Mahima Chaudhary | Updated: Aug 30, 2022 22:08 IST
Nobel Laureates in Literature: When Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel died in 1896, he left five prizes in his will, one of which is the Nobel Prize in Literature, which is awarded to writers who have produced the most outstanding work in an ideal direction. Nobel’s heirs, however, fought the provisions of the will, and the first awards were not presented for another five years. You will get a list of Nobel Laureates in Literature in this article.
Check out: Noble Price Winners 2022.
Discover the writers who have lived up to Nobel’s ideals from 1901 to the present with the list of Nobel Laureates in Literature given here.
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2022 has yet to be awarded. The Nobel Laureates in Literature 2022 will be published on 6th of October, 2022 We will update the same here, once it will be announced.
Sully Prudhomme (1839-1907), a French poet and essayist, was the first person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901, in particular for his poetic composition, which demonstrates lofty idealism, artistic perfection, and a rare combination of heart and intellect qualities.
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The table below lists the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
List Of Nobel Laureates In Literature | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Name | Country | Literary Area |
| 1901 | Sully Prudhomme | France | Poet |
| 1902 | Theodor Mommsen | Germany | Historian |
| 1903 | Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson | Norway | Novelist, Poet, Dramatist |
| 1904 | José Echegaray Y Eizaguirre | Spain | Dramatist |
| Frédéric Mistral | France | Poet | |
| 1905 | Henryk Sienkiewicz | Poland | Novelist |
| 1906 | Giosuè Carducci | Italy | Poet |
| 1907 | Rudyard Kipling | U.K. | Poet, Novelist |
| 1908 | Rudolf Christoph Eucken | Germany | Philosopher |
| 1909 | Selma Lagerlöf | Sweden | Novelist |
| 1910 | Paul Johann Ludwig Von Heyse | Germany | Poet, Novelist, Dramatist |
| 1911 | Maurice Maeterlinck | Belgium | Dramatist |
| 1912 | Gerhart Hauptmann | Germany | Dramatist |
| 1913 | Rabindranath Tagore | India | Poet |
| 1915 | Romain Rolland | France | Novelist |
| 1916 | Verner Von Heidenstam | Sweden | Poet |
| 1917 | Karl Gjellerup | Denmark | Novelist |
| Henrik Pontoppidan | Denmark | Novelist | |
| 1918 | Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Declined) | Sweden | Poet |
| 1919 | Carl Spitteler | Switzerland | Poet, Novelist |
| 1920 | Knut Hamsun | Norway | Novelist |
| 1921 | Anatole France | France | Novelist |
| 1922 | Jacinto Benavente Y Martínez | Spain | Dramatist |
| 1923 | William Butler Yeats | Ireland | Poet |
| 1924 | Władysław Stanisław Reymont | Poland | Novelist |
| 1925 | George Bernard Shaw | Ireland | Dramatist |
| 1926 | Grazia Deledda | Italy | Novelist |
| 1927 | Henri Bergson | France | Philosopher |
| 1928 | Sigrid Undset | Norway | Novelist |
| 1929 | Thomas Mann | Germany | Novelist |
| 1930 | Sinclair Lewis | U.S. | Novelist |
| 1931 | Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Posthumous Award) | Sweden | Poet |
| 1932 | John Galsworthy | U.K. | Novelist |
| 1933 | Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin | U.S.S.R. | Poet, Novelist |
| 1934 | Luigi Pirandello | Italy | Dramatist |
| 1936 | Eugene O’neill | U.S. | Dramatist |
| 1937 | Roger Martin Du Gard | France | Novelist |
| 1938 | Pearl Buck | U.S. | Novelist |
| 1939 | Frans Eemil Sillanpää | Finland | Novelist |
| 1944 | Johannes V. Jensen | Denmark | Novelist |
| 1945 | Gabriela Mistral | Chile | Poet |
| 1946 | Hermann Hesse | Switzerland | Novelist |
| 1947 | André Gide | France | Novelist, Essayist |
| 1948 | T.S. Eliot | U.K. | Poet, Critic |
| 1949 | William Faulkner | U.S. | Novelist |
| 1950 | Bertrand Russell | U.K. | Philosopher |
| 1951 | Pär Lagerkvist | Sweden | Novelist |
| 1952 | François Mauriac | France | Poet, Novelist, Dramatist |
| 1953 | Sir Winston Churchill | U.K. | Historian, Orator |
| 1954 | Ernest Hemingway | U.S. | Novelist |
