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Nobel Prize for Literature



Funded by the bequest of distinguished Swedish chemist Alfred B. Nobel (183396), 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
19403 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

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Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern FictionEncyclopedia of Literature: New from Tartary to Frank O'connor