15 Forgotten American Writers Who Won Nobel Prizes

Sinclair Lewis: The Pioneer Who Got Lost in Literary History

Sinclair Lewis became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, receiving the award “for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters.” Lewis carved out his place in American letters by satirizing the very fabric of American society through novels like Main Street and Babbitt. His breakthrough novel Main Street sold 180,000 copies in its first six months and earned him about 3 million current dollars—almost $5 million in today’s money.

Yet today, Lewis feels like a literary ghost haunting the edges of American consciousness. Sinclair Lewis’s critical reputation could not easily be lower than it is at present. He’s been condemned since well before his death to be more quotable than readable, his Nobel Prize for literature as meaningless to his vanished reputation today as his boast to HL Mencken in 1920 that with Main Street he’d written the greatest American novel. The man who once coined words like “realtor,” “highbrow,” and “John Hancock” as a signature has become a footnote in literary history.

Pearl S. Buck: The Woman Who Captured China but Lost America

Pearl S. Buck won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1938, the first American woman to do so, after her novel The Good Earth became the best-selling novel in the US in both 1931 and 1932. Her novel about Chinese peasant life wasn’t just popular—it was transformative. This commercial and critical success was considered an influential factor in the Nobel Committee’s decision to award Pearl S Buck the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938.

Today, one can’t help but wonder how Buck would be appraised if she were writing today, given the current climate towards assigning writers ‘identities’ and insisting they write no fiction beyond their personal experience. Eighty or ninety years down the track, she’d be more likely to be accused of cultural appropriation, for Buck was American, although she lived for a time with her missionary parents in China—gone are the days a writer can simply spin an imaginative yarn based on meticulous research or close observation of others without getting in hot water. Buck’s crime, it seems, was writing too well about a culture not her own.

Eugene O’Neill: The Playwright Who Revolutionized American Theater

Eugene O’Neill won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936, becoming the only American playwright to achieve this honor. His groundbreaking works like “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” and “The Iceman Cometh” transformed American theater from light entertainment into serious psychological drama. O’Neill brought European expressionism to American stages and explored the darkest corners of the human psyche with unprecedented honesty.

Despite his revolutionary impact, O’Neill’s works are increasingly relegated to university theaters and occasional revivals. His dense, emotionally brutal plays require stamina from both actors and audiences—a commitment that modern theater-goers, accustomed to streamlined entertainment, often find daunting. The very intensity that made O’Neill groundbreaking has ironically contributed to his theatrical exile.

T.S. Eliot: The American Who Became More British Than Britain

T.S. Eliot won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, though by then he’d already become a British citizen, creating eternal confusion about whether he counts as an American laureate. Born in St. Louis, Eliot’s “The Waste Land” remains one of the most influential poems of the 20th century, its fractured verses capturing the spiritual desolation of post-World War I society.

Yet Eliot’s later works—his plays like “Murder in the Cathedral” and “The Cocktail Party”—feel as distant as ancient manuscripts to contemporary readers. His conversion to Anglo-Catholicism and increasingly conservative political views alienated him from the very modernist movement he helped create. Today, students encounter “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” but rarely venture into his dense philosophical poetry or forgotten verse dramas.

William Faulkner: The Southern Gothic Master Too Complex for Casual Readers

William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949, celebrated for his psychological realism and innovative narrative techniques. His novels like “The Sound and the Fury” and “As I Lay Dying” revolutionized American fiction through stream-of-consciousness techniques and multiple perspectives. Faulkner created an entire fictional universe in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, populated with characters whose inner lives were as complex as their tangled family histories.

However, Faulkner’s dense, challenging prose style has made him increasingly inaccessible to general readers. His sentences can stretch for pages, his timeline jumps bewilderingly between past and present, and his characters speak in dialects that require active translation. While literary scholars still revere Faulkner, casual readers often abandon his novels in frustration, finding his experimental techniques more obstacle than enhancement to storytelling.

Ernest Hemingway: The Icon Whose Lesser Works Collect Dust

Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, and unlike many on this list, he remains a household name. “The Old Man and the Sea,” “A Farewell to Arms,” and “The Sun Also Rises” continue to find new readers. But Hemingway wrote more than these canonical works, and his failures are as instructive as his successes.

Novels like “Across the River and Into the Trees” and “Islands in the Stream” revealed the limitations of Hemingway’s famous spare style when applied to subjects beyond his expertise. His later works often felt like parodies of his earlier brilliance, with the understated dialogue becoming merely flat and the stoic protagonists turning into cardboard cutouts. Even literary giants can outstay their welcome with readers who expect consistent excellence.

John Steinbeck: Beyond Grapes of Wrath Lies Forgotten Territory

John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, primarily on the strength of novels like “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Of Mice and Men,” which remain staples of American high school curricula. These works masterfully captured the struggles of working-class Americans during the Great Depression, combining social criticism with genuine human emotion.

But Steinbeck’s later works tell a different story. Books like “Travels with Charley” and “The Winter of Our Discontent” lack the urgency and authenticity of his Depression-era masterpieces. As Steinbeck aged and achieved success, he seemed to lose touch with the common people who had inspired his greatest works. His travel writing felt touristic rather than insightful, and his later novels often seemed forced, as if he were trying to recapture a voice that had naturally evolved beyond his control.

Saul Bellow: The Intellectual Giant Gathering Academic Dust

Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976, recognized for novels like “Herzog,” “Humboldt’s Gift,” and “The Adventures of Augie March.” Bellow’s protagonists were typically intellectual Jewish-American men grappling with modern urban life, combining high culture references with street-smart observations. His novels captured the particular neuroses of post-war American intellectuals with both sympathy and sharp wit.

Today, Bellow’s works feel trapped in academic amber—respected but rarely read outside university courses. His dense intellectual references and lengthy philosophical meditations appeal more to professors than general readers. The cultural contexts that made his characters’ struggles resonant—Cold War anxieties, the decline of urban neighborhoods, the tension between assimilation and identity—have shifted so dramatically that his novels read like historical documents rather than living literature.

Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Yiddish Storyteller Lost in Translation

Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978, the only writer to win for works written primarily in Yiddish. His short stories and novels like “The Family Moskat” preserved a vanishing world of Eastern European Jewish life, capturing both its spiritual richness and human follies. Singer wrote about demons and rabbis, merchants and mystics, with equal insight and affection.

But Singer’s audience has inevitably narrowed as the Yiddish-speaking world he depicted has virtually disappeared. Younger readers lack the cultural context to fully appreciate his references to Jewish religious law, traditional matchmaking customs, and the complex social hierarchies of Polish Jewish communities. Even in translation, Singer’s work requires cultural literacy that fewer Americans possess, making his stories feel more anthropological than literary to contemporary readers.

Czesław Miłosz: The Polish-American Poet’s Double Exile

Czesław Miłosz won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980, writing poetry that bridged his Polish origins and American experience. Born in Lithuania when it was part of the Russian Empire, Miłosz witnessed both World War II and the communist takeover of Poland before emigrating to the United States. His poetry explored themes of exile, historical witness, and the relationship between individual consciousness and historical catastrophe.

Miłosz faces the double challenge of being both a translated poet and one whose work is deeply rooted in Central European history that many American readers find unfamiliar. His profound meditations on totalitarianism, Catholic faith, and the responsibility of artists in political times require sustained attention that contemporary readers, accustomed to immediate accessibility, rarely provide. Poetry in general struggles for mainstream attention, and poetry in translation faces even greater obstacles.

Joseph Brodsky: The Russian-American Voice Between Two Worlds

Joseph Brodsky won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987, recognized for poetry that combined Russian formal techniques with American experiences. Exiled from the Soviet Union in 1972, Brodsky continued writing poetry in Russian while also composing essays in English. His work explored themes of displacement, memory, and the relationship between language and identity.

Like Miłosz, Brodsky suffers from the general neglect of poetry in American culture, compounded by his position between two literary traditions. His Russian poetry requires translation, while his English essays, though brilliant, appeal primarily to intellectual readers. Brodsky’s insights into the nature of totalitarianism and exile should resonate in our politically polarized times, yet his work remains confined to academic circles and poetry enthusiasts.

Toni Morrison: The Celebrated Writer Whose Later Works Fade

Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, and unlike most writers on this list, she remains widely read and studied. “Beloved” continues to find new readers, and Morrison’s exploration of African American history and trauma feels urgently relevant. Her lyrical prose style and unflinching examination of slavery’s legacy have secured her place in the American literary canon.

However, even Morrison’s reputation shows uneven patterns. While “Beloved,” “Song of Solomon,” and “The Bluest Eye” remain vital, her later novels like “Paradise” and “Love” receive less attention and critical acclaim. As Morrison aged, some critics argued that her later works became more allegorical and less emotionally immediate, though others maintained that her artistic vision simply deepened. The selectivity with which readers approach even celebrated authors reveals how literary reputations are constantly being negotiated and revised.

Bob Dylan: The Musician Who Accidentally Won Literature’s Highest Prize

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, a controversial choice that sparked debates about the definition of literature itself. Dylan’s songwriting combined folk traditions with literary modernism, creating lyrics that functioned both as popular music and as poetry. Songs like “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” became cultural touchstones that influenced both music and literature.

The controversy surrounding Dylan’s Nobel Prize reveals the ongoing tension between high and popular culture. Traditional literary scholars questioned whether song lyrics, however sophisticated, qualified as literature in the same sense as novels or poetry collections. Dylan himself seemed ambivalent about the honor, initially failing to acknowledge it publicly. His Nobel recognition represents a democratization of literary culture, but also highlights how institutional definitions of literature continue to evolve and create controversy.

Louise Glück: The Poet’s Poet in an Unpoetic Age

Louise Glück won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020, recognized for her spare, emotionally precise poetry that explored themes of family relationships, mortality, and the natural world. Collections like “The Wild Iris” and “Averno” demonstrated her ability to find profound meaning in seemingly simple observations, using classical mythology to illuminate contemporary psychological states.

Glück exemplifies the particular challenge facing contemporary poets: creating work of the highest artistic quality while knowing that poetry itself has been marginalized in American culture. Even winning the Nobel Prize brings limited mainstream attention to poets, whose work requires the kind of careful, repeated reading that conflicts with contemporary media consumption habits. Glück’s recognition honors poetry’s continuing vitality while also highlighting its cultural isolation.

The Paradox of Literary Fame in America

Many authors who have won the prize have fallen into obscurity, while others rejected by the jury remain widely studied and read. The United States has the highest number of Nobel laureates in the world, with over 420 Nobel laureates, with around 71% of all Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans. Yet this dominance in Nobel recognition doesn’t translate to lasting cultural relevance for many of these literary winners.

The American literary landscape seems to consume its Nobel laureates differently than other countries honor theirs. While European winners often see their entire body of work remain in print and receive critical attention, American winners frequently find their reputations tied to one or two major works, with the rest of their output gradually forgotten. This pattern suggests something particular about American reading culture—perhaps our preference for immediate impact over sustained engagement, or our tendency to reduce complex artistic careers to easily digestible highlights.

Think about it: when was the last time you saw someone reading Sinclair Lewis on the subway, or heard someone quote Isaac Bashevis Singer at a dinner party? These forgotten Nobel laureates remind us that even the highest literary honors can’t guarantee lasting cultural relevance—and that’s a story worth remembering, isn’t it?