 – Edward Whittemore, American novelist (died 1995)
• June 9 – Vicente Leñero, Mexican novelist and playwright (died 2014)
• June 11 – Martti Soosaar, Estonian journalist and author (died 2017)
• June 20 – Claire Tomalin (Claire Delavenay), English journalist and biographer
• June 30 – Mauricio Rosencof, Uruguayan playwright, poet and journalist
• July 2 – John Antrobus, English playwright and scriptwriter
• July 4 – David Littman, English historian (died 2012)
• July 10 – Kevin Gilbert, Australian writer and artist (died 1993)
• July 13 – David Storey, English novelist and playwright (died 2017)
• July 14 – Solange Fasquelle, French novelist (died 2016)
• July 20 – Cormac McCarthy, American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter
• July 21 – John Gardner, American writer (died 1982)
• August – Ko Un (Ko Untae), South Korean poet
• August 9 – M. T. Vasudevan Nair, Indian Malayalam-language writer
• August 13 – Madhur Jaffrey, Indian actress and food writer
• August 16 – Tom Maschler, Austrian-born English literary publisher
• September 9 – Michael Novak, American philosopher and author (died 2017)
• September 19 – Gilles Archambault, French Canadian novelist
• October 11 – David Daniels, American visual poet (died 2008)
• October 24 – Norman Rush, American writer
• November 1 – Huub Oosterhuis, Dutch poet, theologian and liturgy reformer
• November 13 – Peter Härtling, German novelist and poet (died 2017)
• December 2 – Kent Andersson, Swedish dramatist (died 2005)
• December 31 – Edward Bunker, American crime novelist (died 2005)

Uncertain date

• Jim Barnes, Native American poet and translator

• January 21 – George Moore, Irish poet and novelist (born 1852)
• January 29 – Sara Teasdale, American poet (born 1884; suicide)[9]
• January 31 – John Galsworthy, English novelist and dramatist (born 1867)
• February 20 – Takiji Kobayashi (小林多喜二), Japanese writer (born 1903)
• April 5 – Earl Derr Biggers, American novelist and playwright (heart attack, born 1884)
• April 19 – E. W. Hobson, English writer on mathematics (born 1856)
• April 29 – Constantine Cavafy, Greek Alexandrine poet (born 1863)
• April 30 – Anna de Noailles, French writer (born 1876)
• May 26 – Horatio Bottomley, English journalist and fraudster (born 1860)
• June 7 – Dragutin Domjanić, Croatian poet (born 1875)
• July 8 – Anthony Hope (Anthony Hope Hawkins), English adventure novelist (born 1863)
• August 12 – Alexandru Philippide, Romanian linguist and polemicist (atherosclerosis, born 1859)
• September 20 – Annie Besant, English Theosophist writer (born 1847)
• September 23 – György Almásy, Hungarian travel writer (born 1867)
• September 25
  • Ring Lardner, American writer (born 1885)
  • Pascal Poirier, Canadian historian (born 1852)
• October 30 – Herminie Templeton Kavanagh, Anglo-Irish-American short story writer (born 1861?)
• November 12 – F. Holland Day, American publisher (born 1864)
• November 20 – Augustine Birrell, English politician and author (born 1850)
• November 28 – Minnie Earl Sears, American librarian (born 1873)
• December 4 – Stefan George, German poet and translator (born 1868)
• December 27 – Georgina Castle Smith (pseudonym Brenda), English children's writer (born 1845)

Uncertain dates

• Annie Armitt, English novelist and poet (born 1850)
• Janet Milne Rae, Scottish novelist (born 1844)
• Hugo Zöller, German explorer and journalist (born 1852)

• 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