The Nobel Prize in Literature 1911-1920

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1911 was awarded to Count Maurice (Mooris) Polidore Marie Bernhard Maeterlinck “in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers’ own feelings and stimulate their imaginations”.

1912

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1912 was awarded to Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann “primarily in recognition of his fruitful, varied and outstanding production in the realm of dramatic art”.

1913

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West”.

Rabindranath Tagore

Born: 7 May 1861, Calcutta, India

Died: 7 August 1941, Calcutta, India

Residence at the time of the award: India

Prize motivation: “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West”.

Language: Bengali and English.

1914

No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.

1916

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1916 was awarded to Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam “in recognition of his significance as the leading representative of a new era in our literature”.

1917

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1917 was divided equally between Karl Adolph Gjellerup “for his varied and rich poetry, which is inspired by lofty ideals” and Henrik Pontoppidan “for his authentic descriptions of present-day life in Denmark”.

1918

No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.

1919

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1919 was awarded to Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler “in special appreciation of his epic, Olympian Spring“.

Carl Spitteler received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1920. During the selection process in 1919, the Nobel Committee for Literature decided that none of the year’s nominations met the criteria as outlined in the will of Alfred Nobel. According to the Nobel Foundation’s statutes, the Nobel Prize can in such a case be reserved until the following year, and this statute was then applied. Carl Spitteler therefore received his Nobel Prize for 1919 one year later, in 1920.

1920

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1920 was awarded to Knut Pedersen Hamsun “for his monumental work,Growth of the Soil.”