1831 in literature

Events

• January 1 – William Lloyd Garrison begins publication of the Liberator, an abolitionist periodical in the United States.
• February 18 – Alexander Pushkin marries Natalya Goncharova at the Great Ascension Church on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street in Moscow.
• March 16 – Victor Hugo's historical romantic Gothic novel Notre-Dame de Paris, known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, is published by Gosselin in Paris.
• March 19 – The play La Cocarde Tricolore by the Cogniard brothers introduces the term "chauvinism".
• April 18 – The Sydney Morning Herald is first published.

• Convict Henry Savery's autobiographical fiction Quintus Servinton: a tale founded upon incidents of real occurrence is published anonymously in Tasmania, the first Australian novel.
• Playwright Manuel Bretón de los Herreros publishes a translation of Tibullus, which secures him an appointment as sub-librarian at the Spanish national library.
• Daniel Appleton publishes his first book in New York City, so originating of the firm of D. Appleton & Company.

  New books

Fiction

• Honoré de Balzac
• *La Peau de chagrin
• *Sarrasine
• *Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu
• John Brownlow – Hans Sloane: a tale
• Selina Davenport – The Queen's Page
• Benjamin Disraeli – The Young Duke
• Susan Edmonstone Ferrier – Destiny
• Nikolai Gogol – Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka
• Catherine Gore
• *Mothers and Daughters
• *Pin Money
• *The School for Coquettes
• *The Tuileries
• Ann Hatton – Gerald Fitzgerald
• Victor Hugo – The Hunchback of Notre Dame
• Thomas Love Peacock – Crotchet Castle
• George Sand and Jules Sandeau – Rose et Blanche
• Mary Shelley – Frankenstein

  Children

• Anne Knight – Mary Gray. A tale for little girls

  Drama

• Robert Montgomery Bird – Gladiator
• Manuel Bretón de los Herreros – Marcela o ¿Cuál de las tres?
• Dulduityn Danzanravjaa – Saran khökhöö
• Alfred de Vigny – La Maréchale d'Ancre
• Franz Grillparzer – Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen
• Victor Hugo – Marion Delorme
• Alexander Pushkin – Boris Godunov
• John Augustus Stone – Tancred, King of Sicily
• Robert Taylor – Swing, or, Who Are the Incendiaries?

  Poetry

• Thomas Hood – The Dream of Eugene Aram, the Murderer
• Giacomo Leopardi – Canti
• Edgar Allan Poe – Poems

  Non-fiction

• Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet – The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of HMS Bounty: Its Cause and Consequences
• Washington Irving – Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus
• John Stuart Mill – The Spirit of the Age
• James Cowles Prichard – Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations
• Mary Prince – The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave''

  Births

• January 2 – Justin Winsor, American historian and librarian
• January 3 – George Manville Fenn, English novelist and educationalist
• January 14 – John Cordy Jeaffreson, English novelist and non-fiction writer
• February 25 – Jane G. Austin, American writer
• January 26 – Mary Mapes Dodge, American children's writer
• February 16 – Nikolai Leskov, Russian novelist and playwright
• March 29 – Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, English novelist and teacher
• April 9 – Clara Harrison Stranahan, American author and college founder
• April 19 – Mary Louise Booth, American writer, editor, and translator
• May 6 – Mary C. Ames, American writer
• June 7 – Amelia Edwards, English fiction writer and Egyptologist
• June 25 – Harriet Mann Miller, American author, naturalist, and ornithologist
• July 3 – Edmund Yates, Scottish writer
• July 7 – Jane Elizabeth Conklin, American religious writer and poet
• August 1 – William Aldis Wright, English writer and literary editor
• September 5 – Victorien Sardou, French dramatist
• September 12 – Álvares de Azevedo, Brazilian Ultra-Romantic writer
• October 7 – Eleanor Kirk, American writer
• October 15 – Helen Hunt Jackson, American poet, writer and activist

• Nora Perry, American writer

  Deaths

• January 2 – Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Danish-born German historian
• January 14 – Henry Mackenzie, Scottish novelist
• January 21 – Ludwig Achim von Arnim, German poet and novelist
• February 25 – Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, German dramatist and novelist, originator of Sturm und Drang
• April 4 – Isaiah Thomas, American publisher
• June 30 – William Roscoe, English poet
• September 12 – Jippensha Ikku, Japanese novelist and humorist
• October 2 – José Agostinho de Macedo, Portuguese poet
• December 18 – Willem Bilderdijk, Dutch author
• December 26 – Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, Indian poet and teacher

  Awards

• Chancellor's Gold Medal – George Stovin Venables