The Nobel Prize in Literature () is awarded annually by the Swedish Academy to authors who, according to the Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the benefactor of the prize, have produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction". It is one of the five Nobel Prizes that are awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine.

Every year, the Swedish Academy sends out requests regularly for nominations of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Members of the Academy, members of literature academies and societies, professors of literature and language, former Nobel literature laureates, and the presidents of writers' organizations are all allowed to nominate a candidate. Nomination of oneself is not permitted. Despite the yearly invitations for nominations, there have been some years in which the prize was not conferred due to particular reasons (1914, 1918, 1935) and due to the outbreak of World War II (1940–1943). In addition, the prize has been delayed for a year seven times (1915, 1919, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1936, 1949).

Records of nominations are strictly kept secret for 50 years until they are made publicly available. Currently, the nominations submitted from 1901 to 1975 are available. Between those years, there have been 882 writers from different parts of the world nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, 74 of whom were awarded the prize, including Albert Schweitzer and Elie Wiesel, who were awarded a Nobel Peace Prize on 1953 and 1986 respectively. Only 89 women had been nominated for the prize starting with Malwida von Meysenburg who was nominated once for the year 1901 and eight of them have been awarded after all. Only one literary society has been nominated, the Pali Text Society for the year 1916.

Of the 882 revealed nominated writers, only the following are currently living: for 1967, the Ukrainian poet Lina Kostenko (born 1930) for 1969, the Finnish author Hannu Salama (born 1936) for 1973, the Indian writer Pratap Narayan Tandon (born 1932) for 1974, the Taiwanese poet Chen Min-hwa (born 1934).

Though the following list consists of notable literary figures deemed worthy of the prize, there have been some celebrated writers who were not considered nor even nominated such as Masaoka Shiki, Anton Chekhov, Kate Chopin, Jules Verne, Machado de Assis, Sarah Orne Jewett, William James, Ferdinand de Saussure, Robert Hugh Benson, Booker T. Washington, Sholom Aleichem, Rubén Darío, Jack London, L. Frank Baum, Olive Schreiner, Alexander Blok, Marcel Proust, Katherine Mansfield, Joseph Conrad, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, D. H. Lawrence, Arthur Conan Doyle, Khalil Gibran, Constantine Cavafy, Júlia Lopes de Almeida, Fernando Pessoa, Federico García Lorca, Lu Xun, Horacio Quiroga, Osip Mandelstam, César Vallejo, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Edmund Husserl, Antonio Machado, Ernst Toller, Antonio Machado, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Isaac Babel, Mikhail Bulgakov, Marina Tsvetaeva, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Underhill, Robert Musil, Simone Weil, Else Lasker-Schüler, Gertrude Stein, Booth Tarkington, Georges Bernanos, Osamu Dazai, Edna St. Vincent Millay, George Orwell, Graciliano Ramos, Dylan Thomas, Wallace Stevens, A. A. Milne, Alfred Döblin, Galaktion Tabidze, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Georges Bataille, E. E. Cummings, Edith Hamilton, Flannery O'Connor, C. S. Lewis, Langston Hughes, João Guimarães Rosa, Manuel Bandeira, Jack Kerouac, Christopher Dawson, John Dos Passos, Stevie Smith, John Berryman, Dino Buzzati, Nancy Mitford, Rosario Castellanos, Hannah Arendt, Murilo Mendes, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Agatha Christie, Ernst Bloch and Clarice Lispector.

There were also other news outlets and historians that noted the nominations of Mark Twain in 1907, Charlie Chaplin in 1952, Fernando González Ochoa in 1955Jorge A. Zapata Z.: "Fernando González Ochoa". Monografías.com. Retrieved on May 9, 2008. Es'kia Mphahlele in 1969, León de Greiff in 1970,DE GREIFF, Claudia, León De Greiff: exótico, utópico y quimérico, Ciudad Viva, Instituto Distrital de Cultura y Turismo, Bogotá, agosto de 2006, enlace revisado el 23 de junio de 2008. Anja Lundholm in 1974, and Anaïs Nin in 1976 yet their names are not archived in the years they were nominated. Many speculate it could be the case of lost nominations where the nomination letters never arrived at the Swedish Academy due to mishandling and poor mailing services.

