Pulitzer Prizes 1936: Complete list of winners

The 1936 Pulitzer Prizes arrived at a peculiar moment in American letters—a time when the nation was still finding its footing during the Great Depression, and writers were beginning to reckon seriously with the country’s past and future. That year’s winners reflected a deep engagement with American history and identity, from Andrew C. McLaughlin’s sweeping A Constitutional History of the United States to Harold L. Davis’s frontier epic Honey in the Horn, which captured the raw vitality of the American West. The prize selections showcased the Pulitzer’s traditional commitment to recognizing literary achievement across multiple forms, honoring not just novelists but poets, historians, and dramatists who were shaping how Americans understood themselves.

Robert E. Sherwood’s Idiots Delight took the Drama prize that year, bringing a satirical edge to questions about war and human folly that would only grow more urgent in the years ahead. Meanwhile, Ralph Barton Perry’s monumental biography of William James—that quintessential American philosopher—demonstrated the Pulitzer’s appreciation for scholarship and intellectual portraiture, while Robert P. Tristram Coffin’s Strange Holiness won Poetry with its meditative, deeply rooted American voice. Together, these five winners painted a portrait of a nation looking inward, wrestling with its constitutional foundations, its frontier heritage, and the possibility of meaningfully engaging with big ideas in an uncertain time.

The complete list of 1936 Pulitzer Prize winners across all categories follows below.

Biography

• The Thought and Character of William James: As Revealed in Unpublished Correspondence and Notes, Together with His Published Writings by Ralph Barton Perry

Drama

• Idiots Delight by Robert E. Sherwood

History

• A Constitutional History of the United States by Andrew C. McLaughlin

Novel

• Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis

Poetry

• Strange Holiness by Robert P. Tristram Coffin