1937 in literature

• January 9 – The first issue of Look magazine goes on sale in the United States.
• January 19 – BBC Television broadcasts The Underground Murder Mystery by J. Bissell Thomas from London, the first play to be written for television.[1]
• February 6 – John Steinbeck's novella of the Great Depression, Of Mice and Men, appears in the United States.
• April – The Irish writers Elizabeth Bowen and Seán Ó Faoláin first meet, in London.
• May 14 – BBC Television broadcasts a 30-minute excerpt of Twelfth Night, the first known television broadcast of a Shakespeare piece. The cast includes Peggy Ashcroft and Greer Garson.
• May 21 – Penguin Books in the U.K. launches Pelican Books, a sixpenny paperback non-fiction imprint, with a two-volume edition of George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.[2]
• June
  • The British science fiction magazine Tales of Wonder first appears.
  • John Cowper Powys visits Sycharth, birthplace of Owain Glyndŵr, which inspires his 1940 novel Owen Glendower.[3]
• June 30 – The New England Quarterly prints poems by a colonial American pastor, Edward Taylor (died 1729), discovered by Thomas H. Johnson.[4]
• Summer – American-born writer Thomas Quinn Curtiss meets German-born novelist Klaus Mann in Europe and they start a relationship.
• July
  • Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany is established around the Goethe Oak.
  • The American academic librarian Randolph Greenfield Adams writes a controversial Library Quarterly essay, "Librarians as Enemies of Books", complaining of librarians downgrading books and scholarship in favor of other tasks.[5][6]
• July 4 – The Lost Colony a historical drama by Paul Green, is first performed at an outdoor theater in the place where it is set: Roanoke Island, North Carolina.
• July 31 – Stephen Vincent Benét's post-apocalyptic short story "By the Waters of Babylon", inspired by April's Bombing of Guernica, is published in the U.S. The Saturday Evening Post as "The Place of the Gods".
• September 10 – The Soviet playwright Sergei Tretyakov commits suicide while under sentence of death at Butyrka prison in Moscow as part of the Great Purge.[7]
• September 21 – J. R. R. Tolkien's juvenile fantasy novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is published in England by George Allen & Unwin on the recommendation of young Rayner Unwin.
• September 29 – The French playwright Antonin Artaud is expelled from Ireland.
• October 6 – The fictional Mrs. Miniver appears in a column on domestic life by Jan Struther for The Times, London.[8]
• November 11 (Armistice Day) – BBC Television broadcasts Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff, 1928, set on the Western Front (World War I) in 1918, as the first full-length television adaptation of a stage play. Reginald Tate plays the lead, having long performed it in the theater.[9][10]

Uncertain dates

• The National Library of Iran is inaugurated in Tehran.
• Rex Ingamells and other poets initiate the Jindyworobak Movement in Australian literature.
• The future novelist Angus Wilson becomes a book cataloger at the British Museum Library in London.

