Ernest Hemingway and the 1941 Pulitzer Prize

Literature books Photo by Syd Wachs on Unsplash

John Oscar Branch joined the United States Navy in 1970 and was involved in a number of dangerous missions during the Vietnam War, including the Battle of Haiphong Harbor. Following his time in the Navy, he established several businesses throughout Oregon, including the Branch Appraisal real estate company and Oregon Chimney Repair and Cleaning. Beyond his entrepreneurial activities, John Oscar Branch enjoys reading classic literature, particularly the works of John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway. 

William Faulkner, John Updike, and Booth Tarkington are the only authors to receive two Pulitzer Prizes both in the category of fiction, originally known as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. The trio might have been a quartet if not for one of the most controversial decisions in Pulitzer history.

Ernest Hemingway published For Whom the Bell Tolls, his fifth novel, in the autumn of 1940. The book chronicled a doomed guerrilla mission during the Spanish Civil War. When it came time to award a Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1941, Hemingway’s work led the field. In fact, the Pulitzer Prize committee for letters unanimously named For Whom the Bell Tolls as their winner.

The Pulitzer Board initially upheld the decision, but an influential associate of the board found the content inappropriate and lobbied to have the decision overturned. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, ultimately had his wish granted and no prize was awarded for 1941, one of only a few such occasions since the prize’s inception in 1918. Though the prize has been withheld for various reasons, approval by both the committee and board indicates Hemingway’s denial was purely the result of a single individual’s politics.

For Hemingway, however, the Pulitzer would remain elusive for only a few more years. The author’s last significant work, The Old Man and the Sea, was published in 1952 and received the Pulitzer the following year.