No Prize was awarded in 1917. In 1948 the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel was replaced with the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

  • 1918 Ernest Poole - His Family
  • 1919 Booth Tarkington - The Magnificent Ambersons
  • 1920 no award given
  • 1921 Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence
  • 1922 Booth Tarkington - Alice Adams
  • 1923 Willa Cather - One of Ours
  • 1924 Margaret Wilson - The Able McLaughlins
  • 1925 Edna Ferber - So Big
  • 1926 Sinclair Lewis - Arrowsmith
  • 1927 Louis Bromfield - Early Autumn
  • 1928 Thornton Wilder - The Bridge of San Luis Rey
  • 1929 Julia Peterkin - Scarlet Sister Mary
  • 1930 Oliver Lafarge - Laughing Boy
  • 1931 Margaret Ayer Barnes - Years of Grace
  • 1932 Pearl S. Buck - The Good Earth
  • 1933 T. S. Stribling - The Store
  • 1934 Caroline Miller - Lamb in His Bosom
  • 1935 Josephine Winslow Johnson - Now in November
  • 1936 Harold L. Davis - Honey in the Horn
  • 1937 Margaret Mitchell - Gone With the Wind
  • 1938 John Phillips Marquand - The Late George Apley
  • 1939 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - The Yearling
  • 1940 John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
  • 1941 no award given
  • 1942 Ellen Glasgow - In This Our Life
  • 1943 Upton Sinclair - Dragon's Teeth
  • 1944 Martin Flavin - Journey in the Dark
  • 1945 John Hersey - A Bell for Adano
  • 1946 no award given
  • 1947 Robert Penn Warren - All the King's Men