What was the original name of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction before 1948?
Answer
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel
The original name of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel.
The prize was among the original Pulitzer awards established in 1917, although no novel prize was presented that year. Its first award, made in 1918, went to Ernest Poole for His Family, a novel published in 1917. The category retained the “Novel” title through 1947.
The name changed to the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948, when the eligibility wording was broadened from an American novel to distinguished fiction published in book form by an American author. That revision made it possible to recognize works beyond conventional novels, including collections of stories.
A common mix-up is confusing the prize’s award year with the book’s publication year. The 1918 prize honored a 1917 publication, and the same one-year pattern generally continues: Pulitzer categories typically recognize work published during the preceding calendar year.