Pulitzer Prizes 1926: Complete list of winners

The 1926 Pulitzer Prizes marked a particularly rich moment in American literary history, showcasing the diversity of voices and forms being celebrated in the mid-1920s. Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith, a penetrating examination of idealism versus pragmatism in the medical profession, claimed the Novel prize that year, while George Kelly’s Craig’s Wife—a domestic drama with sharp psychological insight—took the Drama award. These victories reflected a cultural appetite for fiction and theater that grappled directly with contemporary American life, neither romanticizing nor cynically dismissing the complexities of work, ambition, and relationships in the modern world.

What makes the 1926 Pulitzer Prizes particularly fascinating is how they revealed the breadth of what the award committee valued beyond pure narrative. Amy Lowell’s posthumous collection What’s O’Clock won Poetry, offering readers her distinctive imagist sensibilities even after her death the previous year. Meanwhile, the History prize went to Edward Channing for his monumental sixth volume on American history, while Harvey Cushing’s two-volume biographical study The Life of Sir William Osler demonstrated the serious scholarly work being recognized alongside the literary arts. The Pulitzer Prizes at this moment were still relatively young—established in 1917—but already they had become the definitive barometer of what America’s literary establishment deemed worthy of recognition.

Here’s the complete list of 1926 Pulitzer Prize winners:

Biography

• The Life of Sir William Osler, 2 vols. by Harvey Cushing

Drama

• Craig’s Wife by George Kelly

History

• A History of the United States, Vol. VI: The War for Southern Independence, 1849-1865 by Edward Channing

Novel

• Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

Poetry

• What’s O’Clock by Amy Lowell