In the news: the Nobel Prize for Literature

The selection of the Nobel Prize winners in literature is enshrouded in mystery–the list of candidates is kept secret for fifty years after each award!

While we’re as much in the dark as to who will win the next prize as anyone else, we can offer a list of all the previous winners, along with links to dozens of their portraits (or, in the case of Thomas Mann, to a photo of his hands) in the Artstor Digital Library.

Nobel prize winners in literature

1901 Sully Prudhomme (France)

1902 Theodor Mommsen (Germany)

1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (Norway)

1904 Frédéric Mistral (France) and José Echegaray y Eizaguirre (Spain)

1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz (Poland)

1906 Giosuè Carducci (Italy)

1907 Rudyard Kipling (United Kingdom)

1908 Rudolf Christoph Eucken (Germany)

1909 Selma Lagerlöf (Sweden)

1910 Paul Heyse (Germany)

1911 Count Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgium)

1912 Gerhart Hauptmann (Germany)

1913 Rabindranath Tagore (India)

1914 No prize awarded

1915 Romain Rolland (France)

1916 Verner von Heidenstam (Sweden)

1917 Karl Adolph Gjellerup (Denmark) and Henrik Pontoppidan (Denmark)

1918 No prize awarded

1919 Carl Spitteler (Switzerland)

1920 Knut Hamsun (Norway)

1921 Anatole (France) (France)

1922 Jacinto Benavente (Spain)

1923 William Butler Yeats (Ireland)

1924 Władysław Reymont (Poland)

1925 George Bernard Shaw (Ireland)

1926 Grazia Deledda (Italy)

1927 Henri Bergson (France)

1928 Sigrid Undset (Norway)

1929 Thomas Mann (Germany)

1930 Sinclair Lewis (United States)

1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Sweden)

1932 John Galsworthy (United Kingdom)

1933 Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (Russia)

1934 Luigi Pirandello (Italy)

1935 No prize awarded

1936 Eugene O’Neill (United States)

1937 Roger Martin du Gard (France)

1938 Pearl S. Buck (United States)

1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää (Finland)

1940-1943 No prizes awarded

1944 Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (Denmark)

1945 Gabriela Mistral (Chile)

1946 Hermann Hesse (Switzerland)

1947 André Gide (France)

1948 T. S. Eliot (United States/United Kingdom)

1949 William Faulkner (United States)

1950 Bertrand Russell (United Kingdom)

1951 Pär Lagerkvist (Sweden)

1952 François Mauriac (France)

1953 Sir Winston Churchill (United Kingdom)

1954 Ernest Hemingway (United States)

1955 Halldór Laxness (Iceland)

1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez (Spain)

1957 Albert Camus (France)

1958 Boris Pasternak (declined the prize) (Russia)

1959 Salvatore Quasimodo (Italy)

1960 Saint-John Perse (France)

1961 Ivo Andric (Yugoslavia)

1962 John Steinbeck (United States)

1963 Giorgos Seferis (Greece)

1964 Jean-Paul Sartre (declined the prize) (France)

1965 Michail Sholokhov (Russia)

1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Israel) and Nelly Sachs (Germany)

1967 Miguel Ángel Asturias (Guatemala)

1968 Yasunari Kawabata (Japan)

1969 Samuel Beckett (Ireland)

1970 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russia)

1971 Pablo Neruda (Chile)

1972 Heinrich Böll (Germany) (West)

1973 Patrick White (Australia)

1974 Eyvind Johnson (Sweden) and Harry Martinson (Sweden)

1975 Eugenio Montale (Italy)

1976 Saul Bellow (Canada/United States)

1977 Vicente Aleixandre (Spain)

1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer (United States)

1979 Odysseas Elytis (Greece)

1980 Czesław Miłosz (Poland/United States)

1981 Elias Canetti (United Kingdom)

1982 Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia)

1983 William Golding (United Kingdom)

1984 Jaroslav Seifert (Czechoslovakia)

1985 Claude Simon (France)

1986 Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka (Nigeria)

1987 Joseph Brodsky (Russia/United States)

1988 Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)

1989 Camilo José Cela (Spain)

1990 Octavio Paz (Mexico)

1991 Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)

1992 Derek Walcott (St. Lucia)

1993 Toni Morrison (United States)

1994 Kenzaburo Oe (Japan)

1995 Seamus Heaney (Ireland)

1996 Wisława Szymborska (Poland)

1997 Dario Fo (Italy)

1998 José Saramago (Portugal)

1999 Günter Grass (Germany)

2000 Gao Xingjian (France/China)

2001 Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (United Kingdom)

2002 Imre Kertész (Hungary)

2003 John Maxwell Coetzee (South Africa)

2004 Elfriede Jelinek (Austria)

2005 Harold Pinter (United Kingdom)

2006 Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)

2007 Doris Lessing (United Kingdom)

2008 J. M. G. Le Clézio (France)

2009 Herta Müller (Germany)

2010 Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)

2011 Tomas Trantrömer (Sweden)

2012 Mo Yan People’s (Republic of China)

2013 Alice Munro (Canada)

2014 Patrick Modiano (France)

2015 Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus)

2016 Bob Dylan (United States)

2017 Kashio Ishiguro (United Kingdom)