| 1955 | Halldór Laxness | Iceland | Novelist |
| 1956 | Juan Ramón Jiménez | Spain | Poet |
| 1957 | Albert Camus | France | Novelist, Dramatist |
| 1958 | Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (Declined) | U.S.S.R. | Novelist, Poet |
| 1959 | Salvatore Quasimodo | Italy | Poet |
| 1960 | Saint-John Perse | France | Poet |
| 1961 | Ivo Andric | Yugoslavia | Novelist |
| 1962 | John Steinbeck | U.S. | Novelist |
| 1963 | George Seferis | Greece | Poet |
| 1964 | Jean-Paul Sartre (Declined) | France | Philosopher, Dramatist |
| 1965 | Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov | U.S.S.R. | Novelist |
| 1966 | S.Y. Agnon | Israel | Novelist |
| Nelly Sachs | Sweden | Poet | |
| 1967 | Miguel Ángel Asturias | Guatemala | Novelist |
| 1968 | Kawabata Yasunari | Japan | Novelist |
| 1969 | Samuel Beckett | Ireland | Novelist, Dramatist |
| 1970 | Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn | U.S.S.R. | Novelist |
| 1971 | Pablo Neruda | Chile | Poet |
| 1972 | Heinrich Böll | West Germany | Novelist |
| 1973 | Patrick White | Australia | Novelist |
| 1974 | Eyvind Johnson | Sweden | Novelist |
| Harry Martinson | Sweden | Novelist, Poet | |
| 1975 | Eugenio Montale | Italy | Poet |
| 1976 | Saul Bellow | U.S. | Novelist |
| 1977 | Vicente Aleixandre | Spain | Poet |
| 1978 | Isaac Bashevis Singer | U.S. | Novelist |
| 1979 | Odysseus Elytis | Greece | Poet |
| 1980 | Czesław Miłosz | U.S. | Poet |
| 1981 | Elias Canetti | Bulgaria | Novelist, Essayist |
| 1982 | Gabriel García Márquez | Colombia | Novelist, Journalist, Social Critic |
| 1983 | Sir William Golding | U.K. | Novelist |
| 1984 | Jaroslav Seifert | Czechoslovakia | Poet |
| 1985 | Claude Simon | France | Novelist |
| 1986 | Wole Soyinka | Nigeria | Dramatist, Poet |
| 1987 | Joseph Brodsky | U.S. | Poet, Essayist |
| 1988 | Naguib Mahfouz | Egypt | Novelist |
| 1989 | Camilo José Cela | Spain | Novelist |
| 1990 | Octavio Paz | Mexico | Poet, Essayist |
| 1991 | Nadine Gordimer | South Africa | Novelist |
| 1992 | Derek Walcott | Saint Lucia | Poet |
| 1993 | Toni Morrison | U.S. | Novelist |
| 1994 | Oe Kenzaburo | Japan | Novelist |
| 1995 | Seamus Heaney | Ireland | Poet |
| 1996 | Wisława Szymborska | Poland | Poet |
| 1997 | Dario Fo | Italy | Dramatist, Actor |
| 1998 | José Saramago | Portugal | Novelist |
| 1999 | Günter Grass | Germany | Novelist |
| 2000 | Gao Xingjian | France | Novelist, Dramatist |
| 2001 | Sir V.S. Naipaul | Trinidad | Novelist |
| 2002 | Imre Kertész | Hungary | Novelist |
| 2003 | J.M. Coetzee | South Africa | Novelist |
| 2004 | Elfriede Jelinek | Austria | Novelist, Dramatist |
| 2005 | Harold Pinter | U.K. | Dramatist |
| 2006 | Orhan Pamuk | Turkey | Novelist |
| 2007 | Doris Lessing | U.K. | Novelist |
| 2008 | Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio | France | Novelist, Essayist |
| 2009 | Herta Müller | Germany | Novelist |
| 2010 | Mario Vargas Llosa | Peru | Novelist, Dramatist |
| 2011 | Tomas Tranströmer | Sweden | Poet |
| 2012 | Mo Yan | China | Novelist, Short-Story Writer |
| 2013 | Alice Munro | Canada | Short-Story Writer |
| 2014 | Patrick Modiano | France | Novelist |
| 2015 | Svetlana Alexievich | Belarus | Journalist, Prose Writer |
| 2016 | Bob Dylan | U.S. | Singer, Songwriter |
| 2017 | Kazuo Ishiguro | U.K. | Novelist |
| 2018** | Olga Tokarczuk | Poland | Novelist, Poet, Essayist |
| 2019 | Peter Handke | Austria | Novelist, Poet, Essayist, Playwright |
| 2020 | Louise Glück | U.S. | Poet |
| 2021 | Abdulrazak Gurnah | Tanz. | Novelist |
Hope you found this article on Nobel Laureates in Literature helpful. Download the list of Nobel Laureates in Literature given in this article for later use.
Between 1901 and 2021, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded 114 times to 118 Nobel laureates.
France has the most Nobel Prize recipients in Literature.
Rudyard Kipling was the youngest laureate, at 41 years old when he was honoured in 1907.
Sully Prudhomme was the first person to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2022 has not yet been awarded.