The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning for Literature (Swedish: Nobelpriset i litteratur), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words of Alfred Nobel, "in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction". Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy, the award is based on an author's body of work as a whole. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize.
The academy announces the name of the laureate in early October. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895. Literature is traditionally the final award presented at the Nobel Prize ceremony. On some occasions, the award has been postponed to the following year, most recently in 2018.
Alfred Nobel stipulated in his last will and testament that his money be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics, chemistry, peace, physiology or medicine, and literature. Although Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, and it was signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895. Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million Swedish kronor (US$198 million, €176 million in 2016), to establish and endow the five Nobel Prizes. Due to the level of scepticism surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that the Storting (Norwegian Parliament) approved it. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, who formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobel's fortune and organise the prizes.
The members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that were to award the Peace Prize were appointed shortly after the will was approved. The prize-awarding organisations followed: the Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June. The Nobel Foundation then reached an agreement on guidelines for how the Nobel Prize should be awarded. In 1900, the Nobel Foundation's newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II. According to Nobel's will, the prize in literature should be determined by "the Academy in Stockholm", which was specified by the statutes of the Nobel Foundation to mean the Swedish Academy.
Nomination and award procedure
Each year, the Swedish Academy sends out requests for nominations of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Members of the Academy, members of literature academies and societies, professors of literature and language, former Nobel literature laureates, and the presidents of writers' organisations are all allowed to nominate a candidate. One cannot nominate oneself.
Between 1901 and 1950, around 20 to 35 nominations were usually received each year. Since then, thousands of requests are sent out each year, and as of 2011 about 220 proposals were returned. These proposals must be received by the Academy by 1 February, after which they are examined by the Nobel Committee, a working group within the Academy comprising four to five members. By April, the committee narrows the field to around 20 candidates. By May, a shortlist of five names is approved by the Academy. The next four months are spent reading and reviewing the works of the five candidates. In October, members of the Academy vote, and the candidate who receives more than half of the votes is named the Nobel laureate in Literature. No one can get the prize without being on the shortlist at least twice; thus, many authors reappear and are reviewed repeatedly over the years. The academicians read works in their original language, but when a candidate is shortlisted from a language that no member masters, they call on translators and oath-sworn experts to provide samples of that writer's work. Other elements of the process are similar to those of other Nobel Prizes. The Swedish Academy is composed of 18 members who are elected for life and, until 2018, not technically permitted to leave. On 2 May 2018, King Carl XVI Gustaf amended the rules of the academy and made it possible for members to resign. The new rules also mention that a member who has been inactive in the work of the academy for more than two years can be asked to resign. The members of the Nobel committee are elected for a period of three years from among the members of the academy and are assisted by specially appointed expert advisers.
The award is usually announced in October. Sometimes, however, the award has been announced the year after the nominal year, the latest such case being the 2018 award. In the midst of controversy surrounding claims of sexual assault, conflict of interest, and resignations by officials, on 4 May 2018, the Swedish Academy announced that the 2018 laureate would be announced in 2019 along with the 2019 laureate. Some years, such as in 1949, no candidate received the required majority of the votes, and for that reason, the prize was postponed and announced the following year.
Withdrawn, invalidated and unarchived nominations
Between 1901 and 1970, literary historians and archivists noted that there were official nominees who were either withdrawn, invalidated or not archived in the Academy's nomination database. In 1911, the Swedish playwright August Strindberg was nominated for the first time by Academy member Nathan Söderblom but because the nomination "arrived too late", it was withdrawn and unarchived unlike any other nominations that were moved to the succeeding year. In 1904, José Echegaray's nomination letter "arrived late due to slow mail service" and Rudyard Kipling's had been temporarily misplaced. It was then decided by the Nobel committee to include both the nominations for 1904 and not moved for 1905.
There have been nine recorded occasions when the nominations were declared invalid. The only nominations for Pedro Pablo Figueroa, Max Haushofer Jr., William Booth and Armando Alvares Pedroso were declared invalid by the Nobel committee because their respective nominators were found to be ineligible. Such declarations also occurred to Ernest Lavisse in 1911, Henriette Charasson in 1945, Teixeira de Pascoaes in 1945 and Enrique Larreta in 1945. Therefore, their names were withdrawn from the archives in those specific years. John Macmillan Brown's self-nomination under the pseudonym "Godfrey Sweven" was declared invalid due to the rule that nominations of oneself is impermissible.
Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy Anders Österling revealed to the New York Times days before the announcement that Willa Cather, together with Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Gabriela Mistral, was among the contenders for the 1944 prize. Despite the revelation, Cather's name was not included in the archives. The prize was eventually given to Johannes V. Jensen.
With the annual revelation of nominated writers for the Nobel Prize in Literature, interesting facts are eventually uncovered between 1901 and 1975 such as the following:
Most nominations in a year: 205 nominations were made in 1973.
Most nominations for a nominee: Spanish philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal received 92 nominations in 1956.
Highest number of nominees in a year: 114 writers were nominated in 1975.
Highest number of new nominees in a year: 30 new writers were nominated in 1969.
Literary societies: The Pali Text Society was nominated in 1916 and remains the only society.