Charlotte Brontë (; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855 ) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards.

John Keats (; 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821 ) was an English Romantic poet.

One of Sappho's poems ( fragment 31 ) was famously translated by the 1st century BC Roman poet Catullus in his " Ille mi par esse deo videtur " (" He seems to me to be equal to a god ") ( Catullus 51 ).

* May 31 – Leopold Staff, Polish poet ( b. 1878 )

* August 31 – Marina Tsvetaeva, Russian poet ( suicide ) ( b. 1892 )

* October 31 – Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Brazilian poet ( d. 1987 )

* January 31 – Friedrich Rückert, German poet, translator, and professor of Oriental languages ( b. 1788 )

* March 31 – Marge Piercy, American poet and activist

* July 31 – Phoebe Cary, American poet, sister to Alice Cary ( 1820 – 1871 ) ( b. 1824 )

* May 31 – Walt Whitman, American poet ( d. 1892 )

* May 31 – Giuseppe Giusti, Tuscan satirical poet ( b. 1809 )

* March 31 – Andrew Marvell, English poet ( d. 1678 )

* January 31 – Miska Magyarics, Slovene poet in Hungary ( d. 1883 )

* October 31 – John Keats, English poet ( d. 1821 )

* December 31 – Gottfried August Bürger, German poet ( d. 1794 )

* August 31 – Konrad von Würzburg, German poet

Two poets, Irishman Francis Ledwidge, 25, of 1st Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, in 29th Division, and Hedd Wyn, a Welsh-language poet serving with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers at Pilckem Ridge, were both killed in action on 31 July.

Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern ( May 6, 1871 – March 31, 1914 ) was a German author and poet from Munich.

József Bajza ( January 31, 1804 – March 3, 1858 ) was a Hungarian poet and critic.

Di Brandt ( born 31 Jan 1952 ) is an award-winning Canadian poet and literary critic.

Julian Beck ( May 31, 1925 – September 14, 1985 ) was an American actor, director, poet, and painter.

Peter Rosegger ( 31 July 1843 – 26 June 1918 ) was an Austrian poet from the province of Styria.

Judith Arundell Wright ( 31 May 191526 June 2000 ) was an Australian poet, environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights.

Johann Ludwig Tieck ( 31 May 1773 – 28 April 1853 ) was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo ( 29 September 1864, Bilbao, Biscay, Basque Country, Spain – 31 December 1936, Salamanca, Salamanca, Castile and León, Spain ) was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher.

* December 31 – Aleksis Kivi, Finnish novelist ( b. 1834 )

Christina Stead ( 17 July 1902 – 31 March 1983 ) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations.

Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux ( 29 October 1882 – 31 January 1944 ) was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright.

* December 31 – Nicholas Sparks, novelist

* July 31 – John Metcalfe, novelist and short story writer

Charles James Lever ( 31 August 1806-1 June 1872 ) was an Irish novelist.

* 31 October – Amrita Pritam, poet, novelist and essayist ( born 1919 ).

Elizabeth von Arnim ( 31 August 1866 – 9 February 1941 ), born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an Australian-born British novelist.

Édouard Rod ( March 31, 1857 – January 29, 1910 ), a French-Swiss novelist, was born at Nyon, in Switzerland, studied at Lausanne, where he wrote his doctoral thesis about the Oedipus legend ( Le développement de la légende d ' Œdipe dans l ' histoire de la littérature ), and Berlin, and in 1878 found his way to Paris.

Nicholas Charles Sparks ( born December 31, 1965 ) is an internationally bestselling American novelist and screenwriter.

Lionel Abrahams ( 11 April 1928 – 31 May 2004 ) was a South African novelist, poet, editor, critic, essayist and publisher.

Abraham " Abe " Cahan ( July 7, 1860 – August 31, 1951 ) was a Lithuanian-born American socialist newspaper editor, novelist, and politician.

Robert Emmett Cantwell ( January 31, 1908 – December 8, 1978 ) was a novelist and critic.

He abandoned that in 1854 after his father ’ s death, and almost immediately became a successful novelist and prolific short story writer, eventually authoring 31 books and almost 200 published articles and poems.

Helen Elswyth Thane Ricker Beebe ( May 16, 1900 – July 31, 1984 ) was an American romance novelist.

David Graham Phillips ( October 31, 1867 – January 24, 1911 ) was an American journalist of the muckraker tradition and novelist.

Ludwig Lewisohn ( May 30, 1882 – December 31, 1955 ) was an outspoken critic of American Jewish assimilation, novelist and translator, known for his novel The Island Within.

* 31 May-John Connolly, novelist.

George Rippey Stewart ( May 31, 1895 – August 22, 1980 ) was an American toponymist, a novelist, and a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Thomas Miller ( 31 August 1807 – 24 October 1874 ) was a poet and novelist who explored rural subjects.

Levin Schücking ( September 6, 1814, Meppen-August 31, 1883 ) was a German novelist.

George Washington Cable ( October 12, 1844 – January 31, 1925 ) was an American novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native New Orleans, Louisiana.