Pulitzer 1918
His Family
The first winner of all. Three grown children of a widowed New Yorker pull in three directions while their father watches the city he knew disappear. Poole was a muckraking journalist before he was a novelist.
Collection · The Pulitzer Prize for the Novel
Pulitzer Prize-winning novels in the public domain
- 10
- books to download
- 7
- we cannot serve yet
- 1917–1929
- 12 years apart
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The Pulitzer Prize for the Novel was first awarded in 1918, to a book almost nobody reads now. Reading the winners in order is a good way to watch American literary taste being argued into existence: the prize spent its first decade honouring the Midwest, the frontier and the family saga, and its judges were regularly accused of picking the safe book.
The prize is awarded the year after publication, so each entry below carries two dates: the year the novel appeared and the year it won. Where a year is missing from the run, the winner is named — either because it is not on the site yet or because it is still under copyright.
In 1920 no prize was given at all. The jury recommended a novel and the Pulitzer board declined to award it.
How this list was built
A book is here because it won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel and because it is in the public domain in the United States. There is no editorial judgement of ours involved.
The run stops in 1931 for the same reason it does everywhere else on this site: United States copyright runs ninety-five years, so the 1932 winner does not become free until 2027. Those four are listed with their years.
Three winners between 1918 and 1931 are missing because we do not hold them yet, not because of copyright. They are named rather than quietly skipped.
Winners as recorded by the Pulitzer Prize board. Public-domain status is checked against United States copyright terms: works published in 1930 or earlier are already free, and anything later enters the public domain on the first of January after its ninety-fifth year.
The first eight years
Seven winners, 1918 to 1925
The prize in its opening decade: a New York family saga, two Tarkingtons, a Wharton, and three novels about the Midwest and the prairie. Every one of these was a bestseller in its year and most of them are out of print now, which is a fair summary of what a literary prize can and cannot do.
Pulitzer 1919
The Magnificent Ambersons
A rich Midwestern family is overtaken by the automobile business it looked down on, and the heir is insufferable to the last possible moment. Welles filmed it and the studio cut the ending.
Pulitzer 1921
The Age of Innocence
The best known winner of the early prize, and the first given to a woman. Newland loves Ellen and marries May, and nothing improper is ever done, which is exactly the point.
Pulitzer 1922
Alice Adams
Tarkington's second win in four years. A girl in a small city performs a wealth her family does not have, and the performance costs more each time she repeats it.
Pulitzer 1923
One of Ours
A Nebraska farmer's son enlists for the First World War because it is the only way out of the life he has. Cather thought it her most misunderstood book; Hemingway was rude about it in print.
Pulitzer 1924
The Able McLaughlins
Scottish Presbyterian settlers on the Iowa prairie, and a soldier who comes home to find the woman he loves has been assaulted. What he does to protect her is the whole novel, and it is not simple.
Pulitzer 1925
So Big
Selina Peake chooses market gardening outside Chicago over the life she was raised for, and then watches her son choose the opposite. Ferber was writing about women's work forty years early.
1926 to 1930
Three winners, and the one the author refused
The years the prize became something writers had opinions about. Sinclair Lewis turned it down in 1926, on the grounds that prizes make writers write for prizes; five years later he accepted the Nobel.
Refused the prize
Arrowsmith
Lewis declined the 1926 Pulitzer, saying prizes make writers write for prizes. A doctor tries to stay a scientist while medicine turns into a business; Lewis paid a science writer a quarter of the royalties to get the laboratory right.
Pulitzer 1928
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
A bridge in Peru gives way with five people on it, and a friar spends a hundred pages asking whether that was a design or an accident. The shortest winner on this page.
Pulitzer 1930
Laughing Boy
A Navajo silversmith marries a woman shaped by a government boarding school, and the marriage becomes a test of how much love survives two worlds pulling apart. La Farge was an anthropologist and it shows.
Winners we do not have yet
Three, all free to read somewhere
These three are in the public domain and simply not on the site. They are named here because a page about a prize that silently skips three of its winners is not much of a page about a prize.
Coming soon
Early Autumn
The 1927 winner. A New England family sitting on old money and older grievances. In the public domain and not on the site yet.
Coming soon
Scarlet Sister Mary
The 1929 winner, and the first Pulitzer given to a novel about the Gullah community of South Carolina. Banned from some libraries on publication. Free, and not on the site yet.
Coming soon
Years of Grace
The 1931 winner. Three generations of Chicago women and what each was allowed to want. In the public domain since January 2026 and not on the site yet.
Still under copyright
The next four winners, and the year each becomes free
Where the list stops, and why. Each year below is calculated from the date of first publication.
Unlocks January 2027
The Good Earth
The 1932 winner, and the book that carried Buck to the Nobel. Free in a little over a year.
Unlocks January 2028
The Store
The 1933 winner, the middle volume of an Alabama trilogy that almost nobody reads now.
Unlocks January 2029
Lamb in His Bosom
The 1934 winner. Rural Georgia before the Civil War, by a writer who never published another novel of note.
Unlocks January 2030
Now in November
The 1935 winner, written when Johnson was twenty-four — the youngest novelist to take the prize.