This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1901.

• 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 1 – Publication of Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the Bee in Belgium.^[2]
• 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.^[3]
• 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.^[4][5]
• 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.
  • The Irish Literary Theatre project gives its final performance.^[6]
• 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.^[7]
• December 10 – The first Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded, to French poet Sully Prudhomme.^[8]
• unknown date – World's Classics series of publications is founded by Grant Richards in England.

• January 17 – Hryhorii Epik, Ukrainian writer and journalist (shot with many other Ukrainian intellectuals at Sandarmokh 1937)^[12]
• January 31 – Marie Luise Kaschnitz (Marie Luise von Holzing-Berslett), German story writer, novelist and poet (died 1974)
• February 2 – Valerian Pidmohylny, Ukrainian modernist (shot at Sandarmokh 1937)^[13]
• February 13 – Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell), Scottish novelist (died 1935)
• 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 poet and translator (died 1968)
• October 25 – Samuil Lehtțir, Soviet Moldovan poet, critic and literary theorist (shot 1937)
• November 3 – André Malraux, French author (died 1976)
• November 4 – Ernest Elmore (John Bude), English crime writer and theatre director (died 1957)
• December 9 – Ödön von Horváth, Austro-Hungarian dramatist and novelist (died 1938)
• December 16 – Margaret Mead, American anthropologist and author (died 1978)^[14]

• January 1 – Ignatius L. Donnelly, American politician and writer (born 1831)
• January 14 – Víctor Balaguer, Catalan Spanish dramatist and poet (born 1824)
• January 17 – Frederic W. H. Myers, British poet (born 1843)
• January 26 – Grigore Sturdza, Moldavian and Romanian adventurer, literary sponsor and philosopher (pneumonia, born 1821)
• February 2 – John Cordy Jeaffreson, English novelist and non-fiction writer (born 1831)
• February 7 – Rowena Granice Steele, first female novelist in California (born 1824)
• February 15 – Maurice Thompson, American novelist (born 1844)
• February 18 – Anna Gardner, American author, abolitionist, teacher, reformer (born 1816)
• March 19 – Philippe Gille, French dramatist (born 1831)
• April 6 – George Murray Smith, English publisher (born 1824)
• April 10 — Harriet Newell Kneeland Goff, reformer and author (born 1828)
• April 12 – Louis Auguste Sabatier, French theologian (born 1839)
• April 26 – Harriett Ellen Grannis Arey, American educator, author, editor, and publisher (born 1819)
• May 24 – Charlotte Mary Yonge, English novelist (born 1823)
• June 4 – Charlotte Fowler Wells, American phrenologist and publisher (born 1814)
• June 5 – Dagny Juel, Norwegian writer and artists' model (shot, born 1867)
• June 9 – Walter Besant, English novelist and historian (born 1836)^[15]
• 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 4 – Harriet Pritchard Arnold, American author (born 1858)
• August 9 – Vishnudas Bhave, Indian dramatist (unknown birth year)
• October 28 – Paul Rée, German author and philosopher (born 1849)
• October 31 – Julien Leclercq, French Symbolist poet and art critic (born 1865)
• November 6 – Kate Greenaway, English children's illustrator and writer (born 1846)^[16]
• November 21 – V. A. Urechia, Romanian historian, writer and politician (born 1834)^[17]
• December 28 – Mary K. Buck, Bohemian-born American author (born 1849)

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Sully Prudhomme