Pulitzer Prizes 1938: Complete list of winners

The 1938 Pulitzer Prizes arrived during turbulent times, offering American readers a remarkable window into the nation’s past and its artistic imagination. That year’s winners reflected a fascinating dual impulse: several celebrated historical figures and periods (Andrew Jackson, the Civil War’s aftermath, early American life), while others boldly experimented with form and perspective. The Drama prize went to Thornton Wilder’s groundbreaking Our Town, a play that stripped away theatrical convention to reveal the profound beauty in ordinary lives—a radical departure from Broadway’s expectations at the time. Meanwhile, John Phillips Marquand’s satirical novel The Late George Apley won Fiction with its sharp-edged portrait of Boston Brahmin society, proving that literary prizes could honor both experimental and wickedly observant works in the same year.

The 1938 Pulitzer Prize winners in biography and history demonstrated the era’s deep engagement with American identity. Marquis James earned recognition for The Life of Andrew Jackson, while Odell Shepard’s Pedlar’s Progress offered a different biographical approach. Paul Herman Buck’s The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900 examined the crucial decades when the nation healed its deepest wound, and Marya Zaturenska’s poetry collection Cold Morning Sky rounded out a year of genuine diversity—from retrospective histories to startlingly modern verse.

Here are the complete 1938 Pulitzer Prize winners:

Biography

• The Life of Andrew Jackson by Marquis James
• Pedlar’s Progress by Odell Shepard

Drama

• Our Town by Thornton Wilder

History

• The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900 by Paul Herman Buck

Novel

• The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand

Poetry

• Cold Morning Sky by Marya Zaturenska