Nobel Prize for Literature
Funded by the bequest of distinguished Swedish chemist Alfred B. Nobel (1833–96), the Nobel Prizes are awarded annually to persons for important contributions in chemistry, medicine, physiology, literature, and the promotion of peace. The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded to the author of the most significant work ‘of an idealistic tendency’.
| 1901 | René-François-Armand-Sully Prudhomme |
| 1902 | Theodor Mommsen |
| 1903 | Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson |
| 1904 | José Echegaray/Frédéric Mistral |
| 1905 | Henryk Sienkiewicz |
| 1906 | Giosué Carducci |
| 1907 | Rudyard Kipling |
| 1908 | Rudolf Eucken |
| 1909 | Selma Lagerlöf |
| 1910 | Paul Heyse |
| 1911 | Maurice Maeterlinck |
| 1912 | Gerhart Hauptmann |
| 1913 | Rabindranath Tagore |
| 1914 | No award |
| 1915 | Romain Rolland |
| 1916 | Verner von Heidenstam |
| 1917 | Karl Kjellerup/Henrik Pontoppidan |
| 1918 | No award |
| 1919 | Carl Spitteler |
| 1920 | Knut Hamsun |
| 1921 | Anatole France |
| 1922 | Jacinto Benavente y Martínez |
| 1923 | W. B. Yeats |
| 1924 | Władysław Reymont |
| 1925 | G. B. Shaw |
| 1926 | Grazia Deledda |
| 1927 | Henri Bergson |
| 1928 | Sigrid Undset |
| 1929 | Thomas Mann |
| 1930 | Sinclair Lewis |
| 1931 | Erik Axel Karlfeldt |
| 1932 | John Galsworthy |
| 1933 | Ivan Bunin |
| 1934 | Luigi Pirandello |
| 1935 | No award |
| 1936 | Eugene O'Neill |
| 1937 | Roger Martin du Gard |
| 1938 | Pearl S. Buck |
| 1939 | F. E. Sillianpää |
| 1940–3 | No awards |
| 1944 | Johannes V. Jensen |
| 1945 | Gabriela Mistral |
| 1946 | Herman Hesse |
| 1947 | André Gide |
| 1948 | T. S. Eliot |
| 1949 | William Faulkner |
| 1950 | Bertrand Russell |
| 1951 | Pär Lagerkvist |
| 1952 | François Mauriac |
| 1953 | Winston S. Churchill |
| 1954 | Ernest Hemingway |
| 1955 | Halldór Laxness |
| 1956 | Juan Ramón Jiménez |
| 1957 | Albert Camus |
| 1958 | Boris Pasternak |
| 1959 | Salvatore Quasimodo |
| 1960 | Saint-John Perse |
| 1961 | Ivo Andrić |
| 1962 | John Steinbeck |
| 1963 | George Seferis |
| 1964 | Jean-Paul Sartre |
| 1965 | Mikhail Sholokhov |
| 1966 | S. Y. Agnon/Nelly Sachs |
| 1967 | Miguel Ángel Asturias |
| 1968 | Yasunari Kawabata |
| 1969 | Samuel Beckett |
| 1970 | Alexander Solzhenitsyn |
| 1971 | Pablo Neruda |
| 1972 | Heinrich Böll |
| 1973 | Patrick White |
| 1974 | Eyvind Johnson/Harry Martinson |
| 1975 | Eugenio Montale |
| 1976 | Saul Bellow |
| 1977 | Vincente Aleixandre |
| 1978 | Isaac Bashevis Singer |
| 1979 | Odysseas Elytis |
| 1980 | Czesław Milosz |
| 1981 | Elias Canetti |
| 1982 | Gabriel García Márquez |
| 1983 | William Golding |
| 1984 | Jaroslav Seifert |
| 1985 | Claude Simon |
| 1986 | Wole Soyinka |
| 1987 | Joseph Brodsky |
| 1988 | Najïb Mahfūz |
| 1989 | Camilo José Cela |
| 1990 | Octavio Paz |
| 1991 | Nadine Gordimer |
| 1992 | Derek Walcott |
| 1993 | Toni Morrison |
| 1994 | Kenzaburo Oe |
| 1995 | Seamus Heaney |
Additional topics
Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern FictionEncyclopedia of Literature: New from Tartary to Frank O'connor