The year 1911 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• George Moore (novelist) publishes the first of his three-volume Hail and Farewell (last in 1914).
• Gallimard publishing house founded in Paris by Gaston Gallimard.
• Britain establishes six copyright libraries to which copies of all books published in the country must be sent: Bodleian Library (Oxford); British Library (London); National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh); National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth); Trinity College, Dublin; and Cambridge University Library.

New books

• Max Beerbohm — Zuleika Dobson
• Arnold Bennett — The Card
• J. D. Beresford — The Hampdenshire Wonder
• Frances Hodgson Burnett — The Secret Garden
• G. K. Chesterton — The Innocence of Father Brown
• Hugh Clifford — The Downfall of the Gods
• Marie Corelli — Life Everlasting
• Ford Madox Ford — Ladies Whose Bright Eyes
• E. M. Forster — The Celestial Omnibus
• Eduard von Keyserling — Wellen
• Valery Larbaud — Fermina Márquez
• D. H. Lawrence — The White Peacock
• Gaston Leroux — The Phantom of the Opera
• Baroness Orczy — A True Woman
• Forrest Reid — The Bracknels
• Bram Stoker — The Lair of the White Worm
• Mary Augusta Ward — The Case of Richard Meynell
• H. G. Wells — The New Machiavelli
• Edith Wharton — Ethan Frome
• Owen Wister — Padre Ignacio

New drama

• George Bernard Shaw - Fanny's First Play
• Baroness Orczy — The Duke's Wager
• Stanislavski and Craig's seminal symbolist production of Hamlet opened at the Moscow Arts Theatre

Poetry

• Edwin James Brady - River Rovers
• John Masefield - The Everlasting Mercy

Non-fiction

• Encyclopædia Britannica

Births

• January 24 - C. L. Moore, science fiction author
• February 8 - Elizabeth Bishop, poet, Pulitzer Prize winner (+ 1979)
• March 11 - Sir Fitzroy Maclean, Scottish diplomat, adventurer, writer and politician
• March 26 - Tennessee Williams, playwright
• April 8 - Emil Cioran, Romanian-born French philosopher and essayist (+ 1995)
• May 20 - Annie M. G. Schmidt, Dutch children's author
• June 6 - Verna Aardema, children's author
• July 21 - Marshall McLuhan - author (+ 1980)
• November 19 - Mary Elizabeth Counselman - American author and poet (+ 1995)
• December 11 - Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel prize-winning Egyptian novelist.
• December 25 - Noel Langley, screenwriter

Deaths

• January 23 - David Graham Phillips, journalist / novelist
• February 7 - Hannah Whitall Smith, Quaker author
• May 9 - Thomas Wentworth Higginson, literary mentor of Emily Dickinson
• May 29 - W. S. Gilbert, humorist
• October 8 - Hesba Stretton, author
• October 29 - Joseph Pulitzer
• November 9 - Howard Pyle, children's author

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Count Maurice (Mooris) Polidore Marie Bernhard Maeterlinck, Belgian poet, playwright, and essayist