• January 1 – John Fuller, English poet
• January 7 – Ian La Frenais, English television comedy writer
• January 8 – Leon Forrest, African American novelist and essayist (died 1997)
• January 9 – Judith Krantz, American novelist
• January 13 – Jean D'Costa, Jamaican children's novelist
• January 14 – J. Bernlef, born Hendrik Jan Marsman, Dutch poet, novelist and translator (died 2012)
• January 22 – Joseph Wambaugh, American mystery novelist and non-fiction writer
• January 23 – Juan Radrigán, Chilean playwright (died 2016)
• February 11 – Maryse Condé, Guadeloupe historical fiction writer
• February 20 – George Leonardos, Greek journalist and novelist
• February 21 – Jilly Cooper, English novelist and journalist
• February 27 – Peter Hamm, German poet, author, journalist, editor and literary critic (died 2019)
• March 14 – Jan Karon (Janice Wilson), American novelist and children's writer
• March 15 – Valentin Rasputin, Russian writer (died 2015)
• April 10 – Bella Akhmadulina, Russian poet (died 2010)
• April 29 – Jill Paton Walsh (Gillian Bliss), English novelist
• May 8 – Thomas Pynchon, American novelist
• May 13
  • Roch Carrier, Canadian novelist and short-story writer
  • Roger Zelazny, American writer of fantasy and science fiction (died 1995)
• June 1 – Colleen McCullough, Australian novelist (died 2015)
• June 16 – Erich Segal, American novelist (died 2010)
• July 3 – Tom Stoppard (Tomáš Straussler), Czech-born English dramatist
• July 6 – Bessie Head, South African-born Botswanan fiction writer (died 1986)
• August 3 – Peter van Gestel, Dutch writer (died 2019)
• August 5 – Carla Lane (Romana Barrack), English comedy writer (died 2016)
• August 19
  • Richard Ingrams, English editor
  • Alexander Vampilov, Russian dramatist (drowned 1972)
• September 5 – Dick Clement, English television comedy writer
• October 4 – Jackie Collins, English-born romance novelist (died 2015)
• October 7 – Christopher Booker, English journalist and editor (died 2019)
• November 9
  • Roger McGough, English poet
  • S. Abdul Rahman, Tamil poet (died 2017)
• November 17 – Peter Cook, English comedian, satirist and writer (died 1995)
• December 3 – Binod Bihari Verma, Maithili man of letters (died 2003)
• December 11 – Jim Harrison, American novelist and poet (died 2016)
• December 22
  • David F. Case, American novelist and short story writer
  • Charlotte Lamb (Sheila Holland, Sheila Coates, etc.), English romantic novelist (died 2000)

Uncertain date

• Parijat (Bishnu Kumari Waiba), Nepalese novelist and poet (died 1993)

• February 19
  • Edward Garnett, English critic (born 1868)
  • Horacio Quiroga, Uruguayan short story writer (suicide, born 1878)
• March 7 – Tomas O'Crohan, Irish Gaelic writer and fisherman (born 1856)
• March 8 – Albert Verwey, Dutch poet (born 1865)
• March 15 – H. P. Lovecraft, American horror writer (intestinal cancer, born 1890)
• March 25 – John Drinkwater, English poet and dramatist (born 1882)
• May 20 – Frederic Taber Cooper, American editor and writer (born 1864)
• June 4 – W. F. Harvey, English horror-story writer (born 1885)
• June 13 – William F. Lloyd, English-born Newfoundland journalist and prime minister (born 1864)
• June 19 – J. M. Barrie, Scottish novelist and dramatist (born 1860)
• June 22 – Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Malagasy poet (suicide, born 1901 or 1903)
• July 18 – Julian Bell, English poet (killed in Spanish Civil War, born 1908)
• August 11 – Edith Wharton (Edith Newbold Jones), American novelist and short-story writer (born 1862)
• August 14 – H. C. McNeile (Sapper), English novelist and soldier (born 1888)
• September 13 – Ellis Parker Butler, American humorist, novelist and essayist (born 1869)
• October 16 – Jean de Brunhoff, French children's author and illustrator (born 1899)
• October 17 – Florence Dugdale, English children's writer, widow of Thomas Hardy (cancer, born 1879)[11]
• October 22 – Chūya Nakahara (中原 中也), Japanese poet (meningitis, born 1907)
• October 31 – Ralph Connor, Canadian novelist (born 1860)
• December 24 – Elizabeth Haldane, Scottish author, philosopher and suffragist (born 1862)
• December 26 – Ivor Gurney, English war poet and composer (tuberculosis, born 1890)
• December 29 – Don Marquis, American poet (stroke, born 1878)

• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Eve Garnett, The Family From One End Street
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Neil M. Gunn, Highland River
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Lord Eustace Percy, John Knox
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Ruth Sawyer, Roller Skates
• Nobel Prize in literature: Roger Martin du Gard
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, You Can't Take It with You
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Frost, A Further Range
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
• King's Gold Medal for Poetry: W. H. Auden