Nominees by their first nomination Notes Nominations that were declared invalid and some nomination data are hidden at the Nomination Archive site according to § 8 of the statutes governing the Nobel archives of the Swedish Academy. However, they are provided in this list. † Posthumously nominated. ♀ Female nominee.

1901–1909

No.NomineeBornDiedCountryRefs. 1901 1 Alexander Baumgartner 1841 1910 2 Charles Borgeaud 1861 1940 3 João da Câmara 1852 1908 4 Louis Ducros 1846 1927 5 Paul Duproix 1851 1912 6 Carl Gustaf Estlander 1834 1910 7 Antonio Fogazzaro 1842 1911 8 Julius Gersdorff 1849 1907 9 Oscar le Pin—— 10 Ossip Lourié 1868 1955 11 Ferenc Kemény 1860 1944 12 Frédéric Mistral 1830 1914 13 Gaspar Núñez de Arce 1832 1903 14 Gaston Paris 1839 1903 15 Sully Prudhomme 1839 1907 16 Charles Renouvier 1815 1903 17 Edmond Rostand 1868 1918 18 Auguste Sabatier 1839 1901 19 Paul Sabatier 1858 1928 20 Henryk Sienkiewicz 1846 1916 21 Giacomo Stampa—— 22 René Vallery-Radot 1853 1933 23 Malwida von Meysenbug♀ 1816 1903 24 Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol 1847 1920 25 Émile Zola 1840 1902 1902 26 Juhani Aho 1861 1921 27 Marcel Barrière 1860 1954 28 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson 1832 1910 29 Bernard Bosanquet 1848 1923 30 Giosuè Carducci 1835 1907 31 Houston Stewart Chamberlain 1855 1927 / 32 José Echegaray 1832 1916 33 Gustav Falke 1853 1916 34 Arne Garborg 1851 1921 35 Hartmann Grisar 1845 1932 . 36 Gerhart Hauptmann 1862 1946 37 Henrik Ibsen 1828 1906 38 Anatoly Koni 1844 1927 39 Ventura López Fernández 1866 1944 40 George Meredith 1828 1909 41 Theodor Mommsen 1817 1903 42 John Morley 1838 1923 43 Lewis Morris 1833 1907 44 Archibald Robertson 1853 1931 45 Herbert Spencer 1820 1903 46 Leo Tolstoy 1828 1910 47 Charles Wagner 1852 1918 48 Carl Weitbrecht 1847 1904 49 William Butler Yeats 1865 1939 50 Theodor Zahn 1838 1933 1903 51 Georg Brandes 1842 1927 52 François Coppée 1842 1908 53 Robert Langton Douglas 1864 1951 54 Iwan Gilkin 1858 1924 55 Carl Friedrich Glasenapp 1847 1915 56 Rudyard Kipling 1865 1936 / 57 Maurice Maeterlinck 1862 1949 58 Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo 1856 1912 59 Albert Sorel 1842 1906 60 Algernon Charles Swinburne 1837 1909 1904 61 Demetrios Bernardakis 1833 1907 62 William Chapman 1850 1917 63 Anatole France 1844 1924 64 Selma Lagerlöf♀ 1858 1940 65 Émilie Lerou♀ 1855 1935 66 Jaroslav Vrchlický 1853 1912 1905 67 Eliza Orzeszkowa♀ 1841 1910 68 Godfrey Sweven 1845 1935 / 1906 69 Max Bewer 1861 1921 70 Gaston Boissier 1823 1908 71 William Booth 1829 1912 72 Borden Parker Bowne 1847 1910 73 Angelo de Gubernatis 1840 1913 74 Pedro Pablo Figueroa 1857 1909 75 Louis Franck 1868 1937 76 Max Haushofer 1840 1907 77 William Jonathan Neidig 1870 1955 78 George Lansing Raymond 1839 1929 79 Joseph Viktor Widmann 1842 1911 1907 80 Eduardo Benot 1822 1907 81 João Bonança 1836 1924 82 Paul Bourget 1852 1935 83 Holger Drachmann 1846 1908 84 Ángel Guimerá 1845 1924 85 Ian Maclaren 1850 1907 86 Andrés Manjón 1846 1923 87 Georgios Souris 1852 1919 1908 88 Julio Calcaño 1840 1918 89 Edmondo de Amicis 1846 1908 90 Rudolf Christoph Eucken 1846 1926 91 Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche♀ 1846 1935 92 Alfred Hutchinson 1859 1930 93 Adolf von Harnack 1851 1930 1909 94 Francesco D'Ovidio 1849 1925 95 Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé 1848 1910 96 Martin Greif 1839 1911 97 Ernest Lavisse 1842 1922 98 Salvador Rueda 1857 1933 99 Émile Verhaeren 1855 1916 100 Verner von Heidenstam 1859 1940

