Pulitzer Prize for Fiction - Definition and Overview

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded since 1948 for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It replaced the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel.

• 1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
• 1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens
• 1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.
• 1951: The Town by Conrad Richter
• 1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
• 1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• 1954: no award given
• 1955: A Fable by William Faulkner
• 1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
• 1957: no award given
• 1958: A Death in the Family by James Agee
• 1959: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor
• 1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
• 1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• 1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor
• 1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner
• 1964: no award given
• 1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
• 1966: Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter
• 1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
• 1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
• 1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
• 1970: Collected Stories by Jean Stafford
• 1971: no award given
• 1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
• 1973: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
• 1974: no award given ¹
• 1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
• 1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
• 1977: no award given
• 1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson
• 1979: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
• 1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
• 1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• 1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
• 1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• 1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy
• 1985: Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
• 1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
• 1987: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
• 1988: Beloved by Toni Morrison
• 1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
• 1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
• 1991: Rabbit At Rest by John Updike
• 1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
• 1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
• 1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
• 1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
• 1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford
• 1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
• 1998: American Pastoral by Philip Roth
• 1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham
• 2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• 2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
• 2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo
• 2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• 2004: The Known World (ISBN 0060557540) by Edward P. Jones

¹ The fiction jury voted unanimously to grant the 1974 award to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, but the rest of the Pulitzer panel overturned this decision.