1910–1919

No.NomineeBornDiedCountryRefs. 1910 101 Wilhelm Benignus 1861 1930 / 102 Robert Bridges 1844 1930 103 Alfred Fouillée 1838 1912 104 Thomas Hardy 1840 1928 105 Paul Heyse 1830 1914 106 William Dean Howells 1837 1920 107 Andrew Lang 1844 1912 108 Pierre Loti 1850 1923 109 Édouard Rod 1857 1910 / 110 Molly Elliot Seawell♀ 1860 1916 111 Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach♀ 1830 1916 112 Gustav Warneck 1834 1910 1911 113 Rafael Altamira Crevea 1866 1951 114 Albert de Mun 1841 1914 115 Gustaf Fröding 1860 1911 116 Karl Adolph Gjellerup 1857 1919 117 Harald Høffding 1843 1931 118 Henry James 1843 1916 / 119 Peter Rosegger 1843 1918 120 Karl Schönherr 1867 1943 121 George Bernard Shaw 1856 1950 122 August Strindberg 1849 1912 123 Ernst von der Recke 1848 1933 1912 124 Henri Bergson 1859 1941 125 Jean-Henri Fabre 1823 1915 126 Salvatore Farina 1846 1918 127 James George Frazer 1854 1941 128 Adolf Frey 1855 1920 129 Sven Hedin 1865 1952 130 Hans Ernst Kinck 1865 1926 131 Benito Pérez Galdós 1843 1920 132 Pencho Slaveykov 1866 1912 133 Carl Spitteler 1845 1924 1913 134 Grazia Deledda♀ 1871 1936 135 Edward Dowden 1843 1913 136 Émile Faguet 1847 1916 137 Jakob Knudsen 1858 1917 138 John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury 1834 1913 139 Edmond Picard 1836 1924 140 Henrik Pontoppidan 1857 1943 141 Rabindranath Tagore 1861 1941 142 Francis Channing Welles 1887 1956 1914 143 René Bazin 1853 1932 144 Vilhelm Grønbech 1873 1948 145 Willem Kloos 1859 1938 146 Josef Svatopluk Machar 1864 1942 147 Dora Melegari♀ 1849 1924 / 148 Dmitry Merezhkovsky 1865 1941 149 Antonio Serra Morant 1866 1939 1915 150 Ferdinand Avenarius 1856 1923 151 Charles Montagu Doughty 1843 1926 152 Romain Rolland 1866 1944 1916 153 Otokar Březina 1868 1929 154 Rabindranath Datta 1883 1917 155 Ivan Franko 1856 1916 156 Per Hallström 1866 1960 157 Gunnar Heiberg 1857 1929 158 Erik Axel Karlfeldt 1864 1931 159 Troels Frederik Lund 1840 1921 160 Henrik Schück 1855 1947 161 The Pāli Text Societyfounded in 1881 1917 162 Jeppe Aakjær 1866 1930 163 Johan Bojer 1872 1959 164 Olaf Bull 1883 1933 165 Bertel Gripenberg 1878 1947 / 166 Otto Ernst Schmidt 1862 1926 167 Ivan Vazov 1850 1921 1918 168 Gustav Frenssen 1863 1945 169 Maxim Gorky 1868 1936 170 Gunnar Gunnarsson 1889 1975 171 Knut Hamsun 1859 1952 172 Alois Jirásek 1851 1930 1919 173 John Galsworthy 1867 1933 174 Arno Holz 1863 1929 175 Ebenezer Howard 1850 1928 176 Władysław Reymont 1867 1925 177 Hugo von Hofmannsthal 1874 1929

1